Blogsitting

While I'm on holiday I thought it would be fun to have a guest write a post here. My blogsitter this time is my colleague Chahira Nouira from the United Nations University in Bonn, Germany (follow her on Twitter).

What is your blogging strategy while you are away on holidays?

The holiday season has started and many of you may have started looking for the house sitter, the dog sitter but have you considered a blog sitter? Taking a break is very often getting disconnected from computers and the internet. But how is it for the blogosphere?

Last year I was observing some of my favorite bloggers and their different strategies for blogging while they are away. Steve Wheeler (Learning with 'e's), Martin Weller (The Ed-Techie) and Tony Bates (www.tonybates.ca) had different strategies that I would like to share here.

Steve was announcing his holidays and that he won’t be online but he also announced a series of post to be published during that period of time. I very much enjoyed reading the series called “Web feats”. The posts were programmed in advance so that readers could have posts on a regular basis while he was away.

Martin chose another alternative and invited Phil Greaney who wrote a great and long post. The nice thing was that Martin took the time to comment and encourage his guest from his holiday home in France.

Tony Bates, wrote a post announcing he would be away to spend some time with his family and would be posting when he returned.

I got the feeling that in the first case readers could get their regular posts but rather be in a lurker mode and won´t comment as often as they would usually on Steve´s blog. As for the second case, Martin joked about him being worried that his guest would take over the blog. This did not happen of course and I think that it made me discover a new writing style on that blog. In both cases it was entertaining and enriching. In the third case I was clearly said not to have any expectations, so I just put the coming back date on my calendar!

These are examples of blogs I read; I am wondering what other bloggers do. What did you decide to do with your blog while you are on holiday?

Chahira writes on the SCIENTIA blog on education and e-learning related subjects.