Ideas

I'm thinking because it's been a while since our last event, we should start with something simpler to put together, and then right after work on something slightly more complex, like the bazaar. That way we can get an event out as quickly as possible, and then that gives us some time to work on something bigger, rather than make the community wait even longer (not that there's any expectations from the writers necessarily, but I hope you know what I mean x0)

So maybe we could start with something like the writing exchange?

And I agree that critiquing should be optional. Maybe we can pair critique-wanters with each other and critique-nopers together, so everyone's giving what they're getting? :0

Committee

I think the most efficient thing to do would be to open committee applications while we start planning an event, because applications can collect in the background while we work, then we can always pause on that to (promote? Still unsure of the correct terminology, lol) some committee members, and then introduce them to whatever project we're working on.

Maybe even further down the line when the new committee is more comfortable with their role, we can begin passing things off to them (like the magazine? Or some other project. Just going on a bit of tangent here, don't mind me- x]). But integrating them into the process of throwing around and developing ideas early on into their careers would be really great.

While it is really unfortunate that the entire committee kind of fell apart, I suppose the silver lining is that with getting to reconstruct it from the ground up, we can completely change the system, and “remold” it to work better. :0

Magazine

It's a relatively simple issue on paper to solve: Just write more articles.

But obviously the reason we haven't is because that takes time, lol. So I can try to write some articles whenever I can, and if anyone else wants to volunteer to as well, that'd be great! Asking the (hypothetical) committee and the community would be great, too.

Basically, I think we should just kind of let everyone know that anyone who wants to can write an article (and it would be very much appreciated). :0

Ideally, we'd build up a buffer, even, and have enough articles to have one in every issue (or maybe even two!), but that's far off from right now.

PoppyWriter wrote:

Sorry, I just kind of skimmed and added a few ideas here and there! ^^'

No worries! It was a really long post (;0), thanks for responding! :D (And so quickly! :o)

I have no idea where to start with this so I'll just go off of the three topics mentioned by Poppy:

Ideas

It would probably be easiest to start with the writing exchange because we already had that planned anyway, and after the event ends (or maybe while its going) we could work on something like the bazaar. We should definitely quick put something together for now or maybe early February though- we've made the community wait long enough (especially since we mentioned the writing exchange on the studio a few months ago and got quite a bit of excitement.)
I agree that critiquing should be optional, though, and I like Derp's idea of grouping critique-wanters with each other and critique-nopers with each other.

Committee

With all of the inactivity with us managers right now, it would help a lot to get some extra helping hands, even if they just worked on the magazine or something. Opening committee applications would be good, but while that happens I think it would be good to have at least a solid foundation for what exactly our expectations are for the committee and what they should be doing and make that clear to the people applying for the position so they know exactly what they're getting into.

Magazine

The articles are kind of a tricky situation. I agree that we should pull more people into writing the articles, and if possible, I think we should build up kind of a ‘back up’ list of articles that we can pull from if no one has written any or if we're all just inactive. Maybe we could assign one of the committee members to write some of them. I also think (just throwing this in) that it would be fun to ask writers of certain genres, writing styles, or even just people who've published to write an article, because us managers don't have all the experience and it would be good to get articles such as ‘what it actually takes to publish a book’ or ‘seven tips to writing a good romance.’

Another quick thing: we should probably check with the other managers and see what they're activity levels will be for the next month so we can plan ahead.
Take this how you will… I'm just throwing stuff around :\

Oh wow, only just got notifications for this forum- :O And kudos to you for doing all that researching, Derp ヽ⁠(⁠｡⁠◕⁠o⁠◕⁠｡⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠.

Studio Host Stuff

WriterDerp wrote:

We had a brief discussion about this the last time Jori was unavailable for a while, the idea that she could transfer host privileges to someone in times where she's unable to be online much.

This isn't 100% necessary to the studio's function, but I think it's a pretty important discussion to have just dropped like that, so I'd like to bring it back. :p

Yeah, not quite sure how that discussion was dropped so suddenly — but at the same time ALL the discussions kinda dropped at once, which is kinda becoming a trend with this forum. The reason probably being that there isn't much order with leadership on here since I'm way less active than, for example, this time last year.

Whilst we're on that point, I'm definitely not gonna be getting any more active as time goes on (which you can probably tell from my profile and November 2023 XP) so I definitely think host transfer or host rotations are gonna need to be a thing that happens.

I think the point where the discussion about this kinda started to drop was trying to discuss how we'd do this (e.g. having a rota for host rotations and how the order would be determined). On that note, how often do you guys tend to log on?


