Hi All,

Before I dive into the meat of this post, I want to be VERY, VERY CLEAR, my opinions shared below are just that, OPINIONS and any comments, unless I attribute them to a specific individual or entity are general and for illustrative purposes only. 

I am not attacking any one person, or any one site.  But, after 11, now nearly 12 very long and sometimes quite contentious weeks I have some things that I wish to say.  Not because I "believe they need to be said" or because "someone has to say them" but because I feel that for me they are important and I want to share what I have learned (or think that I have learned :-) so that it might be helpful to others.

This post began as two comments on two other posts but as I crafted them I realized that blog etiquette (thanks ARDELL for teaching me that so truly kindly :-) dictated that I refrain from spilling my guts on someone elses floor, so to speak and have therefore decided to incorporate portions of the two original comments, along with the rest of my feelings here, in my own private little blog world :-)

To begin with, Mary Pope-Handy has said in the past that (and I shall paraphrase here) if we the Project Blogger participants were puppies instead of people we would by way of the "training" via judging we have received, be so mixed up by now that we would bite people. 

Mary, I heartily concur.  And even I am seriously getting a little snappish over contradictory information. 

Inconsistency in art can be beautiful, but inconsistency in something like this tends to do more harm than good.  And I believe that includes compromising the value of the information for those who are watching from the sidelines and not in the thick of it as I am. 

Speaking now not just as a PB apprentice, but also as a brand new blogger, I have found it difficult, if not impossible, to sort the wheat from the chaff many times. 

And I am not just speaking about reviewing comments made about my own personal efforts.  When I see that someone else gets punished for something one week that they were praised for in another, for the very same reasons, that is difficult to process. 

This past weeks judge, Oliver from vFlyer suggested that perhaps a three or four person panel would be a good idea in the future.  I totally agree and I found it interesting and gratifying to have a judge share their views not just upon our personal efforts but on the event as a whole. 

The judges are as much a part of this experience as we are and as such, should be given equal value with regard to input on how things are going now overall and how they might go better in the future.

Oliver, I really like your idea of getting more than one judge to look at each weeks efforts.  Different people and different perspectives give even more value to the results. 

Perhaps what would work would be to try to get three people each week, who come from three different places in the blogosphere, even if it means weekly judging and not a consistent, continuing panel,

I think one judge could and should be a Real Estate/Technology insider who would be able to understand and speak to the technical aspect of blogs. 

One judge could and should be a non-Real Estate Blogger - someone with no connection with the business or the industry but who does understand blogging (I don't think it would be difficult to find folks that are successful bloggers who are not in the RE business as there are still a whole heck of a lot more of them out there than there are of us :-), they would also serve as the voice of the client so to speak, as they would be reading for content value and how it strikes them more than for anything else.   

And one should be a Real Estate Blogger, preferably an agent or broker who is successful in using their blogs to attract most if not all of their business.  They would provide the blend of the two, that of the understanding of the unique position that the Real Estate blogger occupies and how to serve both masters... the client and the community.

I also think that one of the big problems that the organizer's may be encountering is finding a single judge who has the requisite blog business acumen but does not have any connection, personally or professionally with any contestant or coach.  

Another reason why using a panel approach would be better overall. 

The chances of three different people, coming from three different walks of life, having the same connections to the competitors and also sharing the same opinions, relationships or feelings with each other would be reduced significantly.

Oliver was very above board about the fact that he new some of the contestants or their coaches and that there were some who might be clients.  And I appreciate his sharing of that information.  It was the right thing to do. 

That being said, I would also hope that the remaining judges, even if they do have something to sell, have not sold it to any of us.  That makes the results, no matter how valid they may be, compromised in a way that they should not be. 

When I find out that there might have been an opportunity for something unfair EVEN IF NOTHING UNFAIR OCCURRED, it really makes everything suspect. 

I have said it before and I shall say this again (insert broken record here...) what is unfair to one is unfair to all and I don't care if it is in my favor or not.  If it is wrong, it is wrong.  I also don't care what effect, if any it may have had on the outcome of an activity. 

I liken it to spoiled milk... adding a tablespoon of curdled milk to a gallon of fresh milk, ruins the entire gallon.   And it doesn't matter if you pour it in from the top or pump it in through the bottom, the effect is the same.

That goes for things like this also.   One of the things that I have learned in my chronologically brief, but comprehensive, time within the blogosphere is that blogging relationships and credibility move at warp speed.  They can be rapidly built and even more rapidly destroyed.  

Unlike exchanges out in the "real" world, however you don't usually have total recall or the ability to lay information given out in a nice, neat line and actually and accurately compare one thing to another.  So, a blemish on one's personal or business reputation, while just as damaging, does not usually occur in quite so rapid a manner. 

Here, in the blogosphere, we have one thing and one thing only to work with - our V.O.I.C.E..  I translate that to stand for Values, Opinions, Integrity, Credibility and Ethics.  Damage any one of them and everything is tainted.

I hasten to reiterate here that I am not in any way displeased with this weeks choices and am merely speaking about the contest as a whole.  Everyone is working incredibly hard and has from the very beginning, to make this a successful, valuable and extremely wonderful exercise for all concerned. 

But, one thing that this weeks judging pointed up was another problem with not having a firm set of criteria to use as measuring sticks - no consistency... hmm, that seems to have been said a time or two before :-) for them or for us.  Inconsistent criteria yields inconsistent input which in turn gives back inconsistent results.

He chose to weight our participation on our personal sites, for the most part, much heavier than that of our participation on Active Rain.  That is a valid choice. 

That also discounts the value of our Active Rain participation.  I see them as actually separate but equal.  My site Route66Living.com was built to do one thing and to do it (hopefully) very well, communicate directly with my clients.  I talk city events, general interest and Real Estate there, but I do not talk agent to agent.  That is not what it is for. 

