Well after mulling over the options for a couple of weeks, it seems as though the option that is most likely to work is some kind of group effort. Many people volunteered to help, but few wanted to do so full time. So the next step is… er, to decide what the next step is.

Just now my plan is to have around half a dozen editors, with other regular contributors. For the time being, if possible I would like each of the editors to be in charge of a month. This would include editing a roundup one week, arranging the rota of guest editors for the rest of the month, then passing on to another editor to take over after four weeks.

Beyond that, I am hoping that as a group we can discuss how we should evolve Scottish Roundup for the future. A few really interesting suggestions have been thrown into the mix, and I think it’s worth considering them carefully.

I am thinking about the right sorts of tools to use. If anyone has any suggestions of good collaborative tools to use, that would be greatly appreciated. I’m thinking of using Google tools if possible, partly because I already use them for parts of Scottish Roundup anyway, and also because these are likely to be familiar to most of the contributors.

I will get in touch with those of you who have kindly offered to help out. And if anyone else is still interested in being part of the group, please do email me.

Also, if anyone is able to edit the next roundup (4 July), the door is wide open! Thanks.

Thank you for the huge amount of nominations this week on so many different subjects. The main political event of the week was, of course, George Osborne’s budget with its eye watering tax rises and spending cuts.

Stephen sees Lib Dem fairness in there.

Greener Leith rounds up locals’ tweets on the Chancellor’s speech.

Tom Harris and his friends are less than impressed.

Jeff sees the need for all Scottish political parties to play their part in identifying where the savings will be found.

If you are a casualty of the austere economic reality in which we find ourselves, and you enjoy blogging, making money out of writing might be attractive. Newmodeljournalism.com reviews an e-book on how to become a “next generation journalist” and asks whether this could work.

Walk the Sand turns her attention to cuts of a different kind, embodying the spirit of thrift we may all need to embrace in the austere future.

If you need something to cheer you up after all the budget gloom, look at the gorgeous photos of cats and evening skies Conversation Pieces has taken on her new camera

Elsewhere in politics, Eric Joyce MP shares his ideas on Labour’s future defence policy.

Joan McAlpine writes about the controversy behind the British Irish Council’s decision to choose Edinburgh as its base.

2ourism Scotland has a thoughtful analysis of the changes afoot at VisitSscotland

Angus Parent feels that Audit Scotland Concerns about Angus Council are being ignored by the administration.

SNP Cllr Bellegrove Belle was perplexed at receiving online overtures from David Milliband. Her baby is due today, and Roundup wishes her and her family all the best.

In a few years’ time Baby Thewliss may take inspiration from these original Father’s Day Gifts reported in the blogosphere, leather warrior’s armour from RMontalban and the iDad from KidsCraftandChaos.

She may also like to suggest the inclusion of a monkey race in the school sports in a few years’ time after reading Hopeman Man’s account of the favourite race of his childhood.

Shootin’ Fae the Shin tells a tale of a Musselburgh woman who survived hanging for the murder of her baby.

Yeahokbye alerts us to an Edinburgh exhibition of beautiful photos of an old storehouse on a Norwegian island deep in the Arctic Circle.

There’s some football tournament on at the moment and it seems to be moving on a stage. Paul Edie shares his thoughts on football, and also on leadership, which both Fabio Capello and the French coach Raymond Domenech might want to take on board.

Anyway, who cares about football when the Highland Games season is in full swing? Misssy M tells about her husband’s first experience of playing a “marquee” with his band.

It wasn’t so much In a Bundance’s failure to be impressed with Gok Wan that caught my eye, but the miraculous tale of one man’s recovery from illness just in time to ee the football that made me laugh.

Actually, Islay Blog shows us a much healthier pursuit than sitting around, beer in hand, watching the football – beach rugby, complete with video.

Has Ben Lomond Free Press solved the mystery of Horseboy?

The iPhone 4 came out this week and Tom Harris managed to get his hands on one in fairly short order. He’s not so impressed with the idea of reading books in electronic form, though. In a Bundance hopes he keeps his shiny new toy out of the smallest room.

This week we bid farewell, sadly, to Yousuf, who’s hanging up his keyboard as he starts work. I’ll really miss him and I hope he hangs around on Twitter. We may have been in opposing parties, but it’s always good to have another Schumacher fan around. Roundup wishes him all the best in his new career.

Don’t forget that Duncan is preparing to hand over the reins of Scottish Roundup. The entire Scottish blogosphere owes him an enormous debt of gratitude for the immense work he’s put in, week after week, to keep this site going over the past 4 years. If you have any suggestions (or offers) to make about the future of Roundup, please do so here.

That’s all for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed our journey across the blogosphere. Please e-mail your suggestions for inclusion in next week’s Roundup to scottishroundup@gmail.com.

First off, if there is going to be a roundup this Sunday we need to find an editor. So if you’re up for it, give me an email at scottishroundup@gmail.com.

Thanks to everyone who has responded to last week’s appeal for some extra help on Scottish Roundup. A few different perspectives have been put forward.

As such, this is a good time to discuss what sort of shape Scottish Roundup should take in the future. In the past year or so I have considered changing the format of this website in a number of ways, and now seems like a good point to consider changing the format again.

Before that, though there is the tricky issue of who to pass the baton to. Going by the comments on the previous post, there is a lot of backing for some kind of group-based effort, where a team of people chip in regularly.

There are a couple of things that make me reluctant about that. Firstly, there is the fact that this is exactly what we tried a couple of years ago — and it just fizzled out. There could have been any number of reasons for that, but one of the most fundamental reasons is human nature — when it’s a group effort, people are tempted to shirk.

My sense is that a group effort can work, but it still needs strong direction. We are not just talking about sharing the responsibility of editing the roundup once every few weeks. There is an email account, Twitter and Delicious accounts to keep on top of, responding to commends, arranging the rota, plus all of the other stuff that is involved in maintaining a website.

