sustainablog’s Pedal-a-Watt Powered Blogathon coming in March

UPDATE: The folks at Convergence Tech, Inc. have given us a very generous deal on a Pedal-a-Watt pedal power generator for the blogathon, so we’ve changed the name of the event slightly… we’re grateful for their help!

A few of you may remember the last time I stayed up for 24 hours to blog for a non-profit: back in 2005, I hosted Blogging ‘Round the Clock to raise funds for the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Earthways Center. It’s taken about that long to recoup… but I’m ready for another blogathon! So… on March 26-27, I’ll be pulling another all-nighter (and all-dayer) with sustainablog’s Pedal-Powered Blogathon at the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage‘s eco bed and breakfast, the Milkweed Mercantile.

What’s a Pedal-Powered Blogathon?

You may know that Dancing Rabbit, and many other eco-villages and intentional communities, are off-grid. That’s great in terms of generating clean power… but, it can also mean intermittent power at times (they recently went through a five-day period without it). My partner Brian Toomey of search engine optimization firm JB Web Analytics (and a DR resident), has decided to purchase a pedal-powered generator for those times when the solar panels aren’t delivering, and we thought it would be cool to use it to power my laptop during the blogathon.

This will definitely make for more of a community event… needless to say, I won’t be pedaling and blogging for a full day! We’ll have folks from the DR community join us for some pedaling time.

Blogging for Dancing Rabbit: Radical Sustainability, Ordinary People

I have a confession to make: I’ve been intrigued with Dancing Rabbit for a long time, but my perception has been colored by stereotypes of intentional communities as “communes” trying to distance themselves from the rest of the world.

Now that I’ve visited twice, and worked closely with several residents, I realize that’s not the case there. Yes, Dancing Rabbit is an ongoing experiment in radical sustainability, and the residents there live quite different lives from most of us.

But there’s no attempt to shut out the rest of the world; rather, residents there want to show people what they’re doing, and demonstrate that “radical sustainability” doesn’t mean “freezing in the dark.” The Milkweed Mercantile, for instance, is an attempt to “build a bridge” to the rest of us: a general store, cafe, and B&B that now employs a chef who’s worked in 5-star restaurants.

So, the Pedal-Powered Blogathon will raise funds to support this bridge-building at DR: specifically, we’ll be raising money for residential outreach and education infrastructure. I want to help out with their efforts to show their radically sustainable lifestyle to “ordinary people”… and to further make the case that eco-village life isn’t primarily about sacrifice, but, rather, about abundance: abundance of community, comfort, health, and happiness. This theme will run throughout the posts I create for the blogathon: I’ll be focused on efforts by “ordinary people” (individuals, families, businesses, and organizations) to integrate radical sustainability into their lives.

How can you help with the Pedal-Powered Blogathon?

First, plan on joining in the fun. There will be several ways to participate:

• Comment on blog posts:  …of course (and I want to put together a prize drawing for those who comment… more on that later)
• Join in our Twitter chat: We’ll use the hashtag #susbppb for Blogathon-related tweets, and I’ll have a TweetChat for that hastag open the whole time…
• Contribute a post: If you’re a green blogger, we’d love to have you involved… I’ll be putting together more information on how you can participate.
• Pledge: We’ll be asking for per-post pledges like last time. I’ll shoot for 48-50 posts during the blogathon… if it looks like we’ll have lots of guest posts, and are able to do more, I’ll make sure the word gets out. All money you donate will go to DR.
• Promote it: Help us get the word out via you blog, Twitter, Facebook…

Got questions? Fire away… We’ll be providing more information in the coming weeks as we pull this all together.

UPDATE: I’ve just added an FAQ for the blogathon…

Image credits:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/eldret_99/ / CC BY 2.0
• Dancing Rabbit