Feedback Get-Together 2019 Staff Feedback

not management but I definitely think we could've done better with the planning stages of things. idk how things were in the GT server but it felt like some people were starting to lose the excitement/hype of things close to the GT start date which then forced the delay of the GT as a whole. :o

imo in the future, we should probably plan the GT three months in advance instead of two to try to mitigate this. perhaps that extra month would've helped in trying to get some of the early planning out of the way like the theme/start date/some of the events (which took a while from my observation of the gt channel). idk, personally i feel that the earlier the better; we kinda ran into this issue last year where we kinda rushed things just to get the GT going which caused some stress towards getting it started.

otherwise, i want everyone to ask themselves how they think this GT went, at least compared to last year's. was it more active, or less active, or about the same? i was pretty much completely absent this time around because i couldn't dedicate the time at all, but this is something to take into consideration for how we should plan next year's Get Together.
 
I kinda saw the opposite from Angie tbh. After the initial couple days of hype, basically nothing really happened and then suddenly we were running out of time to get something as complex as a huge story-driven event together. don't think even more time will benefit the hype, I think we just need to be better organised. The sudden rush at the end left us with
-Problems with point allocation
-Problems sorting
-Incomplete story
-General confusion

So we were left reeling with the three key elements of making this work... not finished in time and not really finished even with the extension. We've learned from this though and the event certainly wasn't an abject failure or anything, we just need to do better next time if we try the plot-driven Get-Together again.
 
idk what you mean by "opposite of angie"... you basically described what my biggest concerns were. my overarching point was that things were moving pretty sluggishly up until the end. imo, it honestly would've helped to have an additional period of time so we can hash out some things sooner that took a while. i feel like the only things we were mostly agreed upon was the date of the Get Together, while everything else was kind of incomplete/up in the air, which led to the delay in the first place from the best of my interpretation.
 
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I didn't do much. I didn't even really do the thing I said I was going to do because Life. But there is one thing that I noticed that I feel like that needs to be pointed out.

Next time there's a plot-heavy Get-Together there definitely need to be several people on board from the beginning helping with the story aspect. It shouldn't come down to one person trying to write the whole thing and then two others scrambling to help them when the time was really close. The story in a plot-heavy GT is critical so I think that's something that needs to be laid out and mostly established and written so it's much easier to work around it and, like gimmepie said, you don't end up with an incomplete story and confusion.

That's just my two cents.
 
colours said:
idk what you mean by "opposite of angie"... you basically described what my biggest concerns were. my overarching point was that things were moving pretty sluggishly up until the end. imo, it honestly would've helped to have an additional period of time so we can hash out some things sooner that took a while. i feel like the only things we were mostly agreed upon was the date of the Get Together, while everything else was kind of incomplete/up in the air, which led to the delay in the first place from the best of my interpretation.
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Opposite in the sense that I think extra time would be worse if anything.
 
had an extra long post typed up in hard disagreement, but upon reflection and perusing around the GT Management planning forum, I do not feel that extra time would be beneficial, but rather stricter control of flow of discussions

IMO, I think the best way to do GT in the future is to break it into chunks and be strict on managing the flow of discussion based on this.

Get Together Event Planning Stage I


  • Figure out the date. Stick to it as much as possible. Tyler brought up the idea of the Get Together back in April. If our goal was July, we should really hit the ground running with specifically who's going to help manage the Get Together and structure a GT Management Team and figure out a GT head right then and there. Janp wasn't appointed GT head until early June. Ideally, we should have the team figured out and who's going to help out by the end of April/early May at the absolute latest. At least then, the GT head have a responsibility to keep everyone on duty and focused on the various facets on the GT.

  • Plan out a theme for the Get Together. This will no doubt be the biggest thing we focus our time around because the theme is central and we're going to spend a solid amount of time discussing what it should be and the nitty gritty parts of it. What kind of story should it have? Do we need to have any developer help? If so, then we need to give them ample time to do their coding as well to fit within the GT. One of the things we went wrong last year when doing the survey is that we kinda let Jake know somewhat last minute. After the GT Management Team is created, this is what we should've dedicated at least a good two weeks on at the most, with the theme wrapping up around maybe mid-end of Mayish. Extra time needs to be accounted for in the case we need developer assistance, as whipping up a script likely takes time.