Committee
I agree, this should definitely be rebooted! Since the workload between managers and the committee was always uneven, it was decided at some point that some manager jobs would be shifted over to the committee. I think this included organizing events (which did happen with the prompt competition) and was also meant to include other things, like magazine content. Because this wasn't outlined from the start, though, there was a mixture of confusion about what the committee were actually responsible for, and how to gradually balance out the manager-committee workload by assigning former manager tasks to committee members.

PoppyWriter wrote:

Considering that we're talking about bringing some events back to life, it may be useful to bring the committee back? I'm not super sure, since we've got a lot going on, but it could be an asset at the moment. Any opinions?

Yeah, I'm definitely in agreement with this! As a team who were intended to work alongside managers behind the scenes of SWOW, it would definitely be an asset to reboot the committee and, this time, make the responsibilities clearer so that we're able to collaborate with them in things like, as you said, bringing events back to life (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

TL;DR: rebooting the committee and opening applications for it is definitely a good idea! We would need to make sure that it's 100% clear what the committee's tasks are, which can probably be done by keeping something like the SCAMS Forum active.
But yeah, the research findings from Derp's post explicitly shows some snippets about the discussions for this.

Magazine
I think there are two main things that kinda threw everything into disarray with the magazine:

• The intended idea of rotating who posts it
  
• Amount of content

Bearing in mind that the OG magazine template (can't remember off the top of my head, but I think it was used for around 11 or 12 issues) only consisted of 6 inconsistent sections (or technically 4 — notices and book recommendations were used in every issue) whilst the current one, whilst having much more advanced coding, has 9 consistent sections.

The reason this messed things up a bit (on top of the other things, or lack thereof, happening with the mag already) is probably the consistency factor. Here are the current sections:

• Shout-outs
  
• Notices
  
• Must-read Books
  
• Excerpt (of writing on scratch)
  
• Word of the day/month
  
• Vote! X vs Y
  
• Mini quiz
  
• Article 1
  
• Article 2

There isn't actually any rule saying that these sections have to be consistent, but so far they have been for the most part. This brought article writing into the picture, which of course had its pros (e.g. more engagement with community; more options for magazine viewers etc) and cons (time consuming; very few people tend to write articles for the mag outside of manager roles).

Despite that, the consistency factor does make it potentially easier to get the rotation stuff working (like with studio host, an order of some kind would need to be established. Maybe whoever is available, like when Carmen posted Issue #13?).

PoppyWriter wrote:

(…) We've always tried to make the articles the center of the magazine, but they always tend to get pushed to the side. Whether it just means dedicating ourselves to it more, or asking a person outside of the managing team to contribute (whether that be asking members of SWOW or a committee member if we decide we want to revive that), I think we might want to pick up a little bit on that.

Yeah, definitely. I'm going to talk a bit more about the last part (picking up on article writing and how to do it) in reference to a good idea Dawn had, but you're right about articles getting pushed to the side a lot. One of the major issues (no pun intended, if you catch my drift ❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛) is the fact that, even with constant reminders in magazine issues that articled are something we definitely encourage the community to write and share, very few people end up doing this (probably for the same reason we as managers fall behind on it a bit — it can be super time consuming)!

Dawn-Bellastrom wrote:

The articles are kind of a tricky situation. I agree that we should pull more people into writing the articles, and if possible, I think we should build up kind of a ‘back up’ list of articles that we can pull from if no one has written any or if we're all just inactive. Maybe we could assign one of the committee members to write some of them.

I definitely agree with Dawn's idea of having a kind of reserve list of articles — maybe pre-writing some if we get the time, or at least coming up with ideas for some so that we have something to work with. And getting the committee involved in that would also be another way to resolve the situation!

WriterDerp wrote:

We could even have the committee’s entire and only responsibility be the magazine, or just make a whole separate group for the magazine?

Though that's a lot of groups to keep track of, and an entirely different discussion

I think having the committee entirely in charge of the magazine would be good both for encouraging people who have contributed to the mag in the past to want to get more involved, and also avoiding the issue of the committee rarely having anything to do, since they were formerly dependent on manager interaction, in regard to the assignment of tasks (prior to the failed workload shifting stuff).

With that being the major thing, minor tasks like POTM (since only 12 are needed, and that could be done in a day or two with the hypothetical, most efficient team ever XD) can also be assigned to the committee. Then with events — probably harder to assign to the committee completely if they'd be working on the magazine every month, but we could easily take up the idea of the committee planning when/what kind of event to do, and then the managers doing the rest.

