Ongoing snowflake stuff?

[kate]

So every January, I do snowflake. I love it. It reminds me of why I love fandom, it gives me simple, low-pressure challenges that I look forward to. I don't feel guilty if I miss any. And I always, always get comments from friends saying "oh, it's so good to see you on here again!"

And then I feel a little guilty, too, because I do have a hard time keeping up if I don't have something specifically goading me to post.

So I was thinking... what if there was snowflake stuff every month? Would anyone else be interested in that? I love the snowflake format, so I'd want to at least connect the challenges, if the folks at snowflake wouldn't want to do an expansion there. I mean, snowflake is really special, I get that. And I don't want to diminish it, but I also would like to keep things going in the interim between Januarys.

Any thoughts about this? Anybody willing to jump on the train to do this more often? (Maybe every other month, if not every month? Or quarterly? (since November is Nano and December is December))

Every other month would be March, May, July, September.... and maybe skip November because a) it's NaNo, b) all the holiday challenges etc., c) it would give a little extra break before the original snowflake started up again.

Okay, I could brainstorm all night, but this really was just supposed to be a placeholder for discussion. Let me know what you think?

Comments

[sperrywink]

I'm too overwhelmed as you know, but another option is some people created the sunshine challenge to cover one of the summer months. I forget which one.

https://sunshine-challenge.dreamwidth.org/

[kate]

I am signed up for that too! And I have apparently forgotten about it promptly after I signed up, lol. Good to know others have this same idea. goddess47 had some good ideas about this below, I'm gonna keep musing on this and see if I have enough energy to want to run something like this. I could take the lead on ONE of these types of communities, so if we had someone pick up the other two, we could have similar challenges that run at different times, like sister communities, and spread the work around, maybe.

And I hear you about being overwhelmed! I dropped all my modding stuff here on DW because I just could not manage it anymore. I'm always appreciative of people who have the time/willingness/commitment to do this stuff.

Also, *hugs* - I know things are a lot right now, I hope you're hanging in and taking care of yourself amidst it all!

[athaia]

Maybe we could stretch the challenges to once a week instead of every other day? That would easily cover three months, and would maybe make it easier to participate? I fell completely off the bandwagon this time after challenge #3 because I'm totally exhausted from my crazy workload, and thus felt overwhelmed by things like creating a challenge on my own page etc.

I found a writing meme that I'm now doing every weekend, and this rhythm is something I can manage.

[kate]

Yeah, I get that! I have definitely had snowflake years where I only did a handful of challenges because I couldn't keep up. I think extending it, or maybe shaking up how they're done would be helpful.

[pensnest]

I'm sorta torn... There is the Sunshine Challenge, in July, which is an excellent addition to the calendar, and which last year worked in a somewhat different way to Snowflake which I thought was very good. The prompts made it easier to talk about Something Interesting, without having to be repetitive.

The thing about Snowflake is that it has got to be hard to think up daily challenges that can apply to everyone. Doesn't matter what your fandom is/fandoms are, you can do X. I've been doing the Snowflake Challenge for several years, and am aware of a certain amount of repetition, because it's inevitable.

Perhaps the way forward might be to have one challenge per month? (Perhaps, per month but excluding January, July and December?) Something fairly general? Then again, it might be that the compression of Snowflake into one month is one of the reasons why it works: I know a lot of people have trouble keeping up, but if it were more spread, I suspect a lot would lose interest.

I definitely understand the appeal of the idea of more pan-fandom challenges.

[kate]

I totally hear you about repetition. For me it's a little comforting, actually, as the repetition points up how my interests and fandoms have changed year to year (and sometimes even my take on the questions), but doing the same challenges multiple times in a single year would be too much.

I had forgotten about sunshine, though I am signed up for it. If we went Quarterly, we could go with a seasonal theme, and that would tie all the comms together, but allow there to be enough differences between them for them to be unique.

I think part of the thing that keeps people doing it is the timeline - I'm literally checking snowflake every day. If it was one challenge a month, I'd forget about it for sure. But there are ways to do this that are still low pressure. I love the low pressure feel of snowflake, I feel like that's one of the most important aspects. *continues to think on it*

Thanks for your input!

[goddess47]

I'm modding on Snowflake for the first time and I have mad respect for those that did it in the days there was a new challenge every day! All the responding is a ton of work, even at every other day.

I can see the March, May, July, September idea having a shot (although Sunshine was in that mix)... OTOH you'll never not overlap with something else. Maybe make them stand alone but in a co-op, so you pimp each next challenge out. Let Sunshine stand for July and come up with something for March, May and September. So when Snowflake ends, there's a "join us in March for X" and pimp the next challenge on all the communities.