Get Together Event Planning Stage II


  • Once the discussion from Stage I is complete, we want to take into account "rewards" for the GT. Is it points? Is it something else? I wouldn't spend any more than maybe a week on this. Assuming the goal to start the GT was mid-July, the deadline to start wrapping up this discussion should ideally be like, the second week of June at most.

  • Plan out any miscellaneous events that we'd like to run to keep users interested. Like this thread, for example. This thread may not have many posts, and it might've had more discussion on the GT Discord, but there shouldnt be a ton of discussion; just enough to get ideas out there and flesh them out to keep things interesting.

Get Together Event Planning Stage III


  • Once the discussion from Stage II is complete, we should start wrapping things up from the backend. Review past discussions and ensure that everyone is on the same page with what's been decided. After that, start putting up drafts for recruitment threads. Get feedback on it, and make changes if applicable. The recruitment thread should go up no later than maybe a month before GT starts. I know this might be squeezing into things a bit, but this is assuming that we'd want the recruitment thread to be open for like... two or three weeks, to get as many people as possible.

  • Open the Event Organizer forum early July, and give the EOs approximately two and a halfish weeks to get their Event Threads set up and ready. If we're feeling a bit ambitious, it should be two weeks at the most, and you can use the remaining time left to wrap up any lingering discussions/comments/questions. Best case scenario is that we should finish up by the third week of July, with an extra week to spare (if we're aiming for like... mid-end July) in case we need it.

  • Open GT July 27th. Invite people into GT Server (if applicable). GT Server should be made around Stage I or II tbh, but that's just me.

While this seems like really strict control of discussion (and it is), it keeps everyone on the same page on where we're at. Whoever leads the Get Together can pin whatever stage we're working on at the moment and exactly where in the discussion we're at that can be revisited at any point in time. People will be pinged as appropriate. If extra time needs to be allocated due to unforeseen circumstances, then that can be looked into, but we perhaps need to be more diligent with distribution of workload so one person doesnt feel like they're doing too much.

this way, there wouldnt need to be extra time. we can improve on our workflow, instead.
 
colours said:
had an extra long post typed up in hard disagreement, but upon reflection and perusing around the GT Management planning forum, I do not feel that extra time would be beneficial, but rather stricter control of flow of discussions

IMO, I think the best way to do GT in the future is to break it into chunks and be strict on managing the flow of discussion based on this.

Get Together Event Planning Stage I


  • Figure out the date. Stick to it as much as possible. Tyler brought up the idea of the Get Together back in April. If our goal was July, we should really hit the ground running with specifically who's going to help manage the Get Together and structure a GT Management Team and figure out a GT head right then and there. Janp wasn't appointed GT head until early June. Ideally, we should have the team figured out and who's going to help out by the end of April/early May at the absolute latest. At least then, the GT head have a responsibility to keep everyone on duty and focused on the various facets on the GT.

  • Plan out a theme for the Get Together. This will no doubt be the biggest thing we focus our time around because the theme is central and we're going to spend a solid amount of time discussing what it should be and the nitty gritty parts of it. What kind of story should it have? Do we need to have any developer help? If so, then we need to give them ample time to do their coding as well to fit within the GT. One of the things we went wrong last year when doing the survey is that we kinda let Jake know somewhat last minute. After the GT Management Team is created, this is what we should've dedicated at least a good two weeks on at the most, with the theme wrapping up around maybe mid-end of Mayish. Extra time needs to be accounted for in the case we need developer assistance, as whipping up a script likely takes time.

Get Together Event Planning Stage II


  • Once the discussion from Stage I is complete, we want to take into account "rewards" for the GT. Is it points? Is it something else? I wouldn't spend any more than maybe a week on this. Assuming the goal to start the GT was mid-July, the deadline to start wrapping up this discussion should ideally be like, the second week of June at most.

  • Plan out any miscellaneous events that we'd like to run to keep users interested. Like this thread, for example. This thread may not have many posts, and it might've had more discussion on the GT Discord, but there shouldnt be a ton of discussion; just enough to get ideas out there and flesh them out to keep things interesting.