One last thing:

WriterDerp wrote:

Speaking of, the suggestion I was speaking of was to include more interviews in the magazine, which i think is a great idea! Maybe we should interview the person who suggested it first, lol.

PoemFlower wrote:

Hi! I'm Tris, and have a suggestion. We should post more interviews on the studio magazine, it would be so fun reading and learning about other authors. I also volunteer to interview people, if you need someone.
But remember, it's just a suggestion.

They did volunteer, lol. x]

Well, this won't be a long paragraph: I'm with you in thinking that this is a great idea, so… what if we just replaced one of the article slots with interviews? (⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ᴥ⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ ⁠ʋ⁠)


Okay, this post is long enough and I have to go, so I'll try to post about the ideas/event side of things later on ʕ⁠ ⁠º⁠ ⁠ᴥ⁠ ⁠º⁠ʔ

JollofRice123 wrote:

I think the point where the discussion about this kinda started to drop was trying to discuss how we'd do this (e.g. having a rota for host rotations and how the order would be determined). On that note, how often do you guys tend to log on?

I tend to log on every day. Sometimes that won't be the case (for example, there may be a week in March when I won't be as active), but in general I stick to that.

JollofRice123 wrote:

Yeah, I'm definitely in agreement with this! As a team who were intended to work alongside managers behind the scenes of SWOW, it would definitely be an asset to reboot the committee and, this time, make the responsibilities clearer so that we're able to collaborate with them in things like, as you said, bringing events back to life (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

So should we just dive right into it and open applications? I'm excited to work with more of these people!!

JollofRice123 wrote:

I definitely agree with Dawn's idea of having a kind of reserve list of articles — maybe pre-writing some if we get the time, or at least coming up with ideas for some so that we have something to work with. And getting the committee involved in that would also be another way to resolve the situation!

I'm pretty free with my time for the next little bit, so I'm able to pre-write a few articles! And yes- we should definitely get the committee involved with that

JollofRice123 wrote:

Well, this won't be a long paragraph: I'm with you in thinking that this is a great idea, so… what if we just replaced one of the article slots with interviews?

I think that's a great idea! Maybe one of the QOTDs (or maybe a two-day qotd, to give people time) could be if someone is willing to be interviewed for the magazine?

I want to note that I have seen every message but I honestly have nothing to say

^-^::#ff70d2 cap

JollofRice123 wrote:

I think the point where the discussion about this kinda started to drop was trying to discuss how we'd do this (e.g. having a rota for host rotations and how the order would be determined). On that note, how often do you guys tend to log on?

I log on almost every day, though the amount of time I can be on tends to vary because I usually get on while at school. I'm also less active on the weekends.

PoppyWriter wrote:

JollofRice123 wrote:

Yeah, I'm definitely in agreement with this! As a team who were intended to work alongside managers behind the scenes of SWOW, it would definitely be an asset to reboot the committee and, this time, make the responsibilities clearer so that we're able to collaborate with them in things like, as you said, bringing events back to life (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

So should we just dive right into it and open applications? I'm excited to work with more of these people!!

Do we want to open applications and decide on responsibilities and expectations while the applications are open, or do we want to decide on those before applications are open? The committee blurb on the studio page is a lot less detailed on what the actual responsibilities are, so at the very least, we'd want to re-write it a bit to cover magazine, event, ect. expectations so the people know more about what they're getting into.

JollofRice123 wrote:

I think the point where the discussion about this kinda started to drop was trying to discuss how we'd do this (e.g. having a rota for host rotations and how the order would be determined). On that note, how often do you guys tend to log on?

I also am online pretty much every day, for the most part, though my activity does vary between weekdays and weekends (and days off / holidays, etc) because I also typically access Scratch on my school computer. :0

Dawn-Bellastrom wrote:

Do we want to open applications and decide on responsibilities and expectations while the applications are open, or do we want to decide on those before applications are open? The committee blurb on the studio page is a lot less detailed on what the actual responsibilities are, so at the very least, we'd want to re-write it a bit to cover magazine, event, ect. expectations so the people know more about what they're getting into.

I think we can open applications now, and decide on responsibilities and such while they're open. We can keep them open for maybe two weeks to a month, which should give us plenty of time to come up with a system. :0

JollofRice123 wrote:

One of the major issues (no pun intended, if you catch my drift ❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛) is the fact that, even with constant reminders in magazine issues that articled are something we definitely encourage the community to write and share, very few people end up doing this (probably for the same reason we as managers fall behind on it a bit — it can be super time consuming)!

Maybe we can have an article…about how to write an article? To encourage people to write more of them and also help them with doing so?

