Reading, and Writing, and Building.

Source.

Working on the Great Blog Roll Call (GBRC) 2015 can be a bit overwhelming at times. The first GBRC only had 278 blogs included once everything was said and done. The 2014 GBRC had and additional 87 blogs for 365. The current GBRC 2015 has broken the 400 mark and I'm only on the Ls - which isn't to say that I've got everyone's blog descriptions updated as I'm only in the As for the updates. That sounds weird considering that I'm further on the list and yet not. Let me put this a different way. In order to make the GBRC 2015 accurate I have to develop a thorough understanding of each blog so that everything doesn't read like a repetition (something that I think tends to happen with all the news blogs that get added after the list initially posts each year). So I try to read between three and six months worth of posts on each blog. To put that into perspective for the month of January I read over 2,000 blog posts just to do the Best Reads of the Week series and that didn't have all the blogs I'm adding to the GBRC 2015 involved. 

Moving on. This year I'm trying a few different things to make the list better than last years. First I'm adding an Abandoned and Retired Blogs section that will feature all the blogs that you can still find but are no longer maintained. I'm not sure how much of an impact this will have on the GBRC 2015's final number of active blogs but having a substantial number of blogs that never update on the list feels like I'm just padding the number rather than actively tending to the list. Hopefully this will make it easier for people to prune their lists. 

I'm building a list of all the blog authors who use Google+ and will be creating a post with that contact information. This way if you're looking for people who are writing blog post you can curate your Google circles to include all your favorite authors in one place. I'll also be including authors on the GBRC 2015 with each post to further ground the blogs with actual people. It seems like the more that happens the better relationships that we're all able to build with each other.

Council of Geronimo and Soldiers

I'll also be adding new descriptions to nearly every blog that will be reflective of their 2014 focus and output. My idea is to make each entry as helpful as is humanly possible so that people coming on the list won't stumble into blogs that are completely against what they're looking for. After all if you're looking for a blog that has lots of really well done fluff pieces you're not going to want to pick up a design blog that focuses exclusively on the crunch of mechanical rules. Which brings me to the poll you'll find in the upper right hand side of the screen. I've put a bunch of things that I'm willing to do for this year's GBRC but I kind of wanted to see what you cats wanted. 

Another thing I need to do is develop a new banner and button to use for people to link back to the list. That may be a bit of a bear as I'm not real sure how to do it but I'll figure it out, I think . . . Anyway if you'd like to be included in the GBRC 2015 shoot me an e-mail with the title, "Please add my blog to the Great Blog Roll Call 2015," add I'll put you on! Oh, and before I go, I wanted to thank everyone who has been reading me, sharing my posts, dropping plus ones, and clicking on the ads (every little bit helps). I really appreciate you guys!