Blog on!

PARKHURST – Ready, set, blog!

There are marathons, walkathons and readathons. And now in our digitised world, there’s also the blogathon.

The art of blogging was transformed into a highly-skilled competition as bloggers from around Johannesburg gathered in Parktown at the Common Room on 26 June, aiming to pit their blogging talents against each other and against the clock.

“Awesomeness is the only criteria to win,” organiser, Elance project manager and Northcliff resident Belinda O’Regan declared at the start of the event, as bloggers flexed their fingers and tweeted on their phones, ready to take on the challenge.

Competitive blogging is new to the South African spectator, but it was, surprisingly, rather exciting watching competitors perspire as they created literary masterpieces. Just like most sports there was a goal – to win; there was a time limit to achieve that – one and a half hours, and there was fierce competition. International job creator Elance, an online platform providing jobs for people globally and the host of this event, even spiced things up by throwing in stumbling blocks and time-outs to halt writers’ creative flow and make the game more competitive.

“An Elance survey showed that writers in South Africa are highly valued, and since 2014 is the year of the writer, we thought a blogathon would be a great idea,” Elance project manager Belinda O’Regan explained.

“We’ve had quite a big response.”

She said the event was conceived to create awareness about the company. “Ordinary 8 to 5 businesses are boring, this is the time of the hybrid organisation. We want to get the word out and get people working – and they can. So far, our writers have earned more than one billion dollars.”

The participants were also clearly fired up and enjoyed the event.

“It’s a brilliant opportunity to meet other like-minded people. This is a great event, and I hope there’s more,” blogging competitor Zulè Vuuren said.

“I really, really enjoyed it,” Lutz Schniewind agreed.

“I’m excited to see what happens next. There’s a broad range of people here, it’s really exciting.”

When the votes were tallied and the entries read Sofia Thomas, Mallory Perrett, Dave Russell, Danny Schaefer, Edward Chamberlain-Bell and Heino Kruger took the top six spots with outstanding blogging skills. Chamberlain-Bell emerged victorious in the end with Perrett as the runner-up.

“It was a really close call between the top two spots,” Hagen Engler, one of the judges for the event said.

“They were both truely excellent. The judges were divided.”

Chamberlain-Bell and Perrett both won generous cash prizes and vouchers.

“This is really unexpected,” Chamberlain-Bell said.

“I’m really happy to have won.”