JollofRice123 wrote:

Well, this won't be a long paragraph: I'm with you in thinking that this is a great idea, so… what if we just replaced one of the article slots with interviews? (⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ᴥ⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ ⁠ʋ)

Sounds like a great idea! :]

WriterDerp wrote:

Maybe we can have an article…about how to write an article? To encourage people to write more of them and also help them with doing so?

Ooh, I definitely agree with this! :>

Unity_and_Cq wrote:

I want to note that I have seen every message but I honestly have nothing to say

Haha, that's alright ʕ⁠·⁠ᴥ⁠·⁠ʔ

Committee Stuff

PoppyWriter wrote:

So should we just dive right into it and open applications? I'm excited to work with more of these people!!

Dawn-Bellastrom wrote:

Do we want to open applications and decide on responsibilities and expectations while the applications are open, or do we want to decide on those before applications are open? The committee blurb on the studio page is a lot less detailed on what the actual responsibilities are, so at the very least, we'd want to re-write it a bit to cover magazine, event, ect. expectations so the people know more about what they're getting into.

WriterDerp wrote:

I think we can open applications now, and decide on responsibilities and such while they're open. We can keep them open for maybe two weeks to a month, which should give us plenty of time to come up with a system. :0

Just gonna respond to everyone's points on this in one go ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ I'm all for opening applications asap but I think Dawn makes a good point about the committee blurb (and now that I think about it, the maybe the current form too :O) needing to be updated a bit so people know what they're getting into. We could totally do a whole “successful applicants will get a debrief of the responsibilities later in the process” kinda thing though, and just go for an updated, but still quite general overview (work with managers behind the scene, may help with events etc) ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

For reference, here is the current blurb and sign-up form:

The committee is a group of people who are responsible for ensuring the voice of the general community is heard. Committee members may collaborate on competition ideas, additions to the studio and much more! They also report back to managers about the community's thoughts and opinions. Here's how to join:

Username || How long have you been a curator for? || Why do you want to join the committee? || One idea you may contribute || How active are you (weekly)?

Host Stuff

PoppyWriter, Dawn-Bellastrom and WriterDerp wrote:

Way more active than Jori (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

Okay, this is a great start already, since you guys log on way more than I do (which is usually only to type on here or update the SWOW description, haha). I think we can create some sort of host rotation system now — only thing is figuring out how the shifts for it will work (e.g. weekly, monthly etc). I don't have much experience with this specifically, so does anyone have any ideas on how to continue with this plan? (⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)


Ideas/Events Stuff
Coming back to this discussion — I agree with starting with something a little smaller so we can get it done faster, and since you guys have already been bouncing ideas for continuing with the writing exchange off of each other, I definitely think we should officially start with that!

Another quick side note before getting back to that:

WriterDerp wrote:

National Poetry Writing Month

Is in April. That's really the entire note, lol.

But basically, if we wanted to plan ahead, that'd in like 3 months, so if we wanted to do something, we could for that. Maybe it wouldn't necessarily be an event per se, but some kind of acknowledgement would be cool. Maybe specialized AOTWs, or something, if we wanted to be silly (and I can write a related article for that month's magazine ).

To go on a slight tangent, that's another little thing we can do to spice up the magazine or the studio in general, is to note writing “holidays” and mention them to the writers. I think that'd be nice. :]

Just yes to everything you wrote here XD We could possibly also do an event for that, but rather than doing a typical contest on celebration, we could encourage writers to write poems to add to a poetry collection project that we can share at the end of the month or something. And even if we decide not to do that, themed QOTDs and AOTWs should be easy enough to do (⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠) In any case, back to the writing exchange stuff. I think it deserves it's own post (and this one is getting long anyway-) so I'm gonna type up some of my thoughts on that separately (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

Completely unrelated, but do we have rotations for this month? Have you been pulling QotDs from your mind or do you have a list somewhere, and do we need to do those (and AotWs) for this month? Also, are we going to pull together a January Magazine given that we've pushed it off for the past couple of months, or do we want to wait on that?

JollofRice123 wrote:

PoppyWriter, Dawn-Bellastrom and WriterDerp wrote:

Way more active than Jori (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

Okay, this is a great start already, since you guys log on way more than I do (which is usually only to type on here or update the SWOW description, haha). I think we can create some sort of host rotation system now — only thing is figuring out how the shifts for it will work (e.g. weekly, monthly etc). I don't have much experience with this specifically, so does anyone have any ideas on how to continue with this plan? (⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)

I'd say it would probably be better to do weekly shifts (monthly would probably be a bit overwhelming). We should also probably note which managers are to busy or would just rather not be part of the manager rotations and want to help behind the scenes instead.