Perhaps something can be worked out whereby a small group of people look after these maintenance aspects, the email account, Twitter and so forth, and a wider group can take on responsibility for producing the roundup.

A couple of people have inquired about taking control of Scottish Roundup themselves. It would have to be the right person though. It needs to be someone who can be relied upon to represent the whole of the Scottish blogosphere with an open mind and without any particular agenda to push or axe to grind. Finding the right person would be very tricky.

I don’t know what the answer is, which is why I want your suggestions. I think there is momentum behind a group effort, but it has to work properly. Please discuss away in the comments and hopefully we can reach some sort of conclusion by next week.

As for the format of Scottish Roundup, there have been a few interesting suggestions.

I have thought in the past about taking the site into a different direction, where the focus is not as much on a weekly roundup. I have considered adding different features — perhaps focussing on new blogs, or particularly notable issues that affect Scottish bloggers. I have also considered (and experimented with) featuring fewer posts every week, but more in-depth and with more of a narrative.

One suggestion that I have received in the past week has been for Scottish Roundup to become a group blog. But rather than having a weekly roundup it could focus instead on showcasing others’ content throughout the week. The idea would be for a format more like The Browser, Kottke or Boing Boing.

I think it’s well worth having a think just now about whether this is something we might like to do. And if anyone else has any other suggestions, now is the perfect time to throw it into the mix.

So get commenting and hopefully by next week we will have found a good way to progress. And don’t forget, if you want to edit the roundup for this coming Sunday (27 June) then give me a shout. Thanks!

Thanks to Duncan for taking a chance on the new guy to edit this week’s Roundup.

With no experience and little instruction, I tuned to Wikipedia for advice. It said that editing “is a practice that includes creative skills, human relations, and a precise set of methods”. Ah well, I should have checked before I volunteered…..

This week in the Scottish blogosphere we’ve had politics, shopping, get-togethers and ‘a wee bit of culture’.

Our ‘wee bit of culture’ provoked a raft of responses on Frank McAveety’s actions at the Scottish Parliament’s Petitions committee this week. To be fair to Frank Mc most of the responses I could find online were, if not sympathetic, definitely not damning. Mr Eugenides was uncharacteristically charitable, while Caron places the Labour MSP’s actions in a wider context. Will Patterson’s response, in sorrow rather than anger, placed the episode in the wider context of the challenge faced by the Scottish Labour Party over the next year. Stuart blames Sandra White. After getting such an easy ride from the blogosphere, it took me 25 minutes of searching to find someone who really sticks the boot into this misguided misogyny online.

So a big round of applause for this week’s feminist idol, Calum Cashley.

Elsewhere in politics, SNP Tactical Voting thoughtfully assesses the challenges that the SNP faces for next year’s Scottish Parliament elections, and poses the question: whether Alex Salmond? James Kelly is still a fan.  Yousuf Hamid’s post last weekend on the perils of fiscal autonomy under the SNP Government prompted Joan McAlpine to put the case for more powers for Holyrood as a means to a fairer Scotland. With the UK government still to bring forward their full proposals for new powers for Scotland, this issue has some way to run.

This week I’ve been mostly obsessing about the World Cup, as have many of you. (For the full authentic World Cup experience while reading this week’s Roundup, you should first click here.)

Rob at Left Back in the Changing Room addresses the big question of the World Cup so far: Why has the TV coverage been so dreadful? and references the outstanding article on the issue by Tom English in this week’s Scotsman on the same subject.

Closer to home, the superb Alex Massie and the Scottish Football Blog both take issue with James Macintyre in the New Statesman whose calls for a end to the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football teams seems to have united an otherwise disparate range of football and political bloggers in opposition.

Back in the real world, kind of, I had a great night on Thursday at the Media140 conference at the CCA in Glasgow. I liked Pat Kane’s point on the growth of those of us with ‘extimacy problems’ –when you have problems not sharing. I thought that would be a good phrase to use to an audience of bloggers Pat’s posted his thoughts and notes on social media on his blog, which also has edited highlights of his excellent talk.

The latest in a series of interesting events in the real world which I can’t go to because I already have plans for that day is the ScotGovCamp scheduled for 31st July. I’ll have a drink for you in Berlin folks!

Last, but by no means least, here’s the first in an irregular series of themed sections, catchily entitled:

Other Stuff That John Likes

“These streets will make you feel brand new, the pubs will inspire you! Let’s hear it for Leith Walk, Leith Walk.”

Joan McAlpine goes shopping

Some pictures of poppies

Scotland in the gloaming, the magical time before sunrise or after sunset

Johanna Basford’s Fringe Typeface

So that’s all from me.

If you enjoyed any of the articles featured today, you can subscribe to my Reading List of interesting things on the internet by following me on Twitter.

Happy reading,

John

I have decided to take a sabbatical from Scottish Roundup. Since setting it up almost four years ago, I don’t think there has been a week where I haven’t been trying to gather nominations, arrange the rota of guest editors or actually produce the roundup itself.

But I have much less spare time on my hands than I used to, and I find it increasingly difficult to find time to do it. Also, I have realised that I don’t love blogs as much as I used to, and can’t cheerlead in the way I was able to in the early days.

However, I don’t think it would be right to just pull the plug on Scottish Roundup. So if anyone is interested in taking over the running of Scottish Roundup, please get in contact with me! Alternatively, if anyone could work out a good way of spreading the workload among a group of people, that could be a workable solution too.

If I think someone can continue to push Scottish Roundup forward in the right direction, we can make it happen. Just now I think that it is stagnating and I can’t do the Scottish blogosphere justice anymore.

Email me: scottishroundup@gmail.com.