Setting Expectations

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Today is the very last day of April, and in theory it would normally be the point at which we draw this month long experiment to a close. However due to the weird nature of the times we find ourselves in I changed things up a little bit this year. I am not exactly sure if that many noticed but the time frame of the event and as such the tabulation started March 29th and concludes with May 9th, encompassing the entire six weeks of Blapril. It always felt weird that I specifically outline six weeks of content creation and then only ever counted 31 days of that period towards the ultimate goal of the event. The problem is, now would be the normal time when I start tabulating the results but this means that I ultimately have one more entire week that I will need to include.

It is probably however time to talk a little bit about the proceedings as a whole. We had 46 bloggers sign up to participate in the event, which seems pretty solid given the very impromptu nature of the fact that we moved this up to April. That was made up of eight mentors, thirty two participants and six newbies. So in essence we brought six blogs into the forefront of this community and hopefully got them a bunch of exposure and what will ultimately turn into regular readers. Here is a quick rundown of the participants.

One of the best things to come out of last year, I think was expanding our reach to Facebook… which more or less was a completely different community of users that we were not reaching. Last year Angie from Backlog Crusader introduced the community to Geek Blogs Unite, and this year we had several participants that joined the proceedings from there. I’ve personally been down on Facebook as a whole for years, but it opened my eyes to the fact that there are other thriving communities out there that I personally wasn’t even paying attention to.

I think another significant success has been how actively the Blaugust discord has remained throughout the years between its inception and this current event. It has sorta become a base of operations for a lot of us as we go throughout our separate lives as bloggers. Blogging in as disparate a community as we have will always be a bit like island nations developing trade negotiations with other island nations, since we don’t have a perfect copy of shared experiences. However having a stable platform to communicate and share ideas most certainly helps the isolation, which I guess is an important realization given that so many of us are in very real isolation mode.

Since the topic of this post is about setting expectations, I just want everyone to be aware that the assigning of rewards is going to come a little later this year than it has in other years. Since I specifically used the verbiage “Posts during the weeks outlined for Blapril 2020” that includes all six weeks and I don’t want to jump the gun and push someone out the door that is still working towards whatever goal they ultimately had. My hope as well was by extending it out a bit, it would feel like less of a sprint after which the participant collapses at the finish line, and stops posting for another year. Fatigue has always been a challenge we have dealt with since the very first running of this event.

Yesterday our dear Bhagpuss, who has always been one of my favorite bloggers to read wrote a bit about the exhaustion. It is well worth the read but there is a bit of it that ultimately addresses some of my concerns in doing this each year.

Every time Belghast runs one of these things he takes great care to emphasize that it’s not a competition, that there are no “win” conditions and that the awards are only there for fun. Even so, every time there seem to be quite a few Blaugustians or Blaprilistas who don’t seem to be finding it anything like as much fun as they thought it would be.

Bhagpuss – Inventory Full

To which I allowed myself a moment of despair and commented about my own fears.

I always feel bad when folks seem to struggle a bit. It is this moment when I start to question if I should ever do another event like this again. I am never certain how it is going to end up. I think blaugust as a community has been good, but I am not sure if blaugust as an event really bears the fruit I ultimately hope it will. Those of us who are regular bloggers will stay regular bloggers, but I am not sure if we are really making any new ones from our mold.

Belghast – via Inventory Full

The thing is… this is always a concern that I have when deciding if we are going to do this again. This is also why the format has shifted throughout the years because I keep trying to figure out a way to get the benefit of having a focused month of blogging without getting some of the negative after effects. Blaugust is the herald of fresh content, but unfortunately it is also the warden of months of not posting as the writers recover from the marathon that they just ran. Those of us who are more or less daily bloggers have been doing this for so long that I am not sure what we would do if we were not posting content. However for everyone who has been a once or twice a month blogger, it is a major stretch to try and create so much content in a single event.

That first year was an eye opener, because so many people that managed to get their thirty one days also effectively dropped off the face of the planet. There are times I allow myself to get mired in the notion that I might have killed as many blogs as I have helped create or promote. I appreciate when folks like Naithin come along to give me a kick in the rear when I get to thinking like this, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that what I said isn’t true. I am constantly concerned about the impact I have made with this event, both the positive and the negative. Bhagpuss had some sage advice to follow my own comment.

I tend to get the sense that the pressure, such as it is, comes from the Award system. It’s similar to what you see in games with achievements – with some people, once they know they exist they feel obligated to get them. You couldn’t really have made it any more clear that the awards are just for fun but their mere existence has people setting targets.