Get Together Event Planning Stage III


  • Once the discussion from Stage II is complete, we should start wrapping things up from the backend. Review past discussions and ensure that everyone is on the same page with what's been decided. After that, start putting up drafts for recruitment threads. Get feedback on it, and make changes if applicable. The recruitment thread should go up no later than maybe a month before GT starts. I know this might be squeezing into things a bit, but this is assuming that we'd want the recruitment thread to be open for like... two or three weeks, to get as many people as possible.

  • Open the Event Organizer forum early July, and give the EOs approximately two and a halfish weeks to get their Event Threads set up and ready. If we're feeling a bit ambitious, it should be two weeks at the most, and you can use the remaining time left to wrap up any lingering discussions/comments/questions. Best case scenario is that we should finish up by the third week of July, with an extra week to spare (if we're aiming for like... mid-end July) in case we need it.

  • Open GT July 27th. Invite people into GT Server (if applicable). GT Server should be made around Stage I or II tbh, but that's just me.

While this seems like really strict control of discussion (and it is), it keeps everyone on the same page on where we're at. Whoever leads the Get Together can pin whatever stage we're working on at the moment and exactly where in the discussion we're at that can be revisited at any point in time. People will be pinged as appropriate. If extra time needs to be allocated due to unforeseen circumstances, then that can be looked into, but we perhaps need to be more diligent with distribution of workload so one person doesnt feel like they're doing too much.

this way, there wouldnt need to be extra time. we can improve on our workflow, instead.
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For once, we are more or less in total agreement.
 
I think planning went pretty much the same way as it did last year. Not much was done before the deadline was in few days. I tried to counter this with a schedule, which was followed to some degree, but it still ended in delay. A lot of stuff was decided in the last minute, like the fact there will be two teams in the end, which lead to the absence of the badges under names or the entrance quiz as there was no time to make them.
 
colours said:
… we should really hit the ground running with specifically who's going to help manage the Get Together and structure a GT Management Team and figure out a GT head right then and there. Janp wasn't appointed GT head until early June. …
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Janp said:
A lot of stuff was decided in the last minute, like the fact there will be two teams
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I was too busy to follow the GT management in depth, but based on my experience of working in other groups I'd like to second (?) this suggestion of nominating a person to be in charge of making the final decisions. It's much simpler when there's a single person responsible for saying "there has been enough discussion and I/we've decided to do <this>" as opposed to each participant trying to divine the thread for any consensus (and woe betides any group that simply disagrees but has no tie-breaking process).

In terms of keeping things on track I'm reminded of Hofstadter's law:

Hofstadter said:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
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That said, in our case I think this phenomenon is at least partially due to a natural inclination to trade-off time in the Good-Fast-Cheap model, although I think our options (because we've unpaid volunteers) are more like Quality-Quantity-Time.

It seems the sorts of people who dream of doing something exciting for/with the community are often perfectionists and optimists that unconsciously pick Quality-Quantity and cause ourselves to have to dedicate lots of time without realizing. Perhaps we'd prefer to be closer to Quality-Time? I doubt any creators would want to be in the Quantity-Time space (I certainly can't bring myself to move there), although it's probably legit from a consumption perspective.

Anyway. Regardless of what the underlying reasons are, encouraging people to be pessimistic when it comes to planning out how much time things will take sounds like a good idea.
 
Caite-chan said:
Maybe not have points for every event because I had to have points for VPP but in the end they didn't mean anything. VPP doesn't really have points that can be given through the event. Granted it's not Bobandbill's fault but as an event host I had to have a point value for my event that ended up really mattering in the end.
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It could have mattered though tbf
 
Caite-chan said:
Maybe not have points for every event because I had to have points for VPP but in the end they didn't mean anything. VPP doesn't really have points that can be given through the event. Granted it's not Bobandbill's fault but as an event host I had to have a point value for my event that ended up really mattering in the end.
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In the case of your event, you could have simply handed points out for participation, and nothing more.
 
It could have mattered but it didn't either way. I had been told both ways that I could given points for basic participation which in this case is WAY to easy OR for completing your part of the post count which is the whole point of it being a Community Pokemon. If I'm giving points for basic participation then there's no point in really putting any effort into my event because all a person has to do is post in the event and you automatically get points whether you post the rest of the event or not.

