Volunteer

The Festival of the Trees is an all-volunteer effort which is made possible with bloggers like YOU.

Bloggers from anywhere in the world are invited to host issues of the Festival throughout the year. To be a host for the Festival of the Trees you need to have:

1) a blog or website: a place to host the Festival with a permanent web address; yours does not have to be a nature-themed blog, but we expect it to be noncommercial, literate, and appropriate for all readers.

2) a bit of time: each volunteer contributes about 12+ hours total to prepare one issue; this time commitment involves a few hours throughout the month to search for content and review submissions, and roughly 8-10 hours at the end of the month to compose the Festival issue and publish at your blog/website.

3) a desire to write: hosts need to be able to write up the Festival in clear language, and provide basic editing for grammar, clarity, etc. In short: hosts should be willing and able to write an interesting, engaging, and readable issue.

4) a few basic computer skills: you don’t have to be a coding genius, but you do need to be able to find, copy, and paste permalinks in a blog post or web page (and a little cursory knowledge of html and netiquette doesn’t hurt either).

How do I host an issue of the Festival of the Trees?

Step 1. Volunteer to host an issue of the Festival of the Trees by contacting the managers via the following form.

Tell us which issue you want to host (remember that posts are gathered in the month preceding the issue, e.g. a volunteer host for a May 1st edition will collect blog posts throughout April). If you want to select a theme, let us know before we post the call for submissions.

Step 2. Gather materials for the Festival throughout the month preceding your publication date. While submissions do arrive, hosts typically are required to peruse the web and seek out additional tree-related content to supplement the issue. (The managers also try to scour the web for content and send it to the host.)

We encourage hosts to look back through past Festivals (and to comb the blogroll at this coordinating blog) to seek out new materials from past participants (NOTE: please do not reuse material from previous issues of the Festival). Content selected for use in each issue should be recent (preferably posted within the month preceding publication, unless of course you find an especially juicy, albeit old, chestnut).

Hosts can search for tree content using search engines, their own network of bloggers, and their personal ingenuity. We also ask hosts to seek out materials from around the world wherever possible to encourage global discussion about the world’s trees.

Step 3. Compose the Festival according to your own unique tastes. Our hosts are given free editorial license to select which materials to include, and how to include them. Our past hosts have incorporated images, poetry, and other creative devices to make each Festival unique. Take a look at past issues as well as other nature-science blog carnivals to get some ideas.

Step 4. Announce the Festival of the Trees at your blog, using social media, and however else you like to get the word out. Add some blog bling with tree badges. You can help us keep the forest alive by sharing the Festival with your blogging friends, and participating in future issues by sending us links to tree-related material.

Thank you for celebrating trees and forests with us!