My participation on Active Rain is multi-fold. 

1. It allows me to communicate with my peers and thus position myself to receive and give referrals (and has served me well in this regard already with an agent referral generated by my participation here on AR). 
2. It allows me to communicate directly with my clients via Localism and also to do so indirectly, by allowing my posts to be viewed by the public.  And with AR's strength and value to search engines, there is a good chance that when they come upon me for the very first time it will probably be in connection with my AR activity as well as that of Route66Living.com. 

In my case, when I write here on AR, I believe that whatever I post unless I choose to keep it members only, and I rarely do that, is as much for "them" as it is for "us". 

I also think you get a much better picture of who someone really is when you hear them talking from behind a closed door than you do when they are in front of a crowd.  AR is that "closed door" and, as such, gives the public a chance to see what kind of a person you really are based not just on your exchanges with them, but on how you treat others.

People have asked here on AR time and time again if folks would behave as they do here if they knew that their client's were listening.  Well, I know that they are, and I behave accordingly. 

Even when I have chosen to discuss something as insular and industry specific as, well this post truly is... someone from the outside, who is not in the business of Real Estate would get I believe, a pretty good picture of who I am, what I stand for and how I operate.  In short, although I have an inner Poo-Poo head, I don't let her come out to play here or on Route66Living.com.  That is what my living-room is for LOL.

So, for that reason and that reason alone, I would suggest that in future go-rounds of PB, blogging that is accessible by the public, be it here on AR or on your personal business site should be given equal weight. 

Conversely, non-public posts should not be given any weight at all.  If the object of the game is to build the best blog site to do business with the general public, then you should only count information that the general public can access toward the score. 

This would also allow a participant in the contest to continue to be able to utilize the round-table discussion value of AR during the process without fear that what they share with their peers as water-cooler talk would be what they are judged by as far as business blogging value. 

It would also help to prevent someone from getting "dinged" for not having an outside site.  Not everyone does and not everyone needs to. 

Most of our blogging powerhouses did not spring forth fully formed on their very own branded personal blog site, they were born and to some extent wet-nursed on sites like AR, Rain City Guide, Bloodhound Blog, etc.. 

I don't think it is fair to discount the value of the work just because it is not in the "right" place.  A Rembrandt is still a Rembrandt no matter where it hangs. 

Unfortunately, it seems that some folks have been placed at a distinct disadvantage owing to the delay, regardless of the cause, of getting their personal sites up and running.  That is really not fair to them. 

I tend to feel that the work (i.e. the content contained within the posts) should be viewed as a part of the whole, but weighted somewhat separately, and much more heavily than the frame that is the site. 

People might like what you show them, but they hire you because of what you tell them.  I have noted that as a whole most of the judges have looked more at the messenger than at the message. 

Again, I attribute this to lack of the focus that criteria consistently applied gives. 

Next time, I hope that what they do is decide on the areas that they are looking at and what degree of weight each area is worth. 

Yes, SEO is important... However, a blog that is written solely for SEO may get traffic but not business. 

Yes, eye-candy is important (real candy is as well... especially chocolate, but I digress)... However, if something is all style and no substance then that won't get business either. 

Yes, pictures are important... However, from what I have seen, it is what we say with our words and not just what we show with a lens that is more important. 

Also in a competition like this, I think you really do need to allow the past to inform the future, so to speak. 

If this were just a run-of-the-mill blogging competition (if there is such a thing :-) then treating each week as if it exists in a vacuum would be appropriate, more like Carnival of Project Blogger (R.I.P.) did. 

But this is not a run-of-the-mill competition.  Getting people who were new to blogging (in most cases) or at least had not made any money at it, REQUIRES that you also give serious weight to growth exhibited and positive changes that occur as a result of that growth. 

There is a vast difference between a blog that is launched out the gate fully formed, and never changes, regardless of input from day one, which was custom built by a website specialist.  And a blog that is built from scratch, in front of god and everybody, a truly homegrown effort which has shown its growing cycle from blip to blog. 

Note I did not say that one ws better, merely that there is a vast difference and as such, it is totally unfair to try to compare them without giving weight to their differences. 

Oh, and just for the record, I don't think that just because someone is a good webSITE designer it means that they will necessarily be a good webLOG designer and vice versa.  They share a lot of similarities, but by their very nature are as different as rockets are from butterflies.  Sure they both fly, but...

Once again, I want to be very, very clear... I understand that you folks who have or will judge Project Blogger are as prepared for the task, and are given the same criteria to look for and "rules" to judge by as we the contestants were (that would be very little to none and very loosely structured) and that makes it as difficult for you as it is for us :-). 

Please understand that any criticisms that I have made are not directed at you personally, your companies or your decisions as judges, but are merely expressed in an effort to help ensure that some of the stumbling blocks that we as the inaugural group of Project Blogger participants (coaches, apprentices, judges and organizers alike) have encountered in our journey might be removed. 

Some have been pebbles, some have been potholes and some have proven to be roadblocks, but all have served to make the journey more interesting, the path more challenging and the experience more enlightening.

Thank you all for your efforts, as I have said publicly many, many times before... I do not envy you your task, but I am grateful to you for being willing to tackle it. 

I also wish to thank each and every one of the apprentices, their coaches and the organisers for all that they have shared, all that they have done and all that I have learned.

I sincerely hope that one of the outcomes of this experience is a true blueprint, by way of a post-mortum of the Project upon it's completion by all involved, on how to improve for the future.  When that occurs, no matter who gets the accolades we will all have won the game.

Take care, help lots of people and have a wonderful day!

Tisza