The First International Jblogger Convention

Nefesh B'Nefesh will be hosting The First International Jewish Bloggers Convention “The Power of the JBlogosphere: Taking Jblogging to the next level.” A post about this event can be found here.

Jib Awards: Looking for a Few Good Men (or Women)

Let me set the scene for you. Take something like, Star Wars, and you will get lots of love, but tons of fanboy critique. Every fan has their complaints and thinks they could have done better. (especially those Prequels!) Now imagine if George Lucas made an announcement and told all the fans - "Here are the keys to the franchise, continue as you wish, whatever you'd like you can do." Wouldn't that be cool? Even more important at the moment - what kind of serious dork am I that I could even make that analogy in the first place? Geez, I know, right? I can imagine now that the real question is "can I even trust Chaim to ever write a normal post after this?" .. and you'd be right for asking, but let me just connect the dots and be on more way. The Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards have forever been part of a love/hate J-Blogger relationship. This year for the first time, us, the bloggers have been given the keys to the "franchise." We are working very hard to make this something that every blogger can get on board with. We are trying to address every concern that every blogger had over the years. Things are going very smoothly so far, we even have a brand new website. There are a few of us that have been working non stop on this project, and we have already secured 4 (at least) very good sponsors. We're looking for more sponsors, and we're looking for one or two more people that can take on an aggressive and active role. You can join our Jib Google Group to take part in this discussion and offer some assistance or you can e-mail me or Akiva or BagelBlogger for more information. I leave you now with a sincere apology that I will never again use a Star Wars analogy so gracelessly.

~ Updated ~

The sidebar has been updated for H.H., K.C.C, and I added to two Jblogger interviews from Mother in Israel and added a listing for the all new J-Pix carnival.

Proposed Categories

Bagel Blogger put in a lot of work and came up with the following possible list of categories for the May JIBs: Proposed Categories 2006 Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards - Best 'Life in Israel' Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Aliyah Blog [New] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Diaspora Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 Regional [new] USA: 1 British: 1 European: 1 Canadian: 1 South American: 1 Australian and NZ: 1 Other: 1 _______________________ Best Community/Region Blog [New] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Jewish Religion Blog [Outright] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 Best Orthodox Judaism Blog [new] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 Best Conservative Judaism Blog [new] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 Best Reform Judaism Blog [new] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Jewish Current Events/News Blog [new] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Politics and Current Affairs Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 Best Centre:123 [new] Best Right:123 [new] Best Left:123 [new] _______________________ Best Major Event Coverage [New] Nominated Major Event: Israel Hezbollah War BMEC Category A: The War: Update/coverage BMEC Category B: The War: Best Series BMEC Category C: The War: Best Visual Series BMEC Category D: The War: Report Single story BMEC Category E: (Defineable) Best Response to Negative press during war. _______________________ Best Kosher Series [new] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Kosher Post[new] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Media Critiquing [new] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Single Incident Media Critiquing [new] Outright:123 _______________________ Best Series Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Post Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Overall Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Jewish Culture Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Jewish Humor Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Pro-Israel Advocacy Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Non-Jewish Pro-Israel Advocacy Blog [new] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Personal Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Designed Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best New Blog 2006 Outright:123 _______________________ Best Overall 'Mega' Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Podcast Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best 'Student Life' Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Group Blog Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best Group Series [new] Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 _______________________ Best of Rest Outright:123 New:Upcoming Award 1 I'm not sure what the "upcoming award" means, but perhaps it would be nice to have three places, not just one ultimate winner for the category, just like last year. That will help in furthering our goal - highlighting as many blogs as possible. I know there were some specific suggestions in the comments, and I hope, after taking a look at this list, you'll keep them coming!

