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

[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!