Blogathon

6 O’Clock BS – I Am Your Dancing Monkey

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , 288 Comments

Okay!  I’m starting to get a little nervous and super excited about tomorrow’s Blogathon to benefit the Secular Student Alliance’s SSA Week.

My first post will be up at 6am CST, and I’ll be posting every 30 minutes after that for a full 24 HOURS!

I have a list of topics that I could write about (but nothing pre-written or pre-scheduled!), and a few gimmicks that I’m looking forward to rolling out. I’m not going to give away (hint: GIVE AWAY <—subtlety!) all of them here, but I wanted to introduce a couple of ideas tonight.

The first person to comment on my 6am post tomorrow morning gets awarded the Golden Coffee Bean. There’s no physical prize, just bragging rights. Also you have to make me coffee. Well, you have to at least pretend like you’re making it for me (shhh…I’ll never know the difference!). This doesn’t financially support the SSA; I just want to see a friendly face at tomorrow’s kick off. But speaking of…

ZOMG DONATE TO SSA!

Donate early. Donate often. I want your money! $5, $10, $25, $50, $50,000 (thanks, Todd Stiefel!) – whatever you can give in support of the SSA and its mission of supporting secular students, secular student groups and scientific and critical thought in our schools. That’s why we’re all doing this, right?

And this is where the “I am Your Dancing Monkey” part comes in.

When you donate, there is a place at the bottom of the form that allows you to leave a “topic suggestion” for a given blogger. It looks like this:

Donors choice. I will write about – or do (where’s that video camera?) – a good many things to earn your monies during my 24-hour blogathon. Write your suggestion in the box and I’ll try to make it happen.

Myself, I have two other ideas (other than blogging topics) of how you can use that space if you’re contributing to the Biodork blogathon:

1) Tell me WHERE to blog! I like this one and hope someone makes use of it. My blog tagline is “Thoughts from the big cherry”, which is a reference to the Spoonbridge and Cherry at the Walker Art Center. I love my adopted city and I love exploring it. You pick the place and I will scramble to get there in between blog posts. Don’t know the area? Jump on Google Maps or search for “Minneapolis landmarks” or similar. Pick a place and I’ll get there.

So here’s how it works. Donate a minimum of $10 to SSA and in the “Topic Suggestion” box write “Visit” and a place that is a) in Minneapolis, b) can be found if I google it, and c) is easily accessible to the public. No residential or private addresses please. Businesses, landmarks, etc. are cool. I will blog from that spot and put up a photo of me on location. I can’t promise that I’ll make it everywhere during the blogathon, but if you submit a location suggestion, I will try. I’m going to cap “travel blogs” at six locations so I can do some actual writing instead of spending all of my time driving around. If I don’t make it to your spot during the blogathon, I will do a wrap up post of those locations that were missed and have it up within one week.

2) Tell me to write about YOU! Do you want me to write a story about you and how badass, sweet and mild-mannered, supervillany or just plain AWESOME you are? I’m fairly decent at writing fictional, off-the-cuff stories, and it would be my honor to make up a fictional story about you! If you donate a minimum of $10 to the SSA I will write and post your story (approx. 250-500 words) during the blogathon. In the Topic Suggestion box write “Story About Me” and (this is important) include five words that you want me to include in your story (psst – they don’t have to be words that describe you – they can be any random words you want!)

Housekeeping note: If you donate and have made a request of me, and want to really, really make sure I see it, the best thing to do is to forward me your SSA donation email receipt (or send me a copy-paste of the relevant information). An administrator is going to be forwarding me requests as they come in, but the admin may not be on the clock for the full 24 hours. You can reach me at [email protected]

You can start sending in requests any time. Aaaaaany time between now and 6am this Sunday morning. Well, it’s over at six, so let’s cap requests at 5am Sunday morning.

That’s a lot, I know. And I’m planning on doing some serious writing in between all of the silliness! I am very much looking forward to this wild ride, and hope you choose to spend some of it with me.

Okay. It’s time to go buy energy drinks!