I mean I could have given out Detective Pikachu as a prize for whichever team solved the puzzle first which is what I did last year for GT.

I just felt like after awhile I was nothing more than an after thought like it didn't matter whether or not my part of the event was completed.
 
I agree that more time would have helped, but it had to be time used effectively. I will say I had my frustrations, because I had said weeks in advance that I needed more people to help me, and only got that support late. In the end, I wrote the whole story outline and around half of the story, plus editing - and that was on top of the rough point allocation system setup to tie with the story. I feel that is more than my fair share, and was not the impression I got would be needed when I said I'd like to help with the story back when we started planning.

(Plus I ended up doing the point tracking set-up and a lot of the pinging of EOs to fill in their points as well, midway through!)

I also think this year's GT shows that we need more than one person in the lead position, and maybe ideally someone from CC involved in that. After all, we had an issue where Janp lost internet due to storms, so we had for a day nobody to lead GT stuff. (Plus later on he had an LoA as well on the 2nd weekend). While we managed to pick up the slack, it was only doable after we found out he had net issues, and having more than one person in charge would remove the risk of this repeating in future years.
Janp said:
I was supposed to be this person, but I wanted to get everyone's opinion or just give them enough time to say something before making a call, which slowed things down.
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Then, to be blunt, you need to step in earlier. You were appointed as the lead of this GT, so that means you get the final say. If people are too slow to give an opinion, just make a decision, as it is on them to have given input in time if they agreed to help out. It's unfair on everyone else that we had to rush the story completion and then delay the event, plus do extra tasks midway through to e.g. count points, because we wanted more opinions first instead of going ahead and getting it sorted early.

I would have appreciated more assigning roles in the lead-up too, e.g. telling other people specifically to help out with the story, etc. More direction is key for organising a group of people to get things sorted in time, and given the list made above by Angie that's something we can use to assign for roles next year.
Caite-chan said:
Maybe not have points for every event because I had to have points for VPP but in the end they didn't mean anything. VPP doesn't really have points that can be given through the event. Granted it's not Bobandbill's fault but as an event host I had to have a point value for my event that ended up really mattering in the end.
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Unsure why I am name-dropped here...? Regardless, personally it seems odd to have events that won't contribute any points when that is the theme or main point of the GT. Participation points as said above could have been done, and even thought that would be 'really easy'... well, that's fine! Just means you could give out less points for participation than other events if it is easy. You could also give points for, say, 25% of the total post count required, 50%, etc - that'd be a way to give out points gradually rather than all at the end, and also reward active participation.

If other events had fallen over, then we would have needed points from other events such as VPP. We hit the total point count a day before it ended, which to me suggests the allocation we set was quite good, but the ability to have the backup points in case is good too.
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Other things I mentioned in the discord:

- Have teams (if used) chosen by forum usage (quiz, or assign by userids in profiles). Pair this up with more announcements/etc on the forum side next time.

--- Last year benefitted from the dev help we had for things like the quiz, so ideally we'd have this available next year.

- Trying the existing discord server, maybe with separate channels, instead of a separate one. While that seemed good last year it was definitely quieter this time around, and I think having it on the same place where we have a LOT of users already would help with activity next time around

- Make sure (if we do points) we set up a score tracker early AND tell all EOs part of their responsibility is to update said scores regularly. This was a clear issue that we probably should have forseen earlier.
 
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I don't think we're in a time where we can just put a GT forum together, post events, and expect people to participate, unfortunately. /: Last year's was fun because the on-site quiz made it feel more personalized, and postbit badges publicized it well and reminded members that they were involved in an event. I know it may not have been possible to get the developers involved this year but we do have an entire year for planning, so I think some earlier preparation may be necessary going forward.

It does seem like you guys were all a bit lost this year since you were trying out new things without Jake overseeing it all as he usually does (or an admin at all, for that matter). I'm not going to blame anyone for not realizing they should have had participation points or x y z point-related adjustment for their event, since this was a new attempt and no one knew how exactly it would end up.