Writing Exchange Event
As Derp mentioned somewhere in a previous post, this is one of the more recent event ideas we had (and brought up around November last year), but didn't really finish discussing.

So first off, I think we should definitely get ourselves a rough schedule of when we want to get each part of this done by so that we can try to stay on track with planning and executing this idea:
So for example, these could be tasks and their deadlines:

• Create sign-up project — Jun 18th
  
• Create Exchange studio — Jun 23rd
  
• Invite participants to curate studio — Jun 23rd
  
• Close sign-ups — Jun 25th

Anyway, you get the point. Having some sort of schedule to stick to may make it easier for us to work toward getting things into motion — though, of course, the stuff in the example would come much later in the process. We need to do the planning of the actual event first!

So on that note, let's take this step by step. To start off, should we discuss what participants would actually be doing? The two things we've got down is ‘exchanging writing’ (pretty obvious, since that's the name of the event XD) and critique — or lack thereof. Anything else to add, or do you reckon we can just leave at that for the two main things and move on?

Another thing about that part which just came to mind — will participants exchange writing with several other people, or just one? What do you guys think? ヽ⁠(⁠｡⁠◕⁠o⁠◕⁠｡⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠.

Dawn-Bellastrom wrote:

Completely unrelated, but do we have rotations for this month? Have you been pulling QotDs from your mind or do you have a list somewhere, and do we need to do those (and AotWs) for this month? Also, are we going to pull together a January Magazine given that we've pushed it off for the past couple of months, or do we want to wait on that?

Pretty good questions, actually XD I've mostly been pulling QOTDs from my mind, but it's pretty easy to reuse stuff from earlier years if I can't think of anything. But since you've brought it up: I think we should do a January magazine issue, but I definitely don't think I'll be able to be the one who posts it. So instead of the usual roles, how about this:

• Studio description stuff: @JollofRice123 can handle all of those for this month (◠`ᴥ´◕ʋ)

We're all working on an event right now, so there's that. Additionally:

PoppyWriter wrote:

WriterDerp wrote:

Maybe we can have an article…about how to write an article? To encourage people to write more of them and also help them with doing so?

Ooh, I definitely agree with this! :>

That's a really good idea actually (⁠◕⁠ᴥ⁠◕⁠) So for this month's one-off role rotations… I'm going to post the tasks first. You guys can state the top 2 you wouldn't mind doing, and based on that I'll assign the roles after:

• Article on how to write an article
  
• One other article of choice
  
• Interview with @NightRipple about our most recent writing contest + writing in general
  
• Word of the day + Vote! Options + find an excerpt of someone's writing for the magazine

Only 4 as Ada and Peggy seem to be less active and may not see this — but if you guys happen to come online and see this, you can do 5 QOTDs each, since that would still also be helpful ʕ⁠·⁠ᴥ⁠·⁠ʔ

Dawn-Bellastrom wrote:

I'd say it would probably be better to do weekly shifts (monthly would probably be a bit overwhelming). We should also probably note which managers are to busy or would just rather not be part of the manager rotations and want to help behind the scenes instead.

Cool, noted!

WriterDerp wrote:

I had the somewhat questionable idea of backreading the forum, and arbitrarily chose to start with when I personally joined as a manager (January 8th, 2022 :00).

Unrelated, but since I happened to see this whilst skimming through stuff — happy anniversary of being a SWOW Manager, Derp! \⁠(⁠๑⁠╹⁠◡⁠╹⁠๑⁠)⁠ﾉ

We recently passed 500 followers… just saying

^-^::#ff70d2 cap

loganthabear wrote:

Some interesting coding

Please don't post in this forum, it's for managers of SWOW only! :0

Committee Stuff

JollofRice123 wrote:

For reference, here is the current blurb and sign-up form:

The committee is a group of people who are responsible for ensuring the voice of the general community is heard. Committee members may collaborate on competition ideas, additions to the studio and much more! They also report back to managers about the community's thoughts and opinions. Here's how to join:

Username || How long have you been a curator for? || Why do you want to join the committee? || One idea you may contribute || How active are you (weekly)?

