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/

[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.

[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.

[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!

[corvidology]

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

[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.

[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!