2009 Blog Improvement Project - 8 - Making Your Blog More Comment-able Wrap Up and Third Row Center Seats at the Halifax Comedy Festival

The Blog Improvement Project focused on comments for our last assignment. Upon reading a few articles on the subject, I decided to start responding to everyone's comments here at my blog, as well as continuing to return the visit of everyone who comments here. I also decided to hoist several comments into the body of the post to get the conversation started. And I've tried to incorporate a question towards the end of each post, to encourage readers to answer it by commenting.

Hoisting the comments has been fun. Responding to the comments artificially inflates my comments numbers, so I have to spend some time subtracting my own comments before I can tell how many comments I actually have.

In taking stock of my comments before this assignment and afterwards, there was actually no discernable change in the comments level.

The two weeks of posts prior to the assignment resulted in an average of 11.7 comments.

The two weeks of posts following the assignment resulted in an average of 11.2 comments.

Perhaps two weeks is a little soon to see real changes in the habits of readers who normally lurk. But I'll continue on with my new responding and hoisting.

And I'm just back from a taping of the Halifax Comedy Festival at the Dalhousie Arts Centre. My mom's friends from New Brunswick sent her two tickets - they'd been planning to come to Halifax for the show but couldn't make it. After a week at work where things built up and I nearly blew a gasket, tonight's performance was a godsend.

We had amazing seats. Third row from the front, right in front of the mike. There was a camera on a crane shooting the audience, plus a camera operator onstage shooting past the comedians - so I'm fairly certain we'll be visible at some point once it airs.

Mom and I laughed so hard we were in tears. My favorite performers:


Host Mark Critch

Had us all in hysterics while he ribbed the young stage hand who fixed the mike stand between comedians. Critch pointed out how pubescent the stagehand seemed - then just started calling him Pubes.




John Beuhler

The first comedian of the night to make me cry with laughter. He riffed on taking his cat to be spayed or neutered - how should he know? - and perhaps tattooed.





Sean Cullen

I saw him at a comedy club in Toronto, once upon a time. He was surreal and instigated more tears with his tales of parenting and his song dedicated to his man child.





Steve Patterson

This guy was my favorite, though. His tale of attempting to use Ontario classroom conversational French in his new city of Montreal - and his need for winter tires - was the winner of the evening for me.



Travis says I think you'll find that answering comments is reward on its own.

Apprentice Writer says Scientific research on your blog! Very cool, yet unnerving.

Isabella says I would love to go to a comedy show!!