Tomorrow, I will proudly host the Grand Rounds blog carnival for the fourth time. It's always a good time putting that post together. As people have seen from my past hostings (is that a word), my style is pretty practical and no-nonsense. I've always thought that everyone else's posts should be the star, and not necessarily the GR host - but that's me.
Something interesting I found is that the number of submissions have decreased since the last times I've hosted, and, it looks like in general. I even had to ask some people to have their post included. I remember when I first hosted, I made some people mad since I did not include their post in GR that week. Plus, I remember that I had to wait months before I could host GR. Oh my, how things have definitely changed.
This post will has tough questions, and, hopefully, you will have some honest feedback. And, this isn't the first time tough questions have been asked. I remember when Emergiblog posted "Grand Rounds: One Blogger, One Voice, One Opinion." This was the week before my first hosting duties in 2006. Great discussion among the community with lots of comments back then on the state of Grand Rounds.
As far as me thinking back, I remember when I started blogging "back in the day" that getting included in Grand Rounds was kind of a first sign that you "made it" as a medblogger. I mean, for those starting out, the traffic for that day or two would skyrocket. Grand Rounds was seen as a definite marketing tool for new medical bloggers. How about now? Is it still seen that way? Has Grand Rounds lost influence and excitement as the years have gone on?
I also remember when the mark of a good post was the number of comments. Some of my first Grand Rounds hostings received (for me) a lot of comments, if for anything else comments said, "Great Job." Now, with so many ways to have feedback with twitter, facebook, disqus, etc - It's getting more and more difficult to gauge the reach and the impact of a certain post or GR posting.
In a post from last week called "Creation Vs Curation," I ask the question whether content was still king in the social media world. People can make a name for themselves without creating content at all. By being a good evaluator of the overwhelming information that's out there, you can become "internet famous." Grand Rounds is a celebration of long format blogging. And, even people like KevinMD say that there will always be a place for the long format blog. But, is that role diminishing - especially in the age of microblogging twitter, youtube, and facebook.
So, here is the question for the medical blogger and medical social media community in general? Has Grand Rounds in its current format - run its course? Was Grand Rounds the best format to display the best bloggers - in 2005 - and not so much now? With so many ways to get content out, is GR even needed anymore? Would a change in format (I don't know what that would be) help bring back the influence that Grand Rounds once had? Or, is it time for Grand Rounds to be recognized as innovative for its time, but now it's time to ride into the sunset....