crowdfunding | 2011 Rose & Bay Awards Followup Report & Discussion

The 2011 Rose and Bay Awards for excellence in cyberfunded creativity have now concluded. Winners have been announced for Art, Fiction, Poetry, Webcomic, Other Project, and Patron. We are currently working on the certificates for winners. You can read more about this project on the 2011 Rose & Bay Awards landing page.

Special Thanks To...

These folks helped make the Rose and Bay Awards a success. Please give them a round of applause!

eseme for managing the Fiction category.
xjenavivex for managing the Poetry, Other Project, and Patron categories.
itew for helping with the Art category.
karen_wehrstein for updating the Nominee badges.

Continued thanks to

haikujaguar for the original logo art and to

karen_wehrstein for the general icon, button, and banner art.

Also, thanks to all the folks who made nominations, to everyone who linked and talked about the awards, to the nominees whose projects appeared in our polls, and to the voters. Participation has been enthusiastic all around. Given that Fiction and Webcomic both had well over two hundred votes, and the other categories also had substantial numbers, we probably had 500 or more participants even allowing for some overlap from people voting in multiple categories.

What was new this year?

The Rose & Bay Awards launched in 2010. After the voting period ended, we held a discussion about possible improvements. Here's what we managed...

Split off "Webcomics" as a separate category from "Other Project." (This worked beautifully. It gave Webcomics a chance to compete only against each other, had enthusiastic participation, and left Other Project free for things like music and movies.)

Assign a different manager for each category. (We didn't get all the way to one manager/one category, but we did start with 4 managers for 6 categories. If this is still important to you folks, think about volunteering to manage a category next year. All we really need to meet this goal fully is personnel.)

The Fiction category had non-transparent polling, based on that manager's preference.

What would we like to change for next year?

Some goals requested last year did not make it to manifestation in 2011. We'd like to keep trying.

Move the Rose and Bay Awards off LiveJournal to increase accessibility. (This would require having a crowdfunding hub site and/or a separate award website. It seems very useful, if such can be manifested. Lots of people want this, and we've been trying to do a hub site for several years now, so far with little progress.)

Subdivide the "Fiction" category. (One of our biggest categories, this is the only one whose poll had to be split across two questions and then required a runoff. Any ideas for good ways to break this into smaller categories? The subcategories would have to be easy to determine AND reflect the actual nominations; starting arguments over what belongs where is counterproductive and just peeling off a few items won't help.)

Offer cash and/or other prizes. (This would certainly make the winners happy, and be good publicity for the sponsors. It would require one or more volunteers, preferably people who already have some kind of fundraising experience.)

Further Discussion

What did you like about this year's Rose & Bay award season?
Did you encounter any problems, and if so, do you have ideas for fixing them?
What do you think would improve the Rose & Bay Awards?
Do you have any expertise to offer for making next year's season even better?
Are there any other issues relating to the Rose & Bay Awards that you'd like to discuss?

Please refer other interested folks back to this discussion. The more input and ideas we get, the better our chances of making next year even better than this year.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Splitting off webcomics did more than give other "other" projects the chance to compete against each other, it also led to more webcomics being nominated. I think adding that category was a good decision.

I also would prefer to see poetry remain separate from fiction. Poetry has always been kind of an oddball item in the publishing world, with fewer people trying to make money at it than other types of creative efforts. Having it as a separate category at least shows we take it seriously, which I think is a good thing even if the number of projects remains small.

I'm also not at all sure that dividing fiction between short and long is workable, so long as serials are considered long--the poetry projects that were nominated were also mostly serial in nature, after all. Another thought is that if we move off of LJ for the polls, longer polls would quite likely be possible, eliminating something like this years' need for a runoff poll.

If we do want to divide fiction, we might want to distinguish between novel-length stories (whether serialized or not) and collections of short stories (again, serialized or not).

I would also like to see music split off from other. It's a well-defined art form that tends to inspire a large and enthusiastic fan base.

I really like the idea of most creative crowdfunding method. That fits right in with the purposes of this community, and will help us all to be aware of the variety of methods crowdfunding can take.

I also like the thought of honoring one-time efforts (though this category probably needs a better name).

Finally, I would really like to hear discussion on divination as a category. So far, the only comment on that issue was the fear that we don't have enough administrators.

If we do set up a separate site, my guess is that things can be set up to make the burden of administering the awards lighter, or, alternatively (if we can raise the funds), to provide some monetary compensation to someone who is not nominated in any category to administer all of them.

But in any case, I don't want to stop people talking about potential new categories just because the awards could use more staff.

I admit that staff is pertinent to whether and when the people doing the work will add a new category. However, if people feel strongly about one or more new categories, that might in and of itself inspire new volunteers, which isn't going to happen if people feel that the things they care about have already been rejected.

So, once the current poll is over, I'd love to see a poll and/or discussion about categories.

If I have time -- or if someone else takes time -- it would be helpful to have a comparison of fiction and webcomic projects to see if there's a natural break that's easy to support with a category split.

However, this year we didn't have enough volunteers to cover everything that needed doing; we had to stack up. That makes it a bad idea to increase the categories. If people really feel strongly about the requests they've made, then we should be able to launch a crowdfunding hub site and get more volunteers next year. Then we can think about expanding. Otherwise it's liable to overreach and crash the whole project. That's not a risk I'm willing to take.

Do you really oppose inviting people to talk about categories?

As I said in my post above, whether we can staff everything is an important matter. But categories are important to people. (I note that you opposed eliminating poetry as a separate category. I don't want to see that category eliminated, even though the last time I looked at the polls, I remember it being the category with the fewest nominations and the fewest voters.)

I'm pretty sure that someone who feels a category they care about has been summarily rejected will not volunteer to run it, and also will not volunteer time--or money--for any other part of the award program.

I strongly encourage you to invite this discussion, and instead of saying: "I'm not willing to..." say something that invites participation, perhaps something like: "Implementing new categories will depend on getting a website with substantial automation to reduce the time our volunteers must spend administering the contest or on getting a volunteer to run each category."

Edited 2011-03-31 00:10 (UTC)

2011 Rose & Bay Awards Followup Report & Discussion

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