Once again the charity event that makes staying up all night long trying desperately to write a new entry every 30 minutes is back: Blogathon 2005.

Attention prospective ‘thon participants, donors, volunteers and otherwise wanting-to-know-ers! Tell your friends, your enemies and your pets that Blogathon 2005 will happen **August 6th** this year. Volunteers are being recruited NOW for team leaders and moderators - if you’re interested, please send an email to and let me know.

A very basic form of the site should be up at http://www.blogathon.org sometime in the next few days, and from then on official news will be released there, as well as here on the lovely discussion board.

I participated in 2003—you can read all the entries for it here—I probably would’ve done it again last year, but they took the year off. Now they’re back and I’m thinking I’m going to do it again. Assuming I’m working and not still asking for donations myself.

The idea is simple. First you pick a charity. Then you get a bunch of people to pledge money towards your efforts. Then, starting at the same time all around the world, participating bloggers will sit down and write a new entry every 30 minutes for 24 hours. It’s like a bowl-a-thon without the bowling. The last time I participated I was blogging for the folks at the Association for International Cancer Research and I raised a total of $193.25, which doesn’t sound like much, but was about $100 more than I expected and, in total, the Blogathon generated over $85,314.99 for various charities. Every little bit helps.

If you maintain a blog yourself you might consider participating in this year’s event. Not only is it a great excuse to stay up all night long, but it really stretches your creative muscles and is a great way to bring new readers to your site. SEB grew a lot from the Blogathon and I’d love to see how much we could raise this time around. So if you’re thinking about it just visit the Blogathon link above in the near future and sign up.