The Plan of Action

Well, now that we've established that the real JIBs won't run until around May, and have decided to devote this month to highlighting Jblogosphere in general... we need to start working on a plan of action for the future. Some ideas being discussed thus far: 1) Hosting Some of us have suggested that the Jblogosphere blog would be a good place to host the awards for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's a blog devoted specifically to the Jblogosphere and highlighting Jewish blogs. Secondly, it's run by a number of people (as you can see in the sidebar), rather than just one person. Think about it as having a panel of jury to discuss the outcome, rather than having one judge making all the decisions. Also, the hosts of the blog have their own separate blogs and interests, so Jblogosphere IS really the place for all J-blogs and not for any individual agendas. I'm not exactly sure how that would work in terms of neutrality - does that mean that we would merely abstain from the nomination process and the blog would not be involved in the nominations either, or would that further mean that our individual blogs wouldn't be eligible either? In any case, I think the idea has merit. However, other suggestions are welcome! 2) Organizers Well, I think all of us involved in running this blog would probably contribute in some way, but I think there's always room for other people to get involved. Perhaps we could bring in more left-wing bloggers on the "team" to make the teamwork a bit more diverse. After all, if we want to highlight Jblogs, promoting unity among Jblogs should be one of our absolute priorities. I really think that it would be more fun for more people to get involved, since the whole point is forming a community, and in the past, the competition element seemed to overshadow the "working together" part o of it. 3) Format As Dave pointed out, the People's Choice Jblog awards digressed from the original format of JIBs. Which means that whoever is working on JIBs in the future would probably preserve the original format. Getting a large newspaper to help promote and advertise the awards, as was done in the past, would be incredibly helpful as well. 4) Categories In the past, JIBs had a large number of categories... and nevertheless received a fair amount of criticism from various bloggers who felt left out. Well, there've been several propositions to help deal with the issue. a) create separate categories for mega blogs b) create numerous separate categories for smaller/lower-ranked/newer blogs, the way it was done in The Weblog Awards (if you recall, they had a number of categories, choosing the best blog of each ecosystem level). c) create separate categories for right and left-wing blogs (or at least for the political ones) d) perhaps include more categories - Jewish/Israeli Blawgs? More miscellaneous categories? Separate Current Events from Punditry? Different types of advocacy blogs? 5) Nominations The goal would be to highlight the best of Jblogosphere, so diversity would be encouraged rather than discouraged. Just as in the past, the nominations and voting would be open to everyone, so that as many Jblogs as possibly could be reached, at least potentially. 6) Advertizing Guys, that's what we really need to work on. This time around, part of the reason things didn't work out was because no one really knew about what was happening, no one was advertising, and a limited number of people was nominating and voting. I really hope that'll change in the future. I know some of you don't like the competition element of it, but come on, this is really more for fun than anything else. It's not like we're earning huge prizes or eternal fame here. The whole point is to highlight good blogs, and encourage merit and Jblogosphere in general. 7) Criticism We've discussed the tension between being open to feedback and criticism from bloggers and the flame wars, which have erupted in the past because of a few individuals, who, um, offered less than constructive criticism. Well, trolls are just a part of life. Come on, we're way more mature than that, or at least, more than the trolls. If they want to be mean, that's their problem. We're here to have fun. Period. I'm sure I'm leaving a lot of stuff out, so I hope to hear more ideas and suggestions from all of you. I'm hoping that we'll have learned from past mistakes, and the spirit of good sportsmanship and fun will be preserved.

Hey Friends, It's JBlog Awareness Month!!!!

Folks, I don't know if you knew this or not, but January is J-Blog awareness month. No you didn't know? Hmm, well, maybe that's because I just made it up right now. How do you like that? I mean, why not, I think somewhere, out there, there is some other thing happening that's supposed to accomplish the same thing, but who said there can't be more then one road to awareness. So with that weirdly vague explanation, I officially hereby kickoff J-Blog awareness month. What I'm hoping for, is that people will recognize this new project by upping the amount of Jblog roundups they do, especially to blogs that they are just finding for the first time. Try to include one new blog, or one blog you never read before in your links. Take the graphic from above, and if you want use it to link to this explanation post, or change the link to a random new blog every day! Another way you can participate in Jblog awareness month is to contact SoccerDad and volunteer to host the weekly Haveil Havalim. Other efforts to promote the Jblogosphere come and go, but Haveil Havalim is here every single week. Offer to host one, it's a great experience. Click here to read my blogger roundup for today. Just scroll past the introduction from above.

Updated Haveil Havalim and J-Blogger Interviews

Hello out there in the Jblogosverse. For no reason at all, none whatsoever, completely without any catalyst, I decided to return to this blog and be an ACTIVE member. Yeaup, it's me, that meal 'ol blogger, Mr. "Malicious" himself, Chaim from the Life-Of-Rubin Blog. My first assignment was housekeeping. I updated the dropdown menus for Haveil Havalim and the JBlogger interviews. All 102 Haveil Havalim's are now listed there as well as the four outstanding Jblogger interviews that Jewish Blogmeister conducted. Please if you haven't read them you really should. The next few tasks that I have taken on for myself will be: Strongly encouraging bloggers to take on hosting duties at Haveil Havalim. Convincing the other team members to allow me to make the beta switch. Since I'm the one who did the template work on this blog I'm hoping they won't give me too hard a time :-) Asking someone to email me any new Kosher cooking carnivals (starting from the 11th one and on) Reminding people to go The Kindness Blog and if you want to contribute then go ahead. Anyone can submit a story of kindness, you don't even have to register (wink, wink) just send an email to the lovely Shoshana and be a part of something positive and uplifting. The JBlogosphere is all about helping to spread the word about all the wonderful Jblogs in our community. The Jblogosphere is a blog written by the bloggers ... for the bloggers.

The Peoples Choice JBlog Awards

Nominations for The Peoples Choice JBlog Awards are now open. The categories include Best Overall Blog Best Pro-Israel Advocacy Blog Best Jewish Religion Blog Best Jewish Humor Blog Best Slice of Life in Israel Best "New" Blog Best Jewish Current Events/News Blog Best Personal Blog Best Jewish Culture Blog Best Designed Blog Best Group Blog Best Podcast/Vlog Best Kosher Blog Best Live Event Coverage Best Post and Series Best Student Life Blog Best Recommended Blog Check it out and let the nominations begin! : )

Volunteers Needed

Reb Chaim HaQoton is planning to go back to Yeshiva, and is looking for someone to take over his blog. Please drop a comment if you think you might be interest, either her on Reb Chaim HaQoton's blog! Thanks!

Hillel and College Students

I was just contacted by David Weinberg from Hillel, who informed about the latest Hillel initiative. College students have a chance to get their nicknames and become eligible to win a 1 GB iPod nano or one of the several iTunes gift cards. To enter, you should fill out a brief survey on Hillel's page. And if you need any more information or materials, you can contact David at dweinberg at hillel dot org. Also, if you have any feedback, please feel free to comment! : )