That's actually a really great point, I feel like the blurb doesn't really say much about what the committee actually does? Like I was genuinely confused about what they did for probably a year or so, because we all kept saying that they were the “voice of the community”. Which isn't inaccurate, but I do remember thinking that meant more that rather than ask the whole community for opinions, we'd just ask the committee and they'd kind of “represent” the writers as a whole. So maybe something that goes slightly more in detail about what they'd actually be doing would be helpful. :0


Host Stuff

JollofRice123 wrote:

…only thing is figuring out how the shifts for it will work (e.g. weekly, monthly etc). I don't have much experience with this specifically, so does anyone have any ideas on how to continue with this plan? (⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)

I agree with Dawn that weekly shifts might be better than monthly. As for experience, I wouldn't really say I have “experience” with it, as I'm not a manager in this studio myself, but I know of a much larger studio than ours (16k followers) that does daily host shifts. But again, much larger than our studio and they only change host so often because hosting is somewhat labor-intensive.

In our case, I think weekly shifts will do just fine, to change the QOTD, the AOTW (at either the beginning or end of the shift - we'd need to decide this beforehand), and to update the description when necessary. Unless I'm mistaken (absolutely correct me if I am), that's mainly it for day-to-day responsibilities for hosting the studio, right? :00


Ideas/Events Stuff

JollofRice123 wrote:

Stuff about April (National Poem Month)

Yeah for this I think themes QOTDs and / or AOTWs would be nice, and for an actual event, the idea of a collection of poems would be really cool! We'd have a SWOW anthology! :O

Writing Exchange

JollofRice123 wrote:

To start off, should we discuss what participants would actually be doing? The two things we've got down is ‘exchanging writing’ (pretty obvious, since that's the name of the event XD) and critique — or lack thereof. Anything else to add, or do you reckon we can just leave at that for the two main things and move on?

Another thing about that part which just came to mind — will participants exchange writing with several other people, or just one? What do you guys think? ヽ⁠(⁠｡⁠◕⁠o⁠◕⁠｡⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠.

I think those two as the main things are good, it is a somewhat small event, after all. And I think it'd be simpler for it to be just one person, though if we'd like we could do more. :0

As for the schedule, did we want to do it all the way out in June, or was that an example? I had figured we could try to get this out within a month or two, but I really don't know how long this kind of thing would take to plan. :00

January Responsibilities / Roles

JollofRice123 wrote:

I've mostly been pulling QOTDs from my mind, but it's pretty easy to reuse stuff from earlier years if I can't think of anything.

In my notes doc from my backreading of the forum, I actually took note of all the old QOTDs (from like, 2022 and stuff), so if you'd like, I can make a master post of a bunch of old-enough-to-recycle QOTDs! :]

I think we should do a January magazine issue, but I definitely don't think I'll be able to be the one who posts it. So instead of the usual roles, how about this:

• Studio description stuff: @JollofRice123 can handle all of those for this month
  

(◠`ᴥ´◕ʋ)

Sure!

I can try writing an article this month, I can do QOTDs (I can come up with my own if we'd rather not reuse the old ones, of course) or AOTWs, and / or maybe the book recommendations section or something.

I have midterms next week (wish me luck- ;o;), so I will be busy this month, but I can probably do some or all of these. Especially the article, I can try to pre-write that. :]

Basically, I'm willing to do anything, but I figured being specific would be more helpful. x]

As for the actual list of tasks~

You guys can state the top 2 you wouldn't mind doing, and based on that I'll assign the roles after:

• Article on how to write an article
  
• One other article of choice
  
• Interview with @NightRipple about our most recent writing contest + writing in general
  
• Word of the day + Vote! Options + find an excerpt of someone's writing for the magazine
  

I can do the article about how to write an article, if you'd like! I can also do the interview or the final trio of things. :]

Other

JollofRice123 wrote:

WriterDerp wrote:

I had the somewhat questionable idea of backreading the forum, and arbitrarily chose to start with when I personally joined as a manager (January 8th, 2022 :00).

Unrelated, but since I happened to see this whilst skimming through stuff — happy anniversary of being a SWOW Manager, Derp! \⁠(⁠๑⁠╹⁠◡⁠╹⁠๑⁠)⁠ﾉ

Thanks! :D

Unity_and_Cq wrote:

We recently passed 500 followers… just saying

Ooh we have to do something for that, of course! Mentioning it in the magazine is a must, but maybe some kind of tiny (tiny tiny tiny) event or celebration? :o

JollofRice123 wrote:

• Article on how to write an article
  
• One other article of choice
  
• Interview with @NightRipple about our most recent writing contest + writing in general
  
• Word of the day + Vote! Options + find an excerpt of someone's writing for the magazine

I'd be willing to do the article on writing an article or the interview :>

JollofRice123 wrote:

Okay, this is a great start already, since you guys log on way more than I do (which is usually only to type on here or update the SWOW description, haha). I think we can create some sort of host rotation system now — only thing is figuring out how the shifts for it will work (e.g. weekly, monthly etc). I don't have much experience with this specifically, so does anyone have any ideas on how to continue with this plan? (⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)

I think weekly/every other week would probably work best? I think that this may have to come with some trial and error- seeing what works and what doesn't and adjusting from there.

