It’s been a week of ups and downs, but things are mostly looking up.
I debated about talking about it, but one of the purposes of these updates is to encourage authenticity, so I ought to say that Canvas and Candlelight has been cancelled. Jodi, my co-organizer, has been in and out of the hospital with the flu for the past week, and she’s on the road to recovery, but it really hurt our final few days. As well, ticket sales weren’t coming in fast enough to cover costs, let alone raise funds. I think there’s a lot of reasons for that, ranging from the fact that being asked to paint can make people self-conscious to the fact that we didn’t market it hard enough. In the end, we decided that it was better to have no fundraiser than a fundraiser which raised no funds, and pulled the plug. It’ll definitely come around again, and we’ll apply what we’ve learned this time, but in the meantime everything is getting refunded. If you got a ticket, not to worry, as soon as Paypal updates the information, you’ll be refunded automatically. I’ve learned a lot from the experience though, and I want to share a few things here.
- Last Month Marketing: When planning an event, the month before should be pretty much devoted to marketing. That is to say that all of the nuts and bolts should already be in place, whether that’s licenses, vendors, materials, or anything else. This means that a major event is going to require more lead time, but if that time means that you can make sure it’s done right, it’s worth it. I think there’ll always be issues to troubleshoot in the final month, but better to have this principle in mind.
- Be Prepared to Think Different: Don’t fixate on a single vision for the event, but be prepared to re-evaluate it in order to make it bigger, smaller, better, more personal, or different in a hundred other ways. Adapt to pressures.
- Include the Community: Be prepared to adapt by including people from the community in different ways. Look for ways they can be a part of things, because being inclusive is the best way to build community support.
With that said, I’m looking ahead, rather than dwelling on it. There are other ways I can help my community, and people keep proving it. Yesterday I got an offer to perform at the Glass Slipper Affair and accepted. The work that Family and Children’s Services does is vital to the region’s communities, and I’m happy to help out. It will, at the very least, be an evening of magic, juggling, mayhem and comedy (and shoes).
I’ve been writing more, especially after listening to Functional Nerds with Chuck Wendig and Daniel Polansky. I have a fiction project in me, I just need to sit down and wrestle with it a bit. I’ve been writing blog posts instead, and have a series of guest posts on Wildhearts Web 2.0 about Steam and its community coming up. The first went up on Friday, so check it out!
Concept Crucible this week was the follow up to last week’s Santa post, as welll as the introduction of a new operator, the disjunction. TPK included a how to on Killer GMing, as well as a wiki update about the City of Silks, beautiful Satu Mare.
Paper Progress:
- Obligations of Authenticity in Social Media: Compiling Reading List
- Power Relations and Ethics in Multi-level Games: Compiling Reading List
- Applied Stakeholder Ethics: Seeking Advisor