Bhagpuss – Inventory Full

So I guess the question is… should we do away with the awards? I am wondering if they are something that is more or less vestigial at this point? Blaugust started its life as a challenge to other bloggers, to do what I had chosen to do and start blogging on a daily basis at least for one month. It was in fact a contest and we even had rewards for winning, which admittedly was mostly me just handing out some duplicate humble bundle codes that I had stockpiled. In an attempt to combat the fatigue I kept trying to open it up and make less things mandatory in an effort to lower the anxiety and stress. However for whatever reason I have kept the rewards as sort of bragging rights for anyone who wanted them.

So I ask you the participants and my readers… are the rewards making things worse? Is it time to abandon them? What changes could I make to Blaugust/Blapril to lower the stress level and reduce the negative impact of the event? What would you change if you could in the way these proceedings work? I guess the other topic we need to discuss is whether or not we want to do anything in August when Blaugust would normally run, and if so what should we do to mark it? My comment section as always is open and so long as it isn’t random pedantry about typos or spelling errors, I always welcome real criticism.

15 thoughts on “Setting Expectations”

  1. For what its worth, I really dig the little award thingy that those who complete Blapril/Blaugust can put on their blogs. As someone with a lot of chronic illnesses that cause both pain and exhaustion, it is difficult for me to post something on my blog every day (in addition to my paid work on other people’s blogs). But, for whatever reason, that little award thingy motivates me to keep trying.

    I’m always entirely drained at the end of one of these month-long projects. (I’ve done NaPodPoMo several times over the years, and may do it again someday. Blogging, for me, is less draining than writing blog posts). For me, the little award is something I can look at on really bad physical health days and remember that I do actually get things done once in a while.

    I have taken some days off of putting things on my blog since the end of April. But I intend to get back to blogging more regularly again when I can.

    • I always greatly appreciate your participation. I mean I gotta have someone around to appreciate all of my Diablo 3 nonsense 🙂

  2. I am very grateful for the Blapril event and thank you very much for hosting it! I met a lot of cool people through it, and that’s worth it’s weight in awards (or some saying like that).

    Any pressure I felt was self-imposed and not caused by Blapril. It was fun to push myself towards my own goal within the event, which was just to post as much as possible in April. 29 posts ain’t too shabby for something I jumped into blindly 🙂

    • Happy to have you participating. This is the best part about the yearly events is that it ultimately brings a few more people into the sphere. The discord has been far more popular than I expected, and folks have maintained contact throughout the year more than I could have hoped for.

  3. I’m out of ideas how to improve the event, so from my point of view it’s cool how it is 🙂

    I guess I fall in the middle of the incentives spectrum. Yes, 2018 I aimed for the 31 posts but I was hyped enough to post nearly daily for the 2 weeks before and after. This time I didn’t set a goal and am very happy with my amount and only looked at the badges again on the 30th 😛

    That said, I wouldn’t mind if we did away with the badges if it would make more people happy, but reading the comments the majority seems to like them.

  4. As I wrote before the only reason I didn’t participate in Blapril was because I wasn’t exactly in a good mental space and felt it was better not to participate. I still feel like it was for the best for me at this time but I also feel like the Blaugust/Blapril event is an excellent way to get bloggers together, writing and sharing their content. It certainly helps to give it the feel of an actual community than just individuals shouting at the void.

    I don’t mind the badges either as it gives me a target to aim for. Plus since I’ve been writing for a while I have a good idea of what I can handle and what is completely unrealistic for me so I never felt burnt out after a Blaugust.

    Having said all that, I was going go suggest skipping Blaugust this year since we had Blapril but after reading the others comments perhaps there may be a better compromise. Like others proposed, maybe a “Blaugust Light” might be a good idea. You could even use the opportunity to experiment with some ideas you have been musing or implement some of the suggestions here. Then pick what works and what doesn’t and do a normal Blaugust next year.

    These are just my 2 cents on the subject. 🙂

  5. I personally enjoy things as they are, but I may be in the minority. I’ve fallen off before after blogging in the challenge, but that’s been due to life and mental health circumstances more than anything. I do like Tessa’s idea, though to implement that, you may need to make more use of us Mentors who participate to help track a certain number of assigned blogs (maybe, as Naithan mentioned, a cohort of sorts?). Folks could go to their mentor first for questions and advice, then generally otherwise if they’re still in need of help or assistance. The Mentor would also be more involved outside of Discord (let’s be honest, I know I’m not the only one who struggles to be social on the best of days, and Discord can just get so overwhelming!), making sure to cheer their participants on, checking in with anything they might be able to assist with for motivation, being there to listen, etc.