JollofRice123 wrote:

So first off, I think we should definitely get ourselves a rough schedule of when we want to get each part of this done by so that we can try to stay on track with planning and executing this idea:
So for example, these could be tasks and their deadlines:

• Create sign-up project — Jun 18th
  
• Create Exchange studio — Jun 23rd
  
• Invite participants to curate studio — Jun 23rd
  
• Close sign-ups — Jun 25th

Anyway, you get the point. Having some sort of schedule to stick to may make it easier for us to work toward getting things into motion — though, of course, the stuff in the example would come much later in the process. We need to do the planning of the actual event first!

So on that note, let's take this step by step. To start off, should we discuss what participants would actually be doing? The two things we've got down is ‘exchanging writing’ (pretty obvious, since that's the name of the event XD) and critique — or lack thereof. Anything else to add, or do you reckon we can just leave at that for the two main things and move on?

Another thing about that part which just came to mind — will participants exchange writing with several other people, or just one? What do you guys think? ヽ⁠(⁠｡⁠◕⁠o⁠◕⁠｡⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠.

Those dates look good to me!

I think that obviously exchanging writing is the whole point, but I think as for the critique- and this is just a personal opinion- I think we should leave it up to those participating? Maybe, like, having a question in the sign-up on whether or not they want critique? I don't know- this is just random late-night brainstorming XD

I think it would be easiest for us to organize one person per writing, but… I don't know- if we have time, we can include the option to have several people read over it, but it just depends on how this works out for us as we plan.

JollofRice123 wrote:

• Article on how to write an article
  
• One other article of choice
  
• Interview with @NightRipple about our most recent writing contest + writing in general
  
• Word of the day + Vote! Options + find an excerpt of someone's writing for the magazine

I'd be willing to write another article of choice (and maybe I can throw together some backup articles as well).

Noted, noted and noted! Here are the roles for this month then:
Roles for January:

• Studio description stuff: @JollofRice123
  
• Article on how to write an article: @WriterDerp
  
• One other article of choice: @Dawn-Bellastrom
  
• Interview with @NightRipple about our most recent writing contest (and about their writing in general): @PoppyWriter
  
• Some magazine stuff (Word of the day + Vote! Options + find an excerpt of someone's writing): @Unity_and_Cq

Oh yeah — none of us have said this yet, so happy new year, guys! ヽ⁠(⁠｡⁠◕⁠o⁠◕⁠｡⁠)⁠ﾉ┌⁠|⁠o⁠^⁠▽⁠^⁠o⁠|⁠┘⁠♪
—————————————————————————————————
500 Followers!!

WriterDerp wrote:

Unity_and_Cq wrote:

We recently passed 500 followers… just saying

Ooh we have to do something for that, of course! Mentioning it in the magazine is a must, but maybe some kind of tiny (tiny tiny tiny) event or celebration? :o

Yeah! I could also make a celebratory thumbnail for it (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠) What else could we do? :O




Host Stuff

WriterDerp wrote:

In our case, I think weekly shifts will do just fine, to change the QOTD, the AOTW (at either the beginning or end of the shift - we'd need to decide this beforehand), and to update the description when necessary. Unless I'm mistaken (absolutely correct me if I am), that's mainly it for day-to-day responsibilities for hosting the studio, right? :00

Yep, that's pretty much it! Other than that, there's also POTM votes being tallied, which I've been doing this month but have definitely slipped up on updating in the past, haha.

PoppyWriter wrote:

I think weekly/every other week would probably work best? I think that this may have to come with some trial and error- seeing what works and what doesn't and adjusting from there.

That's a good point — there may also be some things we'll have to adjust over time. We can cross those bridge when we get to them, then (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

On that note, looks like we're all in agreement about having host rotations be a weekly thing, then? If we figure out some sort of rota system for it, we might be able to put it into action as soon as next month :O



Writing Exchange

WriterDerp wrote:

I think those two as the main things are good, it is a somewhat small event, after all. And I think it'd be simpler for it to be just one person, though if we'd like we could do more. :0

PoppyWriter wrote:

I think it would be easiest for us to organize one person per writing, but… I don't know- if we have time, we can include the option to have several people read over it, but it just depends on how this works out for us as we plan.