Next time I think we should have more admin oversight (I'm willing to help with what I can, since I have experience participating in GT over the years) to help delegate things. It was a bad idea to have one person be the lead without any admin involvement, and that's lesson learned for next time. We also need to keep the GT discord on the main PC server. Cuts out the need to join a brand-new server when many of our members are already part of the main one.

So basically for next year...

1) Create a GT channel in the PC server, don't make a new server
2) More admin oversight/participation
3) Begin work early rather than in the last 30 days, and request the help of the dev team and/or Jake to customize the GT to be more than just the creation of a new forum and events
4) Plan in the Staff Hub, which will allow for better collaboration and more staff involvement. Some staff may have things to contribute without necessarily wanting to be an EO or GT manager

There's a reason this event is once a year; it takes time to plan and perfect. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a bit of customization to be prepared by the developers or whoever can assist in time for the next year. I think admins should be responsible for requesting things like quizzes, postbit badges, and such on your behalf (assuming it's not last minute or an unreasonably difficult request). If we can't get any dev help at all, we should at least have points 1, 2, and 4.
 
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When it's mentioned to plan earlier, how early are we talking? Tyler first posted about the GT in April. Are we thinking February or March?
 
April may be fine if we start working on the general plot/outline first and decide if we want to make a request with the developers (or bring those willing to help officially on the team)? Maybe things like quizzes won't always be possible since we may end up having certain teams with fewer members which could make it imbalanced, but I think postbit badges like we had with Tapus with a possible linkback to the official GT thread would be a nice way to spread the word and something we should keep going forward if the theme fits. Perhaps you guys may think it's not up to you to approach developers with requests and I understand that; it's part of why we should have at least one admin on the team exploring possibilities and delegating things. Also why I'd prefer we use the Staff Hub more, since it gives all staff a chance to add their two cents in a place most of them are used to checking regularly.

Here's the link to the previous year's GT feedback thread if you guys want to see what feedback we got.

Sorry that this post is a little more focused on custom additions than actual management work, but it's worth making an attempt to move beyond the traditional setup of make forum -> post event threads and leaving it at that in a time where we have so much competition in social media sites and forums decline in relevancy.

Whatever ends up happening on the dev side though, we should 100% make use of the actual PC discord server for GT talk! That was one of my biggest issues this year, and I think we missed out on a lot of potential activity by keeping it to a different server.
 
Sheep said:
I don't think we're in a time where we can just put a GT forum together, post events, and expect people to participate, unfortunately. /: Last year's was fun because the on-site quiz made it feel more personalized, and postbit badges publicized it well and reminded members that they were involved in an event. I know it may not have been possible to get the developers involved this year but we do have an entire year for planning, so I think some earlier preparation may be necessary going forward.
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I agree with everything here except that last point. I don't think we need to start planning earlier because April is plenty early imo, but we do need to actually use the time we give ourselves. We decided (more or less) on the general theme back in April, but it wasn't until mid-late July that the majority of the work really started. Look how small a time frame that left us to complete the largest share of the work and all the time spent doing nothing between then and back when we chose a theme.

It does seem like you guys were all a bit lost this year since you were trying out new things without Jake overseeing it all as he usually does (or an admin at all, for that matter). I'm not going to blame anyone for not realizing they should have had participation points or x y z point-related adjustment for their event, since this was a new attempt and no one knew how exactly it would end up.

Next time I think we should have more admin oversight (I'm willing to help with what I can, since I have experience participating in GT over the years) to help delegate things. It was a bad idea to have one person be the lead without any admin involvement, and that's lesson learned for next time.
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I mean, we didn't have Jake (or another admin) overseeing it last year either really. Jake was one of the managers iirc but it was generally Tokyodrift and I who ended up directing things and pushing things along. I think that makes real difference clear - there was a second driving force to push things when the other wasn't around. Like Marcin said earlier, I think that would have helped a lot here. If one of those drivers in an admin, that's great, but I think it's been well-enough proven to not be a necessity.

We also need to keep the GT discord on the main PC server. Cuts out the need to join a brand-new server when many of our members are already part of the main one.
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I wouldn't be against trying this. In the past it's been done for the sake of organisation, better allowing for teams and stuff but it would definitely be a good way to, more or less, dump the festive atmosphere on people whether they like it or not.
 
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