As you know – I’ve just curated the Carnival of HR for the second time. The response from all quarters was very encouraging thank you, and the blog had its busiest day so far this month. I appreciate the support – and before the Carnival packs up and heads on to the next destination I wanted to share three things I learned from the curation process.
Deadline
Despite marking time in my diary to bring the Carnival together, I struggled to get going because I got hung up on the submission deadline. This meant I waited until everyone had contributed before I began to plan and write up the curation. I also accepted late submissions, though I didn’t try to factor them into the Carnival theme. The next time I do something like this I will seek an earlier deadline so that I can begin the curation process sooner.
Time
It takes a lot of time to curate a Carnival. Each post needs to be read and considered. Does it fit the theme? What is it about each post that I should reference in the curation summary? It took me over six hours to pull everything together and whilst I appreciate that I am inexperienced in this field, I expect even a seasoned curator like Michael Carty or Martin Couzins would echo that the process of curation is a time consuming one. And reflecting on the feedback I’ve received – I think that investment is necessary, otherwise you are effectively just listing a bunch of stuff, and I don’t perceive much value in that for the reader.
Mistakes
I goofed, a little. First – I incorrectly copied the link to Mark Catchlove’s blog post into the Carnival, so when you clicked on him, you ended up in the ether. Sukh Pabial was kind enough to contact me with the news and courtesy of the WordPress app, I was able to fix this error on the train back from Reading yesterday. Second – I made an omission. Susan Heathfield submitted a contribution titled ‘Never Tell HR These 10 Things’ and although it was past the deadline, I forgot to include it. Sorry Susan. I think these errors arose as a result of the amount of time it took me to get the whole thing done so I think that by tending to the deadline dilemma above, then time, and possible mistakes may be easier to work with and iron out.
I hope this reflection helps you in your blogging endeavours. Thanks again to the contributors and readers, see you at the next Carnival town.