In The Words Of Elvis...

"Thank you, thank you very much."

31 Day Comment Challenge Awards

On Monday, Michele Martin over at The Bamboo Project Blog announced the winners of the 31 Day Comment Challenge and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was a co-winner for the most comments on a wide range of blogs category. I tied with Bonnie Kaplan. Other winners were Carla Arena for the most high quality comments that thoughtfully reflect on the topic, Kevin of Dogtrax for the comments that provoke and promote the most learning, and Taylor for the student award.

Not In It For The Fame

I enthusiastically joined in the Comment Challenge back in April and was raring to go with the first task on May 1st. I knew there were prizes, but that's not what motivated me. I just wanted to become a better blogger. Well, what a month May was! About part way through I knew that I was not going to be able to keep up, and that was OK. Part of the reason that I wasn't able to keep up was the usual life things (kids, work, school...) but a big part of it was that I was finding all sort of new blogs and commenting like crazy. Through the challenge I got to meet a lot of great new people; heck I didn't know any of the other Challenge winners prior to May, but through the challenge I've 'met' and conversed with all but one of them. I also enjoyed reading posts and comments from Kate Foy, Christine Martell, Ines Pinto, and Ken Allen who were some of the others nominated for Challenge awards.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

The Comment Challenge has really helped me to grow as a blogger and I want to thank the fantastic four who organised it; Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, Michele Martin and Kim Cofino. I know that I felt pretty busy during the challenge, but these wonderful women must have been going crazy, because they were everywhere--commenting, posting, and generally supporting participants. Thank you all so much! I also would like to thank Diane Hammond for nominating me for the award and all those who voted for me, read my posts, and especially those who took the time to comment on something I wrote.

Give It A Try!

If you didn't participate in the 31 Day Comment Challenge, you can still access the tasks and the links to participants posts at the Comment Challenge wiki. If you can get a large group of people to do it at the same time, even better. Or you might be interested in Web 2.0 Wednesdays; an idea that sprouted from the Comment Challenge, and is organised by Michele Martin.

Images: Elvis Statue in Hawaii, by Hawaii. Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives license. Not sure how to credit the Comment Challenge Logo, but here goes; the logo was created by Christine Martell of VisualsSpeak for the use of Comment Challenge participants.