Blog Action Day 2008 – Poverty – Launches
Today is a special day on our calendars here at Envato because on August 15th we launch the annual Blog Action Day campaign! As you may recall from 2007’s super successful campaign, the premise behind Blog Action Day is to get the world’s bloggers to unite to post on one important issue on the same day.
Last year was a huge success with some 20,000 bloggers participating to discuss the environment, the UN got involved, as did the EU Minister for the environment and suddenly we were in the papers and the news.
This year we’re tackling a huge issue in Global Poverty, but one that’s perhaps even more important. It’s a topic that most people don’t really feel they can do much about. I hope that through Blog Action Day 08 we might raise awareness on the big and small things that everyone can do to work towards hitting the millenium goals of eradicating poverty for good.
If you’re a blogger, podcaster, or videocaster, we’d love it if you’re join in this effort! We launched the site a few hours ago, and so far dozens of sites have been teeming in, as well as more than a few top 100 blogs (including my favourite blog TechCrunch!) which is very exciting and even a minister from the Spanish Parliament who blogs is participating.
Visit BlogActionDay.org to register and get involved!
Whether you want to learn while you work out or to make that commute useful, Freelance Radio is the place to hear all the tips, tricks and news of freelancing.
Freelance Radio
With over 100 weekly strips and counting, Freelance Freedom is an institution around here. Check out of all NC's brilliant work in the archives.
Freelance Freedom Archives
Interested in contributing to FreelanceSwitch? Write for the foremost freelance community and help share knowledge for the benefit of all!
Become a Guest Writer 
Great idea… I’ll be watching to see who this turns out.
Awesome!!
wow, really? Global poverty? How pretentious.
@ Mike: You could watch and see, or you could help it turn out great…
@ Brian: To be honest, deriding something as pretentious sounds like an excuse to absolve yourself from doing anything to help.
Already signed up and recruiting others!
Now, to narrow down my ideas of blog posts… might prove difficult, I’m quite the indecisive one
Before you guys chose the slogan “change the conversation” for your global poverty campaign, did you actually bother to google it? If you did, you probably would have realized I’ve been using that slogan for my own global poverty related campaign for months now.
I totally would have appreciated a heads up on this ahead of time…
@ Shawn A: After a Google search, it seems the slogan “Change the Conversation” is used by many people and organizations. Are you going to get upset with all of them? I’m sure some have used that phrase far longer than you have too. Al Gore even used it. The phrase is not trademarked.
@Blog Action Day staff – Thanks for the quick reply! I wasn’t familiar with your previous campaign and had no idea that “Change the Conversation” was something you used for your previous campaign (about the environment). As I explained by email, there were a few superficial coincidences – and it’s easy to jump to conclusions. So please accept my sincerest apologies for any drama that may have resulted from this.
@Casey – My ego isn’t big enough to claim I coined the phrase “change the conversation”. I actually first heard it used by Al Gore (like you cited) – who used it specifically for “Changing the Conversation about Global Warming”. I actually felt that there was something we needed to do – in regards to global poverty – i.e. “Change the Conversation about Global Poverty”.
“Changing the Conversation about Global Poverty” is an idea I am putting forward that we need to start talking about global poverty in a way that is: 1) personal, 2) accessible to a global audience, 3) does not make us feel guilty, and 4) does not talk down to us or condescend. My work is my way of putting that theory into practice.
The Blog Action Day staff use of the phrase “Change the Conversation” is a bit different from mine and also risks muddying the specific meaning I’ve been trying to build about “Changing the Conversation about Global Poverty”. But, like I said, I didn’t know this was just were carrying over the phrase from their previous campaign. And, when it comes to Global Poverty, we’re all on the same team here.