I added links to the post-event discussion threads in the 3rd post. I was reviewing WarPath’s 2021 write-up and the thread here and wanted to summarize some of the key recommendations and actions for 2022 for whomever organizes next year and future years.
Last year’s discussion of areas of opportunity included 1) organizational/administrative burden and 2) audience. This post highlights insights from this discussion and proposes recommendations to help guide both operational and strategic goals for FEE3 in 2022 and beyond.
1) Organizational/administrative burden
The past two years have been noteworthy for the high degree of effort and onus placed on a lead organizer and a small group of volunteers. This lead to staff turnover, with both myself and WarPath explicitly stating we would not “run” the event in future years. Last year, we created volunteer committees to help run the event. While this helped ensure the event ran on time, it did not decrease the workload of the organizer as contributions across the committees were uneven and the organizer was responsible for managing each group.
Given that FEU and FEE3 continue to grow year over year, we need to ensure the event can scale with it. To do this in the fairest way possible, we recommend making the event self-service.
This means there will not be a formal LP volunteer committee or art committee that are managed by the organizer. Instead, we will encourage those interested in supporting the event in this capacity to support on an ad hoc basis as requests arise. Their names will be available on the thread with contact info as appropriate.
All graphic assets and recording recommendations will be available in guides and can be easily viewed so project creators can self-serve and create their own thumbnails and videos for submission. Volunteers can be contacted directly by project creators via the forum or discord for support as needed.
To facilitate this, I recommend we create public channels in addition to a thread on mainsite.
- #fee3-general (for general discussion/q’s)
- #fee3-help (for recording tips, connecting with LPers and volunteers, as well as thumbnail support)
Both of these should be available in the discord for people to get help for video recording and thumbnail creation, with all resources and recommendations pinned. This will allow volunteers to commit only to projects that they wish to support and reduce organizational overhead. Thus, the onus is on the project creator to get a showcase made vs. FEU. This means FEU is the “platform” to host projects in the event, vs. the person running the event - a nuanced, but key difference.
By doing this, the organizer(s) will only be responsible for managing submissions, scheduling, quality control, and video uploads. By removing the responsibility of ensuring all videos submitted to volunteers are recorded and have thumbnails, the burden on the organizer(s) should decrease substantially. The artefacts shared in the first post will help facilitate this. (@CT075 - I may need to make some edits in the first post to adjust what’s there so it’s more easily usable based on what we learned this past year)
While it goes against the spirit of inclusivity to not provide “full-service” to all members in the community, the unfortunate reality is that there is no way to continue operating at this scale with the same degree of support as previous years. Therefore, we encourage project creators to learn how to record themselves or forge connections in the community by asking volunteers to record for them.
We hope by doing this, it will elevate the quality of presentations as well, since creators and LPers will be able to discuss and chat ahead of time, while also reducing the likelihood of an LPer feeling obligated to record a project that they do not want to.
2) Audience
There were discussions around the audience and how we can continue to grow the event. Part of this is also centered around the goals of the event and who the target audience is. I wrote up a description of how I see the total addressable audience for FEE3 and believe the event is best served by creating content in whichever format the project creator thinks is most suitable to showcase their project (LP, dev interview, trailer, etc.) and that we continue to engage r/FE, Serenes Forest, larger FETubers, and other channels to promote the event as is.
This is juxtaposed with changing how the event is structured to reach the broadest audience, as our marketing efforts and interest from those channels has historically been low.
In short, FEE3 is very much “by hackers, for hackers” and we should aim to continue making the event fun, easy, and enjoyable for both hack creating and hack playing audience to view and participate in as possible, while working with other FE groups to promote the event to reach new audiences that may be interested in hacking and hacks, but have not yet joined FEU or aren’t aware of the work we do here. According to Cam, the site traffic does increase both during and after FEE3, so there is organic growth and interest. Subscriptions on the FEU channel continue to rise as well even with our minimal promotional efforts. If we can do a better job of promoting the event as is, I predict we can meet some desired audience goals without drastically restructuring the event or reducing the number of participants.
This summary is not meant to be definitive, but to capture the spirit of the discussion from last year and propose key operational and strategic changes to facilitate the event in 2022. The community will continue to listen to feedback and adjust the event as needed.
Thanks all.