October 16, 2011: Blog Action Day

About

Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion around an important issue that impacts us all.

For 2011, our Blog Action Day coincides with World Food Day, so our topic of discussion for this year will  be food.  Take the first step now and sign-up your blog to Blog Action Day and then look at our suggested topics for some food flavoured inspiration to discuss.

Our Goal

First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. We ask bloggers to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue.

By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. Our hope is that out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action.

In 2007 with the theme of the environment, we saw bloggers running environmental experiments, detailing innovative ideas on creating sustainable practices, and focusing their audience’s attention on organizations and companies promoting green agendas.

In 2008 we covered the theme of poverty, and similarly focused the blogging community’s energies around discussing the wide breadth of the issue from many perspectives and identifying innovative and unexpected solutions.

In 2009 the conversation around climate change brought our voices around the globe to discuss an issue that threatens us all and mobilized tens of thousands of people to get more involved in the movement for a more sustainable future.

Last year, with the theme of Water,  we saw 5,600 bloggers from 143 countries, reaching more than 40 million readers with discussions a broad range of water issues, from river conservation, to the ethics of bottled water,  to the increasing privatisation of water access, to the water crisis in Africa, all eager to shed light on this often-overlooked topic.

Founding Story

Blog Action Day was founded by Collis & Cyan Ta’eed in the summer of 2007. With the support of their team at Envato in Australia as well as numerous volunteers, they recruited thousands of bloggers to write about the issue of Environment on October 15, 2007 – making the first Blog Action Day an immediate and quite unexpected success.

In 2009, Collis & Cyan asked the team at Change.org, the world’s largest action platform, to take over responsibility of Blog Action Day and expand its reach.

In 2011, Change.org to hand over the baton to VOICE [link to Voice] an organisation that organises and enables bloggers from around the world to attend and blog from events like G20 Summits, UN Climate Change Conference, as well as organising collaborations of bloggers with media, not for profits and charities organisations. .

The team at VOICE is excited to be part of Blog Action Day and would like to thank those previously involved at  Change.org,  Envanto and especially Collis & Cyan whose hard work has made Blog Action Day such an important and inspiring event in bloggers calenders.

How to take part in Blog Action Day

To take part in Blog Action Day all you need to do is register your blog and then on October 16, 2011 post your blog about food with the #BAD11 tag.