GridBlogging

I think I first heard of intentional concurrent blogging on Hal Macomber's excellent blog. Obviously it stuck in my mind... it's resurfacing now, more than two years later.

It's called gridblogging: "a group of bloggers tackling a specific topic on a specific day" and what attracts me about it is the concurrency aspect: everyone is writing fresh, so the perspectives are very personal, not derived from each other's entries as with the blog-and-comment pattern. Have a look at one such entry by fellow Agile practitioner Laurent Bossavit.

"Grid blogging aims to investigate the potentials of a distributed media production model spread across blogosphere nodes. It seeks to ignite attention on specific topics at set times through variegated voices. A kind of decentralised flash mobbing for the mind, if you like.

Decentralisation is key here. Unlike single collaborative blogging structures that unite discussions under the same URL, Grid blogging is about synchronized guerrilla publishing attacks carried out across a series of online locations. It respects and heightens the individual voice within a media-wise choir. It allows for idea-jamming and mosaics of diverse perspectives to emerge unfettered".

from *the initial invitation to Grid Blog project by Ashley Benigno. november 7, 2003

Bloggers use a common prefix on blog titles to allow them all to be found with one search. I've added Technorati search to my Firefox search bar, so all I need to do is type "[grid::fatherhood]" to find the other blogs in this ring (don't forget the quotes).

Sounds like tagging, actually... perhaps it would be better simply to create a tag and use technorati or del.icio.us? GridBlogging predates tagging as it is used today... but I wonder if is there still some benefit to using the prefix instead / as well? Are there gridblog aggregators?

This post seems interesting, using blogs to actually get work done - a BlogPosium!

Article: Whither GridBlogging?