200+ blogs with 1 thing in common: the 2011 Blogathon

What does a “go-getting” Manhattan Army wife have in common with a poetry-loving wanderer from India and a North Carolina college freshman?

They’re all participating in the 2011 WordCount Blogathon, an annual community blogging event that encourages professional and hobbyist writers to post every day in the month of May to make them better bloggers.

This year’s blogathon is the biggest yet, with approximately 195 bloggers and close to 210 blogs – almost double the number of people and blogs as in 2010.

It’s quite a diverse bunch, with U.S. bloggers checking in from Cape Cod to Washington state – literally sea to shining sea – and others from as far away as Guam, India and Panama. Among them:

• Lara, the author of Apple Days, Army Nights, “Dispatches from a go-gettin’ Manhattanite Army wife.”
• Nisha, an native of India and blogger at Le Monde, her take on travel and poetry
• Annie Daniel, a North Carolina college student who hosts her Aniel Daniel blog on Tumblr, a social network-friendly blogging platform popular with younger bloggers – and who also happens to be the daughter of a college roommate I recently reconnected with on Facebook.

You’ll also find bloggers who write about parenting, people, faith, food, frugal living, technology, movies, books, travel, business, physical and mental health and their hometowns, families, passions and lives.

In the past, I’ve posted the blogathon blogroll on WordCount’s front page. But this year, the list is just too long – not that that’s a bad thing. It deserves a special place on the site, so I created the 2011 WordCount Blogathon Blogroll.

Like magazine circulation managers or email marketing campaign directors know, lists are rarely perfect the first time around, and the blogroll is no exception. I’ll be tweaking it over the next 24-48 hours to catch anything we missed.

Once we get the kinks worked out, I’ll share information about a WordCount Blogathon Google Reader feed bundle that one of this year’s participants is putting together; it’s a widget you can add to your website to track all the blogs in the event.