    • And fwiw, know that I’m always here to assist with more than just putting a Twitter list together and popping in Discord as I can. After many ThaydFest, I’m decent at helping to organize things. 😉

    • I should probably call out too — despite how long the last comment was, I missed it:

      Personally, I’m perfectly happy with the current form of the event.

      I’m also happy to suggest changes to whichever degree we want them, my one below was pretty out there, but like I said — more to trigger thoughts than that I think it is what we should actually as written do.

      Basically; love what you do Bel. Let us know how we can help. 🙂

  6. I personally really enjoyed the overachieving and the challenge of posting “as much as possible” or aiming for a specific goal. Hell, I even may be able to reach for the stars and go for those 69 posts that I wanted to (just for the joke and for nothing else) until the 9th (that’s where it ends after all, right? RIGHT?!).

    I guess I could feel how people could get competitive over the “awards” but in the end, people are winning already by participating and participants usually don’t shame others for posting less and having better things to do. I doubt that that’s the case and I doubt that the pressure is there that one has to achieve this or that goal. I feel that the different prizes are a lot of fun as an idea and I feel like these badges (that in the end are just pictures that you put on the internet) are similar to trophies in video games. They’re fun if you want to collect them and they just exist for people that don’t care all that much about trophy hunting.

    Uh, so basically I like the idea of awards/badges just because I like collecting pins and stuff at conventions – but if it really is the problem that is driving people insane (which I doubt) then I wouldn’t mind letting go of it and I wouldn’t mind going for just the rainbow awards and a participant badge or even just a participant badge).

    I felt as if the assignments were the same ones as last year and since I didn’t want to post about the same stuff again, I just didn’t bother with most of the assignments or themes… I hope that that’s alright. Maybe people hit their head with those.
    I’d imagine that I’d actually let go of my purple colour and stay a Blaugustan after this event… I’d imagine that I’d participate in Blaugust as well, if that’s happening 🙂

    Uh, I think a list of writing prompts that people could use for the event would be quite neat. “31 writing prompts that we thought were silly but doable” or something like that. New or “burned out” bloggers could then just use those if they wanted to..

    And I really enjoyed the amount of posts that were there this year but I feel like we may have some sort of system to split channels up into maybe genres or categories or something to combat getting flooded with posts and possibly missing out on stuff that interests someone more than other stuff… I feel like that actually may be quite interesting. My wordpress reader wasn’t much help this month as there was just way too much going on right now, haha.

    Either way, I really liked the event this year and thanks a lot for organising it again, Bel!

    • Speaking as a blogger who tends to fade away after these events: The event and challenge are never to blame. 100% of the time it’s because my personal interests or priorities change/ don’t align with blogging at the time. I actually come away each time with a sense of accomplishment and very positive feelings towards blogging whether I hit 31 posts or not.

      I would definitely be interested in doing some sort of community event in August. Probably something more laid back than a full blown Blaugust. Maybe a few community writing prompts or themed weeks without the challenge aspect attached.. If I remember correctly, NBI had a writing prompt each week submitted by a different blogger. Not sure how that worked though, I was mostly trying to figure out how to use WordPress at the time.

  7. I also tend to perform better with an incentive and I probably wouldn’t get out of bed if there wasn’t a bit of stress looming. It is just how I am.

    And I am probably an outlier case here, as while I always turn in a post every day during these events, I end up doing that many posts over the course of most months, so am unlikely to fade because one particular month has a specific goal attached. I would still participate even if there were no ranked badges at the end.

  8. Thanks for the kind words, Bel. I didn’t expect to kick off quite so much discussion with the post, which as usual I wrote pretty much off the top of my head, and I very much didn’t want to suggest any kind of criticism. Blaugust, and now Blapril, are amazing events that are the highlight of the blogging year and you organize them brilliantly.

    I think a lot of this comes down to personality. As I commented on Naithin’s thread, when it comes to things I do for pleasure, fun or entertainment, I try to focus on things that I can look forward to doing, enjoy while I’m doing them and look back on with pleasure when I’m finished. Ideally I look for all three of those benefits. Pushing through the pain barrier to enjoy the fruits of my labors doesn’t often work for me – it tends to make me feel I’ve made an error of judgment to begin with – but I realize that for some people that kind of tempering-in-fire works very well indeed.

    I do hope we can do something for Blaugust although by the time Blapril ends it will be less than three months away, whch does sound quite soon, especially compared to the usual year off we get. I was wondering if we might do something a little shorter and more focused than a full month of general blogging but I don’t really have any ideas what that might be. I do personally enjoy writing to order sometimes, as in being given a title or a theme and having to come up with something, rather as happens with both the topic weeks and some of the round-robin awards we see, but I imagine other bloggers would absolutely hate being told what they had to write about.