Yeah, I think you guys make good points. Okay, sounds good — pairs it is, then ʕ⁠·⁠ᴥ⁠·⁠ʔ

PoppyWriter wrote:

(…)as for the critique- and this is just a personal opinion- I think we should leave it up to those participating? Maybe, like, having a question in the sign-up on whether or not they want critique? I don't know- this is just random late-night brainstorming XD

I recall talking a bit about this when we brought up the event a while ago — in short, I agree: having a question on the sign-ups should work. Then we can pair up people who want critique with other people who want critique and vice versa for those who don't want it, to reiterate what one of you guys talked about in an earlier post ʕ⁠·⁠ᴥ⁠·⁠ʔ

WriterDerp wrote:

As for the schedule, did we want to do it all the way out in June, or was that an example? I had figured we could try to get this out within a month or two, but I really don't know how long this kind of thing would take to plan. :00

Oh yeah, June was just an example XD It was just a placeholder month to show the proximity of the dates — sorry, should have made that clearer in the original post! ʕ⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴥ⁠ꈍ⁠ʔ



Committee Stuff

WriterDerp wrote:

That's actually a really great point, I feel like the blurb doesn't really say much about what the committee actually does? Like I was genuinely confused about what they did for probably a year or so, because we all kept saying that they were the “voice of the community”. Which isn't inaccurate, but I do remember thinking that meant more that rather than ask the whole community for opinions, we'd just ask the committee and they'd kind of “represent” the writers as a whole. So maybe something that goes slightly more in detail about what they'd actually be doing would be helpful. :0

Yep, I think we should probably rewrite the whole blurb once we decide on how we're going to split tasks between manager and committee members. The current blurb is really generic since it's been there since the studio started, and back then the committee wouldn't have had much to do anyway since the studio was small enough for the managers to work on without aid from another group. But it probably should've been updated as the studio got bigger and managers had more things to do.

Anyway, the point is that I think the committee is a lot more of “working behind the scenes” as opposed to only being the “voice of the community”, and the blurb doesn't really reflect that (and neither does the lack of designated tasks!) :O I was thinking of listing all the tasks that we managers currently do, and then discussing what to do, including:
a) keep some as manager tasks
b) turn others into committee tasks
c) add some new things?
d) get rid of some things?
e) probably something else too

Any thoughts?



Another thing:

WriterDerp wrote:

I have midterms next week (wish me luck- ;o, so I will be busy this month (…)

Good luck with your midterms, Derp! I hope they go well ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ

Roles:

I'll get to interviewing as soon as I can! I've got a few irl things going on these next few days, but I hopefully should be able to by Friday/Saturday at the latest :-)

Writing Exchange:

This all sounds good to me! Since we aren't doing june (whyyyy did I not realize that was just an example XD), does anyone have any ideas for specific dates?

Committee:

I think that we should probably discuss what jobs we want to leave to managers vs the committee- does anyone have any ideas for what we want to leave to each group, and why we'd leave it to the managers vs. the committee? I don't really know if that question made sense, but… XD

Best of luck on midterms, Derp!! You've got this!!

I don't have a lot of time, so I can't do the quotes, but:

Roles

Roles seem great! I'm glad we were able to divide up the work so efficiently for our first time!

Host Rotations

For host rotations, I should be fine for the next few months (in terms of activity and such), but that's much too far out for me to give an accurate estimate. I think the simplest way would just be to have a list of our usernames in some arbitrary order, for example:

@JollofRice123
@PoppyWriter
@WriterDerp
@chocolatefrog13
@Unity_and_Cq
@gh0stwriter
@Dawn-Bellastrom

(I just used the order we show up in the SWOW curator tab)

We can just give it to the next person in line, and if that person is unavailable, we can give it to the next person. :0

It's also to be considered if someone can't (or doesn't want) to host, in which case we can take them out of the rotation entirely.

Committee Stuff

I think maybe a cleaner division would be if the committee was in charge of organisation, and the managers were in charge of managing.

By which I mean, the managers would do host rotations (QOTD, AOTW, POTM, maybe magazine?) and be the ones to host events, like all the actual “managing the studio” things. And the committee would be the ones to come up with / organize events and do some / all of the magazine, more behind-the-scenes stuff.

Not that any of that would be that clear-cut, either. Of course, the managers would also work on the magazine sometimes, and the committee can host events and such. We can all support each other, of course, but just for the most part. :00

Does any of that make sense? :')

P.S. Thanks Poppy and Jori for the well wishes on my midterms. x]