Goodbye Words!
Some Reflections on Running an IF Meet-up
First of all, if you’re looking for advice on running an IF Meet-up, I highly recommend Emily Short’s post on that subject — it’s where I started when I set out to do this thing. Secondly, if you’ve already read that article, much of this will come as no surprise — my findings were very similar to those Emily outlines, but I’ll share them nevertheless.
My hope when setting up Hello Words was to develop the ‘six or eight diehard community enthusiasts’ Emily mentions, but I never quite got there. After an initial buzz of interest around the group, and a good year or so of a core group of five or six members, people moved away, or had other commitments and numbers dwindled. So, I’m calling it a day after eighteen months. No regrets — I had an absolute blast, met great people who I still keep in touch with by other means, and it would’ve been very sad had I not tried this out at all. So, in no particular order, here are a few things I wish I’d thought about more before starting this endeavour.
Promotion takes a lot of time
Way more than I had accounted for. There were various newsletters, writers’ groups and Facebook pages that very kindly promoted Hello Words, but with the exception of the aforementioned very wonderful Emily Short, the majority required me to email them each month with details of the meet-up rather than just sending them a batch of dates and having them put it in each time. I completely understand why this is, but if you’re mailing multiple people every month, that’s a fair chunk of time even with a stock email. Sometimes I’d forget a couple, and then it wouldn’t get advertised as widely, and that impacted attendee numbers. I’d advise making sure you have at least one person to help you with this, both to reduce the workload, and to have a second brain remembering what one forgets.
A good venue is hard to find
We had to move around a lot within out original venue as there were a lot of (paying) clients who needed it too, and so as we were getting space free, naturally we needed to be flexible. Again this made it difficult to create a sense of continuity that we would always be in X time at X place on X day of the month. I don’t think this is as important as the promotional aspect, but I’d suggest making sure you know where you’re going to be before advertising, so that even if you’re somewhere new each month, potential attendees can look ahead and plan accordingly.
People like to be told what to do (but also have input)
Again, this is very similar to what Emily mentions, but sessions with a clear plan generally worked better. I had intended to make things quite member-led, and did have a couple of ‘open’ sessions just so people could get to know one another, but I usually ended up deciding on what we’d actually do each month, because otherwise the sessions lacked direction and numbers dwindled. That being said, I tried to remain flexible — I’d initially envisioned a writing group set-up where we brought in our own projects and workshopped them, but the general consensus was for more of a reading and discussion group, where occasionally the things read and discussed were made by members, but not always. I wish I’d developed a more structured format earlier along the process, but you learn by doing, I guess.
And I’ve definitely done that! I’ve read some brilliant IF (and story-based games) I never would have encountered without doing this, thought more deeply about my own writing, and developed my skills in way more IF languages and development environments than I ever would have without the support of my fellow Hello Wordsers!
AAAAND… this isn’t necessarily the end. I’m considering setting up a UKIF (it’d be UKIF purely in the sense of being run to GMT, not due to content or participants) chat on Twitter (modelled after the very successful UKYA chat) and would be keen to know your thoughts. Unless one already exists, in which case please let me know what the hashtag is so I can get involved! You can comment below or tweet me @Notagoth.
Adios for now, dear IF friends!
