If you’ve been noticing that there’s only two regular authors on Metroblogging Vancouver these days it’s not just that your medication needs adjusting it’s that we’re getting a little short staffed. It’s not just cutbacks to help the site weather the bad economy, we’re not actually paid to write here, but rather that some of our great writers have moved on leaving us just with one great writer and me.

So if you’re a regular reader of Metroblogging Vancouver, or someone whose looking to make a splash in the local blog scene, then we’re looking at you and for you. We’re looking at you through your monitor right now, so don’t do anything weird or alarming.

What we’re peering out at the world for is for additional authors, the brave women and men who are willing and able to write about Vancouver three or more times a week. Whether you want to write about the great sandwich shop you found, or that political issue that’s been bugging you we’re offering you a platform and an audience.

So if you’re interested in writing for Metroblogging Vancouver then email me at jefferysimpson at mac dot com and let me know. Once you’ve passed our very official tests, which consists of giving me your email address and promising not to just use us to advertise your porn site, you’ll be an official Metroblogging Vancouver author.

Act now, don’t delay and remember this offer is not valid in the Province of Quebec or in conjunction with any other sale, offer or coupon.

Ah blog wars.

We’re all tough behind our keyboard and everyone is brave when they can say things using a fake name.  I’ve been pulled into a few cross blog arguments, and I generally end up feeling dirty afterwards.  Typically they’re boring, the internet equivalent of watching the kids in the special class in grade four fight over who stole whose Muscle Men toys.  However like the playground dust-ups they most closely resemble its hard not to stand around chanting “Fight, fight, fight” when one is going on.

Goodness knows how this one started.  Possibly when Sean Orr of Beyond Robson, whose life goal is to defeat poverty with sarcasm, called the people at new local blog Vancity Buzz cocks [br].  The two sites have been going back and forth from there, mostly arguing over the fact that Orr is left wing and the pseudonomous bloggers at Vancity Buzz are right wing.  Or bar stars.  Or both.

Whatever they are they’re active, like a bunch of rabbits given Viagra in a completely irresponsibly run science experiment they’re posting at a rate that threatens to fill up all available internet storage by 2009.  Sadly nobody alive will ever be able to read all of their posts, because the layout looks a lot like someone vomited onto a scanner bed and just uploaded that as a .tiff file.  How can a default Blogger template look so ugly?

Eventually everyone will get tired of yelling at each other, and go back to their business of posting about clubbing, or making snotty comments about things on the internet and the rest of us can go back to kickball or whatever normal kids did during recess.

Me?  Well I spent most of my recesses online arguing about Star Trek.  Now that’s a blog war I can get interested in.

In hopes of getting more great content up on Vancouver Metblogs we have been recruiting for new authors for the last little while [mbv], and we’re still looking.  However our first new author in quite some time has came aboard yesterday with a stellar first post [mbv]. 

Please stop by his post and welcome Stephen Rees, who has had a very authoritative blog about transportation [sr] for as long as I’ve been reading local blogs.  I’m very excited to have him on board, and judging from his first post I think he’s going to bring a strong voice on transporation and urban planning issues. 

Now that we’ve made the move from Moveable Type to WordPress we’re looking to bring in some new bloggers.  If you’re a Vancouver based blogger and want to reach a whole new audiance consider writing for Vancouver Metblogs.  There’s no editorial mandate, beyond what you blog about needing to be about Vancouver and our request that you post at least two to three times a week.

So post two to three times a week about Vancouver and you get an automatic audiance well above a lot of regional newspapers in B.C.  Imagine the power that would give you, or the click through traffic to your own site as loyal readers fall in love with your prose and follow you to your own blog. 

Whatever your motivation come and join one of Vancouver’s best read blogs. 

For more information email me at jefferysimpson at macdotcom or post your questions in the comments.

On Broadway, originally uploaded by rcousine.

Like the photography we use here at Metroblogging Vancouver? Figure you’ve got some better shots of our city sitting around on your hard drive? Why not upload them to Flickr and post them in our Flickr Group [fkr]?

Once in our Flickr group your photos will appear in our little animated Flickr widget on the right side there, but as long as you’ve left the blogging option open we might use it in one of our posts and people from around Vancouver and around the world will be seeing your shots. And if you’re not a photographer, head on in and look around anyway because there’s some stunning pictures in there.

Welcome to the new design for Metroblogging Vancouver.  It’s been in the works for awhile, and now finally it’s ready to go.

There might be some weirdness over the next few days, since this isn’t only a redesign but a platform change (from Moveable Type to WordPress).  I’m not in on the nuts and bolts of such moves, but some things might get broken, but in a few days that should be sorted out. There’s going to be a few new options which we’ll be rolling out over time, one of which is an ability to conduct polls within the platform which is going to make the Metroblogging Vancouver Tournament of Blogs run much smoother than the way I had been planning.