6 O’Clock BS – I Am Your Dancing Monkey
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6 O'Clock BS – I Am Your Dancing Monkey

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , 440 Comments

Okay!  I’m starting to get a little nervous and super excited about tomorrow’s Blogathon to benefit the Secular Student Alliance’s SSA Week.

My first post will be up at 6am CST, and I’ll be posting every 30 minutes after that for a full 24 HOURS!

I have a list of topics that I could write about (but nothing pre-written or pre-scheduled!), and a few gimmicks that I’m looking forward to rolling out. I’m not going to give away (hint: GIVE AWAY <—subtlety!) all of them here, but I wanted to introduce a couple of ideas tonight.

The first person to comment on my 6am post tomorrow morning gets awarded the Golden Coffee Bean. There’s no physical prize, just bragging rights. Also you have to make me coffee. Well, you have to at least pretend like you’re making it for me (shhh…I’ll never know the difference!). This doesn’t financially support the SSA; I just want to see a friendly face at tomorrow’s kick off. But speaking of…

ZOMG DONATE TO SSA!

Donate early. Donate often. I want your money! $5, $10, $25, $50, $50,000 (thanks, Todd Stiefel!) – whatever you can give in support of the SSA and its mission of supporting secular students, secular student groups and scientific and critical thought in our schools. That’s why we’re all doing this, right?

And this is where the “I am Your Dancing Monkey” part comes in.

When you donate, there is a place at the bottom of the form that allows you to leave a “topic suggestion” for a given blogger. It looks like this:

Donors choice. I will write about – or do (where’s that video camera?) – a good many things to earn your monies during my 24-hour blogathon. Write your suggestion in the box and I’ll try to make it happen.

Myself, I have two other ideas (other than blogging topics) of how you can use that space if you’re contributing to the Biodork blogathon:

1) Tell me WHERE to blog! I like this one and hope someone makes use of it. My blog tagline is “Thoughts from the big cherry”, which is a reference to the Spoonbridge and Cherry at the Walker Art Center. I love my adopted city and I love exploring it. You pick the place and I will scramble to get there in between blog posts. Don’t know the area? Jump on Google Maps or search for “Minneapolis landmarks” or similar. Pick a place and I’ll get there.

So here’s how it works. Donate a minimum of $10 to SSA and in the “Topic Suggestion” box write “Visit” and a place that is a) in Minneapolis, b) can be found if I google it, and c) is easily accessible to the public. No residential or private addresses please. Businesses, landmarks, etc. are cool. I will blog from that spot and put up a photo of me on location. I can’t promise that I’ll make it everywhere during the blogathon, but if you submit a location suggestion, I will try. I’m going to cap “travel blogs” at six locations so I can do some actual writing instead of spending all of my time driving around. If I don’t make it to your spot during the blogathon, I will do a wrap up post of those locations that were missed and have it up within one week.

2) Tell me to write about YOU! Do you want me to write a story about you and how badass, sweet and mild-mannered, supervillany or just plain AWESOME you are? I’m fairly decent at writing fictional, off-the-cuff stories, and it would be my honor to make up a fictional story about you! If you donate a minimum of $10 to the SSA I will write and post your story (approx. 250-500 words) during the blogathon. In the Topic Suggestion box write “Story About Me” and (this is important) include five words that you want me to include in your story (psst – they don’t have to be words that describe you – they can be any random words you want!)

Housekeeping note: If you donate and have made a request of me, and want to really, really make sure I see it, the best thing to do is to forward me your SSA donation email receipt (or send me a copy-paste of the relevant information). An administrator is going to be forwarding me requests as they come in, but the admin may not be on the clock for the full 24 hours. You can reach me at [email protected]

You can start sending in requests any time. Aaaaaany time between now and 6am this Sunday morning. Well, it’s over at six, so let’s cap requests at 5am Sunday morning.

That’s a lot, I know. And I’m planning on doing some serious writing in between all of the silliness! I am very much looking forward to this wild ride, and hope you choose to spend some of it with me.

Okay. It’s time to go buy energy drinks!

6 O'Clock BS – I Am Your Dancing Monkey