Day of Blogs

For the uninitiated, the Blogathon is a 24 hour marathon carried out by "Bloggers" around the world.

Blogging is the art of keeping a weblog - web pages written by people who wish to share their thoughts and let others know what is happening in their lives. It has been described as the 21st century equivalent of keeping a diary, with the difference that it can be accessed by millions of people all over the world.

The whole Blogathon concept started in 2000 when blogger Cat Connor decided that a free weekend could be combined with a marathon session of insomnia to have some fun with her personal website. In fact, Cat decided to update frytopia every 15 minutes for an entire 24 hours, for a total of 96 posts over the course of a single day. Armed only with a stack of movies and a case of Mountain Dew, Cat plunged headfirst into a day’s worth of blogging and wound up surviving it well enough — even earning some notoriety among her blogging associates along the way.

The first annual event occurred in 2001, when Cat invited friends and other bloggers to join her in her sleepless marathon. Over a hundred participants stayed awake on July 28 and 29, some doing so in spectacular fashion: there were virtual mix tapes, physical collages, shoes aplenty, and even dreams for the sleepy. Altogether, bloggers raised over $20,000 for 77 different charities in 2001 and garnered even more attention than Cat had on her own the year before, prompting her to confirm Blogathon’s perennial nature: 2001’s success outstripped all my expectations, so we’re here for good.”

This year, Cat, Sheana, and Heather had real life trump their admin plans so they put out the word that “alterna-thons” were welcome. Several bloggers including Jen K-M took them up on their offer and Day of Blogs was born.

AICR has been involved with the Blogathon since 2003 and once again was one of the suggested charities chosen to benefit from their efforts.

Days of Blogs took place on the 26th-27th of July 2008.

You can read more about it here.