There was big news in last week’s Carnival of Real Estate, but we were delicate enough not to take notice.
A kinder, gentler BloodhoundBlog? Don’t hold your breath.
There is other RE.net blog carnival news, though:
We know about the Carnival of Real Estate Investing, of course, which was started by Real Estate Investing for Real. (BloodhoundBlog will be hosting this blog carnival on February 19th.)
Now comes news of the Consumer Focused Real Estate Blog Carnival, founded by Sadie’s Take on Delaware, Ohio. The idea is to reward locally-focused weblog posts.
From the other direction, David Gibbons of Zillow.com phoned this afternoon to talk about an idea he has proposed for the Carnival of Real Estate. The idea is to make a five- or ten-minute podcast with each week’s CoRE host, discussing the judging process, the decisive qualities of that week’s winning choice, and, also, offering the host a moment to discuss his or her local real estate market.
I like this idea, although I can never talk about anything for ten minutes. Our phone call to talk about a ten-minute podcast ran for 32 minutes. But I do like the thought that there will be some oversight over the hosts, if only to prevent — or at least draw ignominy to — the kind of news we delicately ignored this week.
I am also concerned about this proliferation of RE.net blog carnivals. I understand the impetus to create niche carnivals, but each new addition tends to dilute the impact of the others. I like the Carnival of Real Estate being “The Oscars,” as it were, of real estate weblogging carnivals. An idea I suggested to David is to split out CoRE awards by category: Best Investing Post, Best Local-Interest Post, Best Feature Post, Best News/Commentary Post, with one overall Best Post picked from among all the entries.
Another idea I have been toying with is to create a weekly Odysseus Medal to be awarded to what I think is the best RE.net weblog post of the week. Why me? Because I had the idea. Because I’m a presumptuous-enough insufferable bastard to trumpet my own opinions with a clarion’s call. And because I am a good judge of quality writing.
But: We’re judging the Carnival of Real Estate this week, so I’m not going to do that yet. Mike Price said some truly terrifying things about us, but they only sting because they’re plausible, even though false. We tried, once, to write the book on CoRE judging, and we made a point of saying then that we don’t judge on spelling or grammar.
But we do judge on moment, so entrants would do well to give a moment’s thought to the importance of their work. We certainly will.
Sullen-teenager-web-programmer-god Cameron Swann has written us software that will permit “blind” group judging: Judges will see each entry as a web page, with the author’s name and weblog kept secret. We want to judge on merit only, as much as is possible in an inherently subjective process.
If you haven’t entered yet, get busy. Deadline is Sunday at 3 pm EST, which is 12 noon PST.
And: If you want to post a stolen article as you own work, steal something from me. I love to win…
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