20,000+ Bloggers Talk Environment on First Ever "Blog Action Day"

In case you missed it, let me tell you about a phenomenal event that the United Nations Environmental Programme pulled off on October 15th. They organized the first ever "Blog Action Day." The goal of Blog Action Day is simple: ask every blogger in the world to write a post about the same subject on the same day. This year, the subject was "the environment." That's it. Bloggers were free to take it in any direction from there. (Here's the promo YouTube Video.) What resulted is possibly the largest synchronized "conversation" about the environment that has ever taken place. Over 23,000 blog authors posted commentary, news or information about issues related to the environment. Those blogs have a combined subscription base of over 14 MILLION readers! I say "conversation" in quotes because it is only a conversation if the blog readers pick up the blog author's lead and talk-back in the blog's comments section. If you check out these Google search results for Blog Action Day posts, you can see that some posts were incredibly successful at getting a conversation going, while others were not. But, I suppose lots of two-way conversation isn't the only value here. One of my favorite posts got no comments at all, but my life would be less rich if I hadn't been introduced to this incredibly heart-warming video of an adult lion being reunited with the keepers who raised it as a cub. I think one of the most spectacular successes of Blog Action Day is that all kinds of bloggers that normally don't take up environmental issues got into it, thus bringing their audience into the conversation as well. I found out about Blog Action Day because a tech blog I subscribe to stunned me with an out-of-the-blue post about the need for a new "Vision of the Environment"! When I went to see who else was participating, I found all kinds of fascinating ways bloggers shoe-horned "the environment" into their blog's theme. Here are a few I thought were unique:

• 5 Best Environmental TV Offerings on the Web - from a digital lifestyles blog
• Environmentally-Friendly Tailgating Tips - from an FSU sports blog
• Top 35 Environmental Blogs - from a technology news and analysis blog
• Making Art without Unmaking the Environment - from an artist collective
• Is God Green? - a personal blog connecting the political and religious
• Why You Need Environmental PR - not your usual greenwash from a PR blog
• "Green" Knitting Practices - from Feather & Fan
• How to Be Chic and Environmentally Conscious- from the Beauty Blog Network

That's just a sample. If you want to see if a blogger addressed a topic you are interested in, try this: Go to Google's Blog Search page and enter "Blog Action Day" plus the topic you are interested in and see what comes up. For example, here are the results for Photography and Renovations. It is incredible to me that so many authors paused their usual train of thought (from sports to God to lipstick!) to write about the environment. And the connections that they made were so unexpected and wonderful! Congratulations to UNEP for pulling off such a successful event!! I think it was pure genius. And a world first!! Note: Sad to say, AASHE didn't get a blog post out the door for Blog Action Day itself. I was tempted to make a post and fudge the date. ;)  Hopefully this recap will suffice. I've signed up to get alerts from Blog Action Day in the future, so we'll do better next year!

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