If It's May It Must Be...

Yes, it's that time of year again. The trees are in bud, the sun's in hiding, the temperature's dropped ten degrees - it must be Spring!

And with the merry days of May, as surely as village maidens dancing round the maypole (they do do that where you live, don't they?) comes

 The Newbie Blogger Initiative.

The NBI, for anyone who hasn't run into it before, is an annual pep rally for would-be bloggers. It's for anyone who ever thought about putting finger to key and then thought again, for anyone who's tried and faltered, for anyone who's reading this and thinking "Geez, does this guy ever go on...I could do better than that...". It's for anyone who fancies giving this blogging lark a go.

The NBI began very much as an MMO-centric affair and MMOs are just about all I blog about so chances are anyone reading this is already on board that train. If not, never fear! It's already opened out to welcome all stripes of the gaming rainbow and this year Izlain and Doone, the current curators and keepers of the flame, hope to widen the appeal still further.

If you think there's nothing left to say about MMO payment models, the holy trinity or the NGE that hasn't already been said by ten thousand bloggers before you you'd be right  then maybe you'd like to try your pen at some other aspect of the Wider Geekdom. The NBI is a broad church. You could probably even blog about Broadchurch! Maybe not... anyway, can anyone ever truly say they've read enough posts about MMO payment models?

I'm not entirely sure what's planned for this year's festivities. In previous years I'd received an email by now or engaged in some other form of promotional run-up to the big day but this year the NBI has kind of crept up on me. The first mention I saw was in Wilhelm's April review.  He's obviously been paying more attention than me although he does seem to have the advantage of a time machine - the link he posted on April 30th to the Call for Organizers goes to a post that's dated 2nd of May!

If you think organizing is a thing you can do you don't need to be a Timelord or a Chronomancer. You don't even need to wait to be asked. Just go out yourself on the thread I just linked. No, not Jeromai's, although I'm sure he'd pass the message on - this one!

If you're a would-be blogger you can go sign up here.  Go on! You know you want to!

If you just clicked that last link and got put off by having to fill out a form - I know it would have put me off back when I was unmming and ahhing and sitting on the fence over whether to commit myself to public scrutiny - it's okay! Go here instead and just make yourself and your blog known on the Forum. It all comes out the same in the end.

Whatever route you choose, if you have the slightest desire to see your assumed name in links this is the place to start. Don't worry about commitment. Don't think about whether you'll stay the course. If you try it and don't like it that's fine. You can just stop whenever you want. Plenty of bloggers go round the track a few times before they hit their rhythm. There are no rules, no quotas, no targets. Just give it a go. If it grabs you you'll always be glad you did and if it doesn't that's fine too.

Very selfishly I hope this year's NBI is a huge success that brings in lots of new bloggers. I see it as a great big trawl net scooping up new blogs for me to read and enjoy. Oh yes, its all about me! And once you have your own blog it'll be all about you!

I'm going to add all the new NBI blogs to my blogroll for May, which means I might have to cull some of the dormant ones on there before I find out the hard way whether Blogger actually has a limit on that particular widget. If you start an NBI blog and don't see it listed, yell at me in the comments somewhere. There have been one or two blogs over the years whose urls Blogger simply refused to recognize but if yours isn't there it's probably just me being slack.

That's enough waffle from me. Your turn!