Carnival 1: Chess First!

Announcing the first edition of the first chess carnival in the history of the world. This will be posted right here, on this very blog on September 1, 2007.

I am inviting all the chess bloggers and chess sites in the universe to submit a sample of their work here for inclusion in this inagural edition.

There are now thousands of carnivals on the web. Almost every area of interest has it’s own carnival. Except for chess blogs.

The advantages of having a chess carnival: (1) For bloggers – to showcase a sample of their work to the chess community; (2) For readers – to sample content from a wide variety of chess blogs in one place. A Chess Carnival will also encourage quality work. If a blogger knows that his piece is being showcased right alongside pieces from the other blogs, then that serves as a motivator right there.

I don’t mean to be presumptuous in doing this. I just know that instead of complaining about nobody doing something, pointing fingers, and endless discussing, sometimes it’s best that someone just steps up and gets the ball rolling. That’s what I’m doing. If someone else wants to take over, then that would be fine with me. In fact, I need all the help on this that I can get.

First, hosting. The successful carnivals rotate blog hosts from month to month.

Second, publicity. The successful carnivals have a number of blogs who post an announcement on the upcoming carnival on their blogs and keep doing so each month.

Third, participation. Successful carnivals have a large sample of work from their blogging communities. Note here, bloggers don’t do any additional work. A carnival is not for original pieces written just for the carnival. A carnival is for work that has already been posted onto the blog.

For more information on the chess carnival, see the discussion in the USCF Forum. For more information on blogging carnivals in general, see the FAQ page from Blog Carnival, a site specially devoted to this subject.

Here’s an example of one of the classier blog carnivals. The History Carnival is now in it’s 55th. edition. Note that a civil war site is hosting it this month. Each month, a different blog hosts the carnival. Also, 55 straight months is a pretty good track record. Why can’t chess bloggers produce as quality a carnival as the history bloggers do?

In the interest of getting the ball rolling, here’s the summary of the Chess Carnival. Bloggers please submit your sample post for the next carnival here.

I’ll still to contact as many blogs this weekend as possible. I’d like the initial roll-out of this venture to be as high quality as possible. Once people see what a chess carnival can look like, then they can have a better idea of what this is all about. Please help!