    On the Awards, again, while I don’t pay much attention to them and they don’t motivate me at all, I would bet there are some people who love them. People are certainly very proud to show off the badges on their blogs. It would be a shame to lose that for those who appreciate it and as I said it’s difficult to see how much less competetive those could be made – it’s pretty much a prize for everyone already.

    So, not much help. That’s why I will never be the one organizing one of these things! Whatever you and the wider community decide on for Blaugust, though, I’ll be very happy to join in. Keep up the good work but don’t wear yourself out doing it!

  9. FWIW, I value the award badge associated with the Blaugust event even though I don’t for anything else I’ve (yet) encountered that has one. There are any number of factors to that, but not least of all is that it’s from you and something that feels earned.

    Having said that though; if we identify that this is a problem — I would have no problem letting them go. I’m not sure they are a problem yet, but it’s early days on the conversation yet.

    Having said all this — I haven’t witnessed an incident over Blaugust 2019 (or yet Blapril 2020) of someone hitting their goal and just saying ‘enough’ never to be seen again. Certainly there are those that either no show or drift off quickly into the piece, but I’d be incredibly hesitant to apportion any blame to the event itself for those cases.

    I’m also up for doing this again come August, but I’d 100% understand if that’s a minority view or if you aren’t up for it again so soon!

    re: Feedback on what we might change or adjust? Maybe this is something we can brainstorm more communally on too, or in the Discord, but as a starter:

    The goals (as I understand them) are to:
    * Encourage new bloggers or people contemplating giving blogging a go to do so and
    * Give existing bloggers a bit of a kick to life (if they need it)
    * Further develop the sense of community we have and bring people together

    The latter one was quite a focus for Blapril in particular with the world condition; but I don’t think is a bad one to maintain going forward. Although it might also be a goal that takes care of itself through the sheer existence of the event.

    Some of the problems I have seen with the current format:
    * Too much content to possibly keep up with. Higher participant counts while good, further exacerbate this issue.
    * Potential risk for burnout attempting to post every day (even when this goal is clearly stipulated as optional and not the main point).

    So here’s a proposal which is perhaps pretty out there — I don’t necessarily think it is ‘the’ answer, just running on the principle that in the early stages of brainstorming no idea is a bad idea, in that at the very least it may spark something for someone else. 😉

    With that caveat out of the way, how about something along the lines of a group project. (I can hear the groans from everyone who attended uni already, but stick with me.)

    The Mentor/Participant to Newbie ratios are generally fairly high. It could be the case that a newbie is wrapped into a group, who then helps them through the setup, coaching through first post(s) and of course, sharing with the world what their fledgling blogger has achieved.

    Make the weekly topics into weekly assignments. But rather than expect a post each day — just a post each week on the ‘brief’. If the new blogger in question has additional things to say and wants to shoot for the stars with a post a day; excellent! But this isn’t what they would be awarded for.

    The award would be for completing the weekly post brief with the assistance of their cohort.

    —

    If we went with something like that; would it still deliver on all the goals? I think so. There might be some risk with segregating into groups, but possibly could be mitigated by some switches if not week by week then at the midway point, to expose to a wider audience?

    I think this would be quite invigorating to work this closely with a newbie blogger, as a more experienced blogger so would deliver there.

    I guess the other major risk I see is that, as I noted, there have been some no shows. Entirely possible such a setup would mitigate this from occurring with engagement up front, but entirely possible who groups could be left with little to do.

    I hate to think how long this thing is, so will leave it here. Just the first potential idea. I’m sure more will come after sleep!

  10. I really like the Camp NaNoWriMo setup in which you as participant can decide what your goal is, and if you make that goal, you get to call yourself a winner. This might be more work for you if you need to track it all, but I think most of us are mature enough to track it ourselves. We could crown ourselves a winner whenever we reach that goal, and then you could still hand us a pretty reward.

    Personally, I perform better with an incentive. Especially when it’s an external one. Like Naithin said in his post, it’s training for a marathon. There might stress involved but the good kind. The kind that trains the (writing) muscle. How you train it is up to you. I did the daily blogging this year and it was much easier than it was the last time I took part. Doing these bootcamp events do make it easier to come up with new topic (heck, I already want to write five more posts even though I said I’d take a break) and writing more frequently.

    So I hope we keep doing them. With or without rewards. There’s value in there beyond creating more content.

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