Sunday, February 04, 2007

The Tar-Heel Tavern

Tarheel Tavern

The Tar Heel Tavern is the Blog Carnival of North Carolina bloggers. A blog carnival is a regularly compiled selection of blog-posts submitted by bloggers who either belong to a particular geographical region (e.g., India, Iraq, Balkans, or North Carolina), or write on a particular topic (e.g., medicine, science, philosophy, history, religion, education, etc.), or regularly post photographs of animals (e.g, cats or dogs). If you are still not sure what a blog carnival is, check this carnival collection for some examples. The very first blog carnival, The Carnival of Vanities, was invented right here, in Chapel Hill, NC, by Bigwig of Silflay Hraka.

The Tar Heel Tavern will be posted every week, during the night between Saturday and Sunday. Every week a different NC blogger will edit and host the carnival. Links to all issues will be posted right here, on this post, as they appear each week. This post is also going to serve as the homepage for the carnival, where up-to-date information will be posted about submission rules, past/current/future hosts, and whatever other information may be neccessary at any time in the future. We have designed a logo (above) and you are welcome to import it into your blog template to serve as a link to this page.

In this space, you will find links to the future carnival hosts. Each host will, a few days before the carnival, post instructions on his/her blog containing information about submission (and perhaps a special carnival theme of the week). You can also send submissions to me at Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com and I will forward your entry to the host of the week. I will always respond with a "thank you" note when I receive a submission, so if you do not get one, try to submit again. Alternatively, you may want to use the Universal Carnival Submission Form.

When you send an entry for the next carnival, please put "Tar Heel Tavern" in the Title field of your e-mail (so it does not get eaten by spam-killers). Provide the name of your blog, the title of the post, and the URL of your post. Additional blurb about it is also a nice touch. Hosts may require additional information. For instance, you may have to identify yourself as a Lefty or Righty politically, so the editor can place them in appropriate "chapters" of the carnival.

Please send only one entry, and try to make it not more than one week old, i.e., written since the previous carnival was posted. Newbies may, as their first effort, submit an older (but better) post that will showcase their writing better as they introduce their blog to the community for the first time.

Finally, if you want to keep in touch and be informed, subscribe to the Tarheel Tavern board. Sign in (see the appropriate field on the side-bar) and you'll get weekly reminders and all the other information. That is also a great tool for hosts to spread the message and inform the interested bloggers about their edition.

You can read the complete Archives of the Tar Heel Tavern here, also you can find all the links here or you can follow the links below:

posted by coturnix at 10:49 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 03, 2005

On Hosting The Tarheel Tavern

In the blogging world, I'm a newbie. I haven't even hit my one year anniversary yet, but a few months ago, thanks to Billy, I discovered this phenomena that is so unique to blogging - the blog carnival. Now I'll be honest, it was just shortly before that, that I had even discovered blog aggregators, I mean I was fresh! And though I was intrigued by the concept of the blog carnival, I really had no idea what it was all about, or how it all worked, so first, I lurked a while, joined in as a contributor, just to get a feel for it. What I learned is that he who hosts reaps the traffic!

Now we all know how important traffic is, it's like the brass ring for a blogger, because only via traffic does one get comments, which are pure gold. So after a few weeks of contributing, I volunteered to host. I was breathless, weak in the knees under the stress of it, and completely intimidated by the concept, because I thought that surely this was going to be hard work.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's much simpler than it seems at first. I announced a theme, a deadline, (generally the evening before or morning of the day that the post is expected to be made) and let people know where to send the link for their entry. Then, once my inbox filled up with entries, I visited the various blogs to get a feel for the blog and blogger in question. All that was left then was to edit a bit, write a little something to pull it all together and give it some cohesion, and check my links.

On the day of the carnival, I made my post, announced that it was up, and watched the magic happen! There was traffic! There was networking, track-backing, there was link trading, camaraderie and friendship! And . . . there were comments!

By the time the weekend was over, blog rolls had swollen, my counter reached record levels and best of all, I had the chance to meet and greet a group of people I might not have gotten to know otherwise. I found interesting reads and people who think like I do and I'd begun a new relationship with people in my area who care about the things I care about.

This my friends, is the blogosphere - jump in and enjoy the carnival! It really is a heck of a fun ride, and not only is it free, YOU reap the biggest benefits!


Thinking about hosting the Tarheel Tavern sometime soon? Read these posts from folks who've hosted a carnival!
On Hosting a Blog Carnival I
On Hosting a Blog Carnival II

How I Hosted the Tangled Bank ..
and coming soon:
The Host with the Most

posted by Erin at 11:01 PM 0 comments