Brian, I would feel the same. One of the mottos I try to follow in life is treating others the same way (if not better) that I would like to be treated. So if I like to see others participating in my group projects, of course I’ll participate in theirs, because I know that they would enjoy it as much as I do.

Pearl, I look forward to your participation in this group projects. And all the best to your blog’s growth in the new year.

Johno, I was thinking about you having such a specific topic on iLT. But I hope you didn’t completely abandon Redsil, and perhaps you could organize something there. Also you seem to be pretty good with the typography related forums, so that would be an ideal topic for you to talk about on iLT, wouldn’t it? – Asking your readers to contribute with the experience on Typography or graphic related forums. What do you think? On the other hand, I know how busy you are, so even if you just contribute to this project with your personal experience with social networking sites that would be awesome.
hmm… I’m too not that crazy about the name Group Writing Project, but can’t seem to come up with a more appropriate one. I’ll think more about it and if you get any ideas, please share ;-)

About the group writing: for me it’s mostly a time thing; all of my ’spare’ time (and more) is taken up writing my own blog and answering messages from readers. The only way I could participate, would be to drop one of the posts on my blog. Moreover, iLT is quite narrow in it’s topic, and so a non-type-related post would stand out like a sore thumb. However, I do feel that the whole ‘Group Writing’ thing has a lot of potential, and if there were a type-related one, then I might consider it. I also think that it might be even more popular if it went by a different name; not sure what, but “Group Writing Project” sounds a little literary. Just a thought.

Oh, the reason I mentioned the blogging for money: those bloggers (not all, of course) see every post as a potential money-earner, so they’ll never be interested in collaborative projects that only inspire.

Past few months have definitely been amazing in finding fantastic bloggers and developing relationships and I do believe majority of this has been possible because of participating in group writing projects.

Time is a huge problem for me but I also feel participating in these projects can provide many new ideas for your own blog besides contacts… So, I am looking forward to the mega project :)

That said, I would be interested in reading anything about social networking sites. For one thing, are there too many? For instance, LinkedIn is the one I’ve chosen to invest any time in at all, primarily because it’s billed as the one to use for furthering one’s professional interests. But it seems that evry time I add a batch of connections, I get a whole slew of invites to other networking groups.

Now, I realize that my interests are admittedly self-serving, but having gotten as late a start as I did in work that I love, making books, I need to promote the hell out of myself to get steady, interesting, well-paying work.

So I’ll ask … How have any of you maximized LinkedIn to the benefit of your work life? Are there more appropriate networking sites for what I have in mind?

Simon, thanks for being on board with the social media project.

Brian, I agree it’s impossible to participate in every readers project, especially if you have thousands of loyal readers, but like you said – it wouldn’t hurt them to participate in other projects every once in awhile. It would make them to appear less distant.
I think you’re The Blogger Who Hosts (and Participates in) The Most Group Projects, and the most creative and interesting ones. How many projects did you organize in total since you started blogging?

I’m generally on-board with participating in every project I can — even those that appear to be off-topic on the surface. Those are the ones that you can really get creative with and change the tone to match that of your blog. I missed out on Simonne’s project mostly because of timing — but also because I had just posted a couple of articles on a similar topic and I felt it would be awkward to post on the same topic that soon.

On the point of the more popular bloggers not participating in projects, I can kind of understand why. They have a lot of loyal readers who host their own projects and they couldn’t possibly participate in all of them. Even so, it would be nice to see them participate every once in a while.