2016 RABlog Week Survey

September will be here before we know it and with it 2016 RABlog week.  But before we get to the event there is some planning needed, and for that reason, I composed our first of what will be at least two surveys this year.  The second survey will concern topics for 2016 RABlog week and will be available later in August.

Who can participate?

Everyone is welcome to participate even if you are not a blogger or intend to blog.  This survey is intended for interested readers and bloggers, so all are welcome.  In fact, the best thing about a blog week is that we get the chance to further build community around the social interaction of blogging.  Blog week gives us a unique chance to spread our audience both among other bloggers and readers.  So if you follow this blog because of diabetes feel free to take the survey and if you know someone who is interested in rheumatoid arthritis, we would love their opinion as well.   Heck, if you see someone on the street, and you like them feel free to invite them to take the survey (ok, that might be a little much but you get the idea).

The main issue:

One thing I hope we as a community can decide is when to have RABlog week.  The survey will describe the issues, but between Labor Day in the United States, Medx, the traditional start of school in North America and the observance of Arthritis Awareness Month in Canada, we have some competing forces on the schedule.  I have to admit I chose September last year because it worked in my schedule and it was three months (recovery time) after Diabetes Blog week.  I chose the third week of September because I thought that would avoid most back to school activities in North America.  That all seemed liked a reasonable choice until it was scheduled and I realized it ran smack into MedX.

Then about half way through the week, I found out Arthritis awareness month was September in Canada.  So I had made one good and one poor choice; both by happenchance.  This year I hope to be a bit more deliberate about choosing the date.  When you take the survey you will get the chance to rank order some dates in September and October to have 2016 RABlog week and then one more important question; should we move the week from year to year to avoid MedX?

Something that has made other blog weeks successful has been a fixed week from year to year.  But other blog weeks I am aware of do not compete with a juggernaut like Medx.  As we know it seems that every year Medx gets more compelling, the talks more interesting and interest increases.  So the question before us is if we want to establish a fixed week, not moving it to adjust for Medx or if we want to be more flexible in our dates.    The second question is, are we willing to let it drift into October to give our community some spacing?

Topics:

There is a comment section in the survey for your thoughts, and if you have a topic or two, you might want to include, please make the suggestion.  I am starting to think about topics and would love to hear your ideas.

Voting more than once?

Yes, you can take the survey more than once, but only one time per IP address.  Each device is an IP number so feel free to use your smartphone, laptop, desktop, or any other device.  Since this is not a high-stakes vote, we can afford to take the same opinion a few times.  After all, if someone feels strong enough to take it twice, then I suspect they are very interested.  Trust me I took it five times before it went live, and it is not that interesting (don’t worry I had erased my data before it went live)

Click this link to get to the first 2016 RABlog week survey

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Take away for July 4, 2016

• The first event for 2016 RABlog week is upon us
• You can take the survey even if you are not a blogger
• Help pick the date and badge
• Blog week is never about pressure so let’s have some fun