Declare Yourself an A-List Blogger
by
on August 27, 2008,
You thought for people to call you an A-lister you will have to work hard and build your blog into a noticeable name? Honestly, I used to share your opinion but that has changed today when I found out that to become an A-lister you can simply join a new blog network called exactly “A-List Bloggers Network”. That’s it, no more hard work involved, really.
The people behind the network mention that it “debuted last week at ASAE with a dozen or so contributors” (all of them A-listers, I believe, though I have only found one familiar name among the contributors). Right now a simple search on Google does not produce any sites linking to alistbloggers.org so the A-listers do not seem to have received any visibility for their network as of yet.
To my disappointment the letter “A” in the name does not stand for what we are accustomed to call A-listers. Instead, here “A” stands for “associations” and the network is supposed to make “association leaders think” by publishing posts related to various professional associations and organizations. Right now all the posts I looked through are actually republished from main blogs of the 14 contributors that have chosen to join the network with this pretty strange name for whatever reasons they may have.
All the pages of the blog invite everyone to join so I believe in the near future everyone will be able to easily declare him/herself an A-lister by joining the network and contributing posts related to some associations from time to time. But unfortunately the instructions on how to join seem to be terribly incomplete and lack the instructions on where to apply so it is not clear what the criteria to select A-listers will be.
But if we believe that a name chosen for a project can determine the project’s future, this one is absolutely doomed to succeed. Whatever it eventually develops into, it will be interesting to see what success bloggers can achieve by declaring themselves A-listers from the very beginning.
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Jay
Svetlana Gladkova
Michael Fidler 
It’s fun being down on the z list. Don’t think I could keep my job and be an a lister.
@David Knight: How about launching a network klistbloggers.org? I’ll have mine at plistbloggers.org, I believe
@Stupid Blogger: That’s the main problem some bloggers fail to realize: being an A-lister requires devotion people rarely even show on their day-jobs.
I think I’ll stick to being a silent-K list blogger
I’m not on any list, from A to Z, but I can definately see how much dedication it takes and I barely have enough time to get my real job done. I truly appreciate the people that have the time and passion to keep up with the rest of the world and take the time to let no-listers like me know about it.
Well, guess A is better than some other uncommon abbreviations for associations (but A$$ Bloggers would get some attention!). You can see the double-meaning the group is trying to convey, but it causes more confusion than reason, as you pointed out.
However, the encouragement of associations to blog (and even an association of associations that blog) is great. I’m a firm believer that blogging is an excellent way for trade groups and all associations to communicate with members, voice the official POV and other valuable benefits.
Take care,
Mike
@Mike Driehorst: True, A is certainly better than some abbreviation people would have hardly noticed at all. And now they will at least get attention for the name, even if they fail to attract it for their actual work.
And I can totally agree that encouraging any entity to blog is a good thing to do, hopefully we will eventually see more diversity in blogging because of this.
@Svetlana, thanks for writing about our project! We’ve been live for a little bit less than two weeks and we’re still building out our site.
The goal of A-List Bloggers.org is to pull together the great content written by the growing association blogging community in a single location to make it easier for our staff and volunteer colleagues to find it.
It’s true, our name does poke fun at the whole “A-list blogger” thing, and connects to our focus on what’s going on in the world of associations. We don’t mean to offend…we’re just trying something new!
We appreciate you mentioning the site on your blog and we invite you check back in the months ahead to see how things unfold.
Svetlana,
Thanks for pointing out some of the shortcomings of the A-List site. I am one of the co-collaborators who has developed the site from idea to reality and I want to clarify a few inaccuracies in your post just to set the record straight.
First, the call to join is not to become an “A-List Blogger” but to become part of the site. One of the underlying goals of creating the site was to make it easy for time-starved association executives who in our experience are resistant to any type of social media consumption and also “generally” don’t read blogs because of the sheer quantity, to have a “go-to” place where they can see the most notable and prolific bloggers in the association world.
Our bloggers are very carefully selected based on the quality and clarity of their thought and overall contribution to the association profession. It is not an arbitrary decision or one we take lightly. We have put into place very rigorous standards (number of posts, quality of posts, and a number of others) to be considered for inclusion.
Second, as you correctly pointed out the instructions for participating are very undefined. That is clearly a failing of my own and something I didn’t complete before taking the site live to coincide with ASAE’s (American Society of Association Executives) Annual Conference in San Diego last week. Our site will be based on an architecture of participation allowing folks to get involved (perhaps for the first time) by being able to tag posts, pictures, videos and the like, contribute to or consume our Twitter-stream, comment, and share links. The idea is to make the site a bit of something for everyone while never losing focus on our core focus or purpose.
Finally, as many of the other commenter’s have pointed out, A-List is really a play on words, and meant to encompass the Association world. In a world of made up words (the last time I checked Profy is not in common use either), we felt it was meaningful to and memorable for our core audience, as I am sure Profy is as well. As with all things on the web, our site is a work in progress. I will, expedited by your post, update the get involved page, in the next day or two.
Thanks for stopping by and please keep tabs on us…we too hope we are “doomed” to achieve success.
Cheers,
Dave S.
@Jeff: Thank you for the comment, it is understandable that you are poking fun at the A-listers yourself with the name but I’m afraid you will have many bloggers poking fun at the project because of the name - even though the ideas behind the project sound like very serious ones.
@Svetlana, thanks for your reply. We can’t control how others respond, only what we’re trying to accomplish. And just to be clear, we’re not poking at the people who are A-list bloggers, but at the concept of an A-List. Stay tuned…we’ll see how it goes!
@Dave: Thank you for such a detailed comment, it definitely explains your intentions better. Right now the pages that describe how people can participate and those with instructions are definitely misleading (and resulted in what I have written here) and I hope that it will become more transparent once you have the content completed. I know how it is when you rush to launch for a deadline so it is perfectly understandable.
It is very good to know that you have strict criteria for contributors and they are the people with strong reputations in the associations-related blogging. I hope I will not spoil it with my blog title
As for the name itself, I do hope that for your target audience “A” will be perfectly enough for associations. Unfortunately here in the tech blogosphere A-lister has a very different meaning that is one of the hottest and most-discussed topics - hence my post. By the way, “profy” actually is often used as a colloquial short form for “professional” and that’s what we had in mind when registering the domain. But later on I realized it was far from understandable to the rest of the world so I had to work hard (and still do) making our audience remember the name
I will be sure to keep an eye on your project and since I am a firm believer that any niche can benefit from using blogs by reputable people, I sure hope it will be a success.
@Jeff: I’ll be sure to keep an eye on your project. And good for you that you make it clear you are not poking at the A-listers - they can be easily offended and will hardly resist the temptation to trash anyone if offended
Coming to this discussion a little late, but I should point out that several of the “core” A(ssociation) List Blogs (as opposed to the “friends of….” like myself) are in the Technorati Top 5 Association blogs. So while they might not be visible in the tech blogosphere, they are very visible in the association blogosphere and probably merit both types of A-list designations, at least in our little corner of the world.
@Elizabeth: Thank you for the clarification, I know that the entire blogosphere is very atomized with tech bloggers having no idea of the best-known celebrity bloggers, for example. Thus I am quite willing to admit that contributors to this blog networks are all A-listers in their niche, I hope you understand that after seeing such a name I just could not resist some irony.