March can be a 'Spring Fling' and May can be a 'Patriotic Parade' and September can be 'Fall [something clever]' which gives you a theme that should be pan fandom.

Let them vary. Some can be 3-4 challenges in the month, some can have more...

My $0.02 worth!

[kate]

Thanks for this! I forgot about sunshine, so actually, quarterly (seasonally) is starting to really ping me as a way to go. Adding Spring and Fall would give us something to look forward to and allow a break inbetween and also give each of them a bit more individual flavor, as well as their own communities.

I also agree that the challenges need not have the same timeline or structure as snowflake - avoiding repetition is certainly a good thing to keep in mind. I think there needs to be a fair amount of work in the month they go on, though, so there'd have to be a lot of volunteers. I think to the work I did on fandom stocking back in the day, and there just were NOT enough people to handle that well. Many hands make light work and all.

Yeah, I'm thinking I have enough energy to maybe get the Spring one started, but I'd have to have a call for volunteers and hopefully at least one other person with enough time and fannish interest to keep me propped up (the way saekhwa did with all the Losers stuff for so many years).

Definitely thinking more on this, thanks for your $.02!

[corvidology]

I'd probably sign up for it but would probably want to do 2 posts a week at most.

[kate]

Sweet! I definitely understand that every other day is a lot, for sure. I do like the idea that snowflake is low pressure, no one is required to do any of the challenges they don't want to, and there's no due dates or requirements. I'm all about no stress fannish experiencess.

[corvidology]

There could be some months where there's a "thing" to post about and it's as simple as that and up to the person how many times they post... like OTP month or something like that.

[kate]

Hm, yeah, that's an idea. I'm still thinking on this. It hinges on the interaction for me; it's the participation posts where I check out what people have done and say hi and things, so that's part of it. But I also want people who have the completionist thing like I do be able to have an easier time, too. Still mulling over this, thanks for the idea!

[dreamersdare]

I think there's a potential advantage to additional, affiliated challenges that people can dip in and out of. Quarterly seems most reasonable, but I can see a few potential pitfalls that might need poking at:

- How do you stop it being just 'more of the same'? You need spaces for people to introduce themselves, but there's a risk that people just end up feeling like all they ever do is write and rewrite intro posts. I'm not sure how much of Snowflake's appeal comes from it's scarcity, so I think if you want to extend that, it's worth thinking about how it will be different, and therefore appeal to a wider range of folks (and I'm aware that makes the workload potentially much harder)

- Posting frequency is... a challenge. I'm quite introverted, but not shy - I can do the posting and the social interaction without a problem, but it's tiring. I currently feel like I've been put through the wringer, and it's not bad but I'm not sure I could maintain this intensity for this duration three or four times a year. Might be worth thinking about either a) shorter sessions, only lasting a week or so, or b) less frequent challenges; maybe twice a week or something?

None of that is to say I think it's a bad idea, because I don't; I think opportunities to build up interactions on DW are a good thing. I'm more trying to catch early the things that might tilt the balance of success against you.

[kate]

These concerns are fair and I do have a lot to say about them, but it is well past my bedtime and I'm flagging a little. Planning to come back tomorrow when I'm fresh!

[dreamersdare]

*laughs* I like it. Placeholder for thoughts because currently too tired to brain!

[jesse_the_k]

As a lower-stress alternative, there's thefridayfive, which poses five questions to answer in your own journal with links back to a comm.

It crowd-sources the questions and the answers!

[kate]

Yes, I do like that comm, I've been on it before. It's definitely cool and low pressure, two good things about snowflake, too.

What I'm realizing (with perfect clarity as my life settles into the new year) is that I am not on DW regularly. It's just not part of my routines, daily, weekly, or otherwise. I have tumblr, slack, and discord open constantly, but not DW. I have a system of "daily things I need to do" and a list of "things I do if there's any leftover time in the day" and DW is so far down that second list that it easily goes many days (or weeks) without me checking it. And once it drops down to me checking less often than once a week, then it's likely going to fall off the list completely soon.

Snowflake works for me because it slots into my "daily things I need to do" and the interaction with all the other people keeps it in my inbox and therefore at the front of my mind. When snowflake isn't going on, the interactions are much less, too.

That's why, for me, the key to snowflake is the interaction. But that's a lot of work, and it's a strain on literally all the mods. This is all still percolating in the back of my brain, but I feel fairly certain that a spring version is out of the question, and fall will just have to see if I come up with things in the meantime and can corral enough people to do it.