Meta Monday: Hegemonik now at 30+ posts (Open Thread)

Hegemonik is now 30 something posts old. 30!

As the author of the project, I’m looking forward to trying to step up the level of readership in the blog. I’ve been experimenting with different forms of blogging, trying to encourage comments and broaden topic areas, all to encourage the interaction between this and the various pathways in the multiverse.

In the near future, I think I’m going to invest in some of WordPress’s upgrades. As a former Blogspot user, I’m kind of ticked at the inability to edit CSS right out of the box. Also, a bit peeved at WordPress messing around with code embedding. Sure it makes WordPress.com less susceptible to fly-by-night sploggers, but it just messes with my ability to tinker around with the innards of my blog.

I’m wondering whether it might be worth it to get arrange hosting and getting a domain name. Any thoughts out there?

Also: The RSS aggegation project is still on. Right now, I’ve got three SDS bloggers who’ve opted in. If you’re an SDS blogger, let me know if you’re interested in the project!

Meta Monday: Participate in a project to promote SDS blogs

Not too long ago, there was an exchange of emails amongst a few bloggers in SDS about trying to tie together SDS’ers blogs into some common project, something a bit more coherent.

As many such exchanges go, it generated some excitement but fell by the wayside in the middle of a crunch around Finals-time. So maybe it’s time to take that idea off the bikerack and put it into effect.

There’s several potential solutions. One of the ones I would like to commit to would be passive, wouldn’t require a lot of effort, but could help boost up readership and interest in blogging from the SDS angle.

It’d involve the following:

• Consolidating the RSS feeds from SDS’ers blogs into a single, easily-to-subscribe-to RSS feed.
• Using that feed to power a Feedburner Headline Animator displaying the headlines of SDS’ers blogs that anybody with a blog or MySpace page could add.
• Taking some time to promote both the feed and Headline Animator on Facebook.

What’s all this jibber jabber about RSS and some Headline Animator? Here’s explanations of both:

RSS feeds explained in plain English

Now check out some info on the Headline Animator from Feedburner. All it does is take the RSS feed and does a ticker of the headlines from an RSS feed. In this case, it’d be SDS’ers blogs.

If you’re an SDS’er and would like to participate, please leave a comment to this story that includes your site’s address plus the address of your RSS feed. This is a volunteer project, so give this about a week to start up.

Meta Monday: thinking over SDS related projects

These next two weeks I’m not going to have the time for some of the essay writing I’ve been doing of late. I’ll be working on laying out the print version of the SDS News Bulletin , which will eat up the bulk of my spare time.

In the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking a project for SDS in advance of the next National Convention. What form it’ll take, I’m unsure — it depends on what I hear from folks, what needs we really have, and how much work needs to be done by the Convention and what can be done by the Convention.

First on my list, I want to work on some materials for large-scale political education for SDS. The default model for carrying out any education in SDS are workshops used by non-governmental organizations and community based organizations to train their professional organizers — usually in some small, intimate setting, usually in a setting of 1-trainer to about 10-participants.

In itself, that is not a problem. The problem arises out of the small scale and high intensity which these trainings need, which has denied most of the organization the political education it needs in order to make informed decisions.

Meta Monday: You have our gratitude!

Readers:

There’s been a lot of traffic at Hegemonik in its first month of existence. I’m trying to keep content fresh while unplugging to enjoy the good weather out in the meatspace.

I’d like to thank those bloggers who’ve been swapping links and helping promote Hegemonik of late, in no particular order: