Hey Folks! It is almost Blaugust time. No this is not the new logo but it was the only one I could grab on the fly from my archives that did not have an implicit year associated with it. The new logo is still a work in progress, as is most of the stuff that would go into the big rules and sign-up posts. However, I thought I would do things a little differently this year. I more or less cobbled together Blaugust each year as a “thing I do” that the community also does with me, but this time around I am asking for some feedback.
What Do You Want From Blaugust?
It is a simple enough question. What are you expecting from the Blaugust experience, and what sorts of things do you hope to participate in? Each year I follow a pretty similar script, and each year I have folks who are confused by the rules or expect them to be way more strict than they actually are. I have some ideas on how to resolve that confusion or attempt to resolve it. However, I thought I would start this whole pre-Blaugust discussion out by just asking what you as a participant are expecting to get from the experience.
What Worked Well in Past Blaugusts?
If you have participated in Blaugust before, or merely lurked… what seemed to work well? What aspects of it did you enjoy? What aspects of the proceedings did you want to see more of? I get that this is a bit weird as far as blog posts go, but essentially I am soliciting feedback before I lock this year’s rules in stone.
What Did Not Work Well?
Now we have the opposite side of that coin. What did not work well, and what do you feel could have been improved upon? I can’t guarantee that your feedback is going to change the course of the past year’s proceedings, but I am curious what aspects did not go as well as they could have. Essentially I want to know what did not land as well as it could have, so that maybe with some tweaking I can prevent that from happening again. Blaugust is very much a free-form experience, and I don’t think I will be playing more of a camp director role going forward, but if there are things that we can change to make things work more smoothly in this self-directed manner then I am all about that.
As it stands right now I do not expect to be posting my “launch” topic until at least next week, but I am in the process of firming up material for the coming run of Blaugust. You can of course post your feedback in the comment section below. Also, I am pretty widely reachable through various direct message platforms if what you want to say is in a more sensitive manner. Lastly, if you crave more real-time interaction for this discussion and feedback from other voices there is always the Post Discussion channel in the Blaugust Discord. This is the first time I have really asked for feedback during the entire process of running Blaugust so we will see how this goes.
Thanks and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and also to the upcoming Blaugust 2022.
Like Tipa, I also like the theme weeks. And like Naithin, I think Blaugust’s biggest danger is it’s own success. I felt I was actually reading fewer blog posts in depth than in a normal month last year because I had to try and at least skim so many
I can’t really see a way around that. We hardly want to ask people to post less after all. Maybe some prompts designed to produce short, sharp responses? I’m very partial to a list myself. Some Top Tens or maybe Fives might make for both snappy posts and some liively conversations.
Overall, though. I’d say don’t overthink it. It’s been a lot of fun every other year. Let’s just do it again! . .
So, before anything else, I wanna say that I loved the Blaugust community. When I wanted to start writing a blog, I found the community thanks to a quick google search. Everyone was incredibly welcoming back then in July of 2019. When I asked what Blaugust was, everyone welcomed me in and invited me to participate as well. I’ve been blogging ever since – and I made friends along the way, got valuable experience, learned a lot, talked a lot, had a lot of fun and I have been enjoying it as much because of you all.
That being said, I believe that the format is a double-edged sword. The whole premise of “post every day in August” intices productivity and activity but it also can be incredibly overwhelming. Because of the amount of participants each time and the amount of blog posts, I often end up only reading some posts at the beginning and eventually, I skim… and then I may just end up bookmarking posts, thinking I’ll read it later, leaving a like to prove I was there and then I don’t get there anytime soon again. Comments as well are something that often end up not happening because of it.
Hence, I can second what the others said. I love the community aspect but it gets overwhelming pretty fast and it would be cool if there was a way to encourage not the “blog a lot” part but rather the “bond a lot” part. I guess it also heavily depends on who is around and how many participants there are this year but it’d be amazing if we could do something along those lines and maybe if we could incentivise that through activities on the discord. DnD One-Shots, for example, or gaming nights or just hang-outs and stuff. I know that I will try and be in the discord voice channels a lot more.
When it comes to incentives, there is also the “awards”. I love them. Being able to put a badge onto one’s site is pretty darn cool. The rainbow one is amazing and I love it. Maybe we could have something like the awards but for interactions and people commenting on blog posts or something like that… So, if you were very active in the community aspect you get the award but it has a star or something on it to make it special. Obviously, that’s super tricky to plan and I don’t want to put on more work for you but incentives are kinda cool for people that need something to work towards.
At last, you’re doing an amazing job, so please don’t overthink it too much. Also, please, don’t overwork yourself. We’re a community and we can work together. If you need help with anything, I’m here and I know that many other people would probably also be willing to help out with anything they could. In the week before Blaugust, I wanted to publish a post with 31 prompts for Blaugust that may help out people. On top of that, there are the themed weeks (as Tipa mentioned) and other ways of possibly helping out the whole event. 🙂 I’m here to help. I appreciate you. Thanks again for all the work you do!
I agree. I like theme weeks because it gives a little structure for those who want it, but it’s not mandatory if you have other things to write about.
I loved the motivation I got to post more often and think less about “is this worth making a post about?”. But I also equally loved the increase of chatting in the Discord channel! The community part is important for me as well. Also, having some prompts to go with helped with writing blog posts. Those are always nice to have.
So, this is my pre-coffee brain here, but I’m going to go off the top of my head for a minute.
Blaugust – as is – is great for giving folks a motivation to write more. Those of us who are generally active on the Discord get a good amount of community building & even some occasional collaboration on there, but one of the things that stayed with me from last year was that while my personal output was way up during August, my interactivity was way down. Obviously, this is (and probably will continue to be) an issue of the limitations of time and energy.
That said, I think it would be fantastic if there was another “category” that was a part of Blaugust that encouraged community building, interactivity, and collaboration. I’m not quite sure yet what that would look like in my ideal scenario, but the first thing that came to mind is some sort of bingo board with interactivity focused tasks. Maybe have a community building participants badge for a bingo, and a super rainbow for the full coverage in addition to the writing-focused badges. We all do like a badge, after all.
I realize this would create more work for you, and might not be feasible (and would probably need to be on the honor system in a way that just checking post counts avoids), but if you want to brainstorm more, I’m around!
Ah man. I love Blaugust. In any normal year, would be there with bells on for the full-fat post-every-day version of the event. I’m not sure that I can be in that space this year. It’s a hefty demand even in normal times!
In terms of what I want from Blaugust? If it’s going to change at all — and even with my circumstances, I’m not convinced it should, but I’m certainly not as against it as I was previously — then perhaps there is a way to craft an event that provides some more focus on one another, the community.
This now jumps ahead to what perhaps hasn’t worked so well in the past — but one of my observations is that there ends up being so much content generated that it is essentially impossible to keep up. Perusing other people’s efforts sometimes dropped down to the barest of skims, or loading and liking even, and moving on.
Despite that — going into what has worked well now — I’ve always enjoyed the buzz of activity that surrounds it. The occasional new addition to the community is fantastic too.
Happy to help ideate in chat or the like if you wish, but for now will let things percolate in the problem space before jumping right into solutions. 🙂
I kinda enjoyed the theme weeks.