MetaCarnival: A Carnival of Blog Carnivals

If you are a blog­ger or read blogs often, you know that there are a good num­ber of excel­lent blog car­ni­vals focused on spe­cif­ic themes. If you are inter­est­ed in med­i­cine, you know what car­ni­val to vis­it. Edu­ca­tion, the same. Biol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, nurs­ing, birds, aging, philosophy…a vari­ety of top­ics are very well cov­ered in the blogosphere.

What you prob­a­bly haven’t come across is a high-qual­i­ty “metacar­ni­val” or “car­ni­val of car­ni­vals”, where you can read the best blog posts ACROSS top­ics, sub­jects, disciplines.

This is why a few blog car­ni­val “orga­niz­ers” are launch­ing next Mon­day a month­ly rotat­ing “MetaCar­ni­val” to fea­ture the most inter­est­ing posts from a vari­ety of high-qual­i­ty blog carnivals.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing blog car­ni­vals so far, alphabetically:

Car­ni­val of the Blue: oceans,

Change of Shift: nurs­ing,

Encephalon: neu­ro­science and psychology,

Four Stone Hearth: anthro­pol­o­gy,

Gene Genie: human genet­ics and per­son­al­ized medicine,

Hour­glass: biol­o­gy of aging,

I and the Bird: yes, birds,

Med­i­cine 2.0: web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies for healthcare,

Prax­is: aca­d­e­m­ic life,

SurgeX­pe­ri­ences: sur­gi­cal experiences.

Basi­cal­ly, par­tic­i­pat­ing blog car­ni­val “own­ers” will send the host of each MetaCar­ni­val edi­tion their respec­tive 1–2 Picks of the Month, select­ed among the blog posts that have been pub­lished in a recent edi­tion of their carnivals.

- Cri­te­ria for par­tic­i­pat­ing car­ni­vals: well-main­tained, rotat­ing, with reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tors and edi­tions, good pre­sen­ta­tion, good posts.

- Cri­te­ria for posts to be includ­ed in the Meta car­ni­val: sub­mit­ted by orga­niz­ers of those high-qual­i­ty car­ni­vals, the posts should not only be good but also attrac­tive to a wide audi­ence beyond our respec­tive fields, per­haps linked to main­stream news, per­haps build­ing bridges across fields, per­haps sim­ply fascinating.

- Mechan­ics: we are think­ing about pub­lish­ing the MetaCar­ni­val the last Mon­day of each month, so the first one will be next Mon­day, Octo­ber 27th, host­ed here in Sharp­Brains. Host­ing rotates among par­tic­i­pants. We already have hosts for the first few editions.

Your feed­back? can you sug­gest a bet­ter name? what image should we use to rep­re­sent the MetaCar­ni­val? any oth­er suggestions?

Note: I want to rec­og­nize Bora for his advice, inspi­ra­tion and help in set­ting this up.