Carnival of the Liberals

Carnival of the Liberals Thinking Liberally

"A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth." Jacques Barzun

Do you know about Blog Carnivals? You should. They're wonderful examples of Online Community at its best and most effective.

Groups of bloggers gather in a loose coalition around a common interest, theme or belief system. Bloggers in the group take turns hosting a Carnival -- commentary and links to posts from other bloggers based on a specific topic.

Bloggers volunteer to host carnivals, which includes reading and choosing submissions, writing the carnival commentary and creating the links. And there's usually a group coordinator who puts out regular newsletters to keep the coalition together and publicize the group and its efforts.

Nobody gets paid to do any of the hard work involved in blog carnivals. But everybody wins. We network. We learn from each other. We discover new blogs. New ideas. Maybe even new friends.

I peruse many blog carnivals but my affiliation of choice is Carnival of the Liberals, aka COTL. It's Fearless Leader, Leo Lincourt of Neural Gourmet, has just posted the 1st Anniversary Edition of COTL. Read all the posts Leo's gathered "that touched on big picture issues in one way or another." It's truly a smorgasbord of liberal positions and ideas.

I'm proud to have been included in the special 1st Anniversary COTL edition. I'm even more proud to be a member of the Carnival of the Liberals.

If you're interested in finding your special interest(s) among the many blog carnivals in the blogosphere, you can find them here.

Get out there, it's fun!