One Weird Longform Trick...on the Blockchain!

Good news everyone! We are now accepting applications for the second offering of the Ribbonfarm Longform Blogging Course, Summer 2017 edition. The first time Sarah Perry and I ran the course, which was last November, we had 15 participants. We also ended up with 31 people on the waitlist. This time we have an upfront application process (application deadline, Friday May 5) rather than a first-come-first-serve ticket sale. The application process is to help us screen for participants who are most likely to both benefit from the course, as well as turn into regular contributors. Which is kinda the main point of us doing this. The course will run in June/July on TBD dates/times based on the scheduling constraints of accepted applicants. It will be an expanded offering compared to last time (6 live video sessions instead of 4), and incorporate all the feedback and meta-learnings we got out of the pilot offering. We're also going to try and accept more participants this time. The main constraint there is our editing bandwidth. The most demanding part of teaching the course last time was working 1:1 with participants on their course essays. But I have some tricks planned to make that easier. And what's all this about blockchain? Well, read on! As an added incentive for applying, if accepted, you'll get to join the (beta) ribbonfarm colony on colony.io, a blockchain-based platform for virtual, open, decentralized organizations. We'll be using the ribbonfarm colony to run a sort of swirling marketplace of pitches and prompts, using fancy blockchain-based tokens to coordinate the coursework and essay writing. Why a blockchain experiment? Well, partly because the Colony.io guys just happened to join this other experiment I'm running, a Slack-based consulting thingie called Q Lab. So an unexpected fringe benefit of that was that I got into their beta, which just launched yesterday. It's a great product (I was playing with it all day yesterday), and it is giving me all sorts of clever ideas for the future of ribbonfarm. But mainly, this is because I want to try and evolve a healthy marketplace of ideas around ribbonfarm, based on people pitching great article ideas, issuing interesting prompts and provocations to each other, and in general, leveling up the art of blogging itself. Colony.io is an early stage beta product with significant limitations of course, but it's perfect for running this sort of future-of-blogging experiment. My personal goal within that future, of course, is to emulate the founder of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Hurling Frootmig. If my cunning plans work out, by 2027, most of the actual work of writing and editing great articles for ribbonfarm will be done by any passing stranger who happens to wander into the empty ribbonfarm offices on a lazy afternoon, and sees a blockchain smart contract for a writing prompt worth acting on. As editor-in-chief, I of course, will be relaxing on a beach somewhere, eating lunch and sipping mai tais. Like Hurling Frootmig, I am a big believer in long lunches. The 10-year ribbonfarm business plan is as follows:

• Phase 1: Teach people to write longform, refactored perception style
• Phase 2: ?????
• Phase 3: Profit... on the Blockchain!

Applications are due by Friday, May 5th. There is an application fee of $5 you'll pay when you submit the form, and the course fee for accepted applicants will be $100, due upon acceptance. There will be a few free scholarship spots for people who cannot afford the course fee (that's another reason for the application fee). As with the pilot offering, you'll have a chance to earn back your course fee if we accept the article you work on during the course for ribbonfarm. Not kidding. Last time, we ended up accepting all 10 of the completed course essays for publication. And not because we didn't want to admit failure as editors, but because we actually thought all of them made for pretty good ribbonfarm posts. So we mean it when we say this isn't about making money, but about cultivating a community of good writers around ribbonfarm, who can boldly go refactoring where no blogger has gone before. Finally, here's the cherry on top. As a thank you for applying (and whether or not you're accepted), you'll get immediate free access to the DIY slides-only version of the first pilot course via Teachable. The list price of that is $10, so you can think of your Summer 2017 course application as a way to earn a $5 discount on the Fall 2016 course materials. Of course, if the live course doesn't interest you and you just want the materials, you can directly enroll in the Teachable course. If you recommend this course to friends/family members who are not familiar with ribbonfarm, I suggest you also share a few of your favorite ribbonfarm posts with them, so they get some idea what they are potentially signing up for. One of the application questions asks for favorite ribbonfarm posts, so applicants who come in cold will need to do some reading/browsing around anyway. So apply now! Remember, the due date is Friday May 5th. Don't wait till the last minute please, since I'd like to get a head start on reviewing applications. I hope to have all reviews done, and decisions out, by May 15. Here's hoping to see a lot of quality applications, and meeting a lot of great new writers. Hail blockchain!