Hmm. Quiet room is quiet.

AH HA

@HedgeMage I FOUND YOU.

Yep, I'm here.

glomms

mind if we chat in community room?

go for it

Really quiet room is really quiet!

20 Minutes Til Chat!

@TimStone what's shaking?

Not much, not much. Wondering how it got to be 3:40 without me eating lunch.

@TimStone :O

get foods before we start our Big NaNo discussion!

Oddly, I'm not at all a writer, I just lurk to keep the chat alive. But I shall get food anyway. :P

@TimStone So it goes. Hooray, foodstuffs!

Whohoo... one minute to go

yeaaaaaaah

grabs some chips

--Welcome to the Writers.SE NaNoWriMo Planning Chat--

So... National Novel Writing Month is just weeks away. We have a survey going out to MLs (NaNoWriMo Municipal Liasons) that more than anything hopes to bring them to the site and get them interested in it. They get a little NaNo goodie package in exchange for their time.

The big question is: What else can we do to help our site grow during NaNoWriMo?

<-- gives the floor to, well, everybody...

Also, what should we give the MLs in their boxes...

All right, I'll go first

One of the things we can do is ask a lot of questions

and expand our answers. we should also make an effort to "bump" up some good older questions that would be relevant around NaNo time.

espcially since this site went into pubbeta in late November....right?

I know the forums are pretty active so a link to the site in forum sigs (and then actively participating in forum discussions) is a subtle way to nudge people in the right direction.

Also mentioning how helpful Writers.se is in your profile is worth a shot, although I don't know how many people browse other user's profiles.

@OneMonkey Agreed :)

signatures! signatures!

i'll see if i can Jin/Sean to make a standard signature banner that we can use.

@Aarthi: That's a great idea. As then all of us will have a definite thing that runs like a common thread on the forums, sort of branded.

Although the pressure to be fascinating could prove to be a tester :)

@AarthiDevanathanΨ That would be nice, but remember to keep it small. :)

@HedgeMage: Subtle but distinctive is good.

@HedgeMage are there size limits to the nano forums' signatures?

There is also the Valuable Flair already available.

@SJohnston: Those are good.

I think I'll definitely run with one of those.

Yes! Let's do that:

all Writers.SE folks on the NaNo forums should put their Flair in their signatures.

As there tend to be loads of questions at Nano about how to get that next 1667 words done by hook or by crook we could have a crib list somewhere of popular and highly voted questions of pantsing that we can point people to.

@AarthiDevanathanΨ I'll check after we're done here.

So you don't end up searching through all the questions all the time. After all I'm actually going to be writing a novel as well as visiting the Nano site and time will be at a premium... definitely.

@OneMonkey I'm doing a novel this year, too, and I think I have @AarthiDevanathan talked into it (feel free to help me persuade her)

@HedgeMage: Why would someone not do Nano, it's awesome! (You see what I did there? ;) )

What do you guys think about a spin on JIT business cards? I know when I meet other NaNo'ers I often want to hook up with them during the month. A Writers.SE business card with spaces for name, novel name, genre, writers.SE account, and nanoname ?

How many of us are participating at NaNo?

@LadybugKiller "us" as in people in this chat room right now, Writers.SE users, or something else?

I am.

I am

<-- Raises @AarthiDevanathan's hand for her

@HedgeMage /me has her hands raised.

yay!

<-- grins

@HedgeMage: Us like participants of Writers.SE

@LadybugKiller There's no way to know.

Is it possible that we could maybe get the Nano people to mark Writer's. SE as a "region"? Or something? So we can be a tribe that people can subscribe to our own sub-forum.

@OneMonkey I'll ask Sarah, their ML coordinator.

I'm a member of the Nottingham Region and I think people can be members of more than one.

There are a few virtual loco groups :)

@OneMonkey That's a cool idea

@OneMonkey If it works, that's seriously the best idea I've heard all night.

I wish I'd have thought of it :)

That would give us some identity and allow us to ask more traditional flaky opinion questions and stuff that doesn't actually fit in the Q&A

It's like a Writer's SE outing!

hehe :)

I only just thought of it because of Ladybug's question.

If we were a region we can see how many of us end up there.

That was a rubbish application of the English language, apologies.

I like rubbish application.

(Maybe I shouldn't have said that as writer ;)

:)

It's like any other kind of profession as soon as doctor's knock off I'm sure they're all smoking and drinking and stuff. When writer's get home they like to split infinitives and put prepositions in odd places.

See I wildly abused the apostrophe there.

Of course we should be careful not to do that on the Nano forums... :S

lol

Don't Nano do a podcast? If they do it via Skype maybe a few of us could record for it, if anyone's brave enough.

I have an acting degree and Skype so I'd be happy to do it timezones notwithstanding.

oooh i'd do it, fanfiction author that i may/may not be in my alter ego

We'd obviously have to come up with something to say.

what, "omg writers.se is awesome come joiiiiiin" isn't enough?

Well, yes but people might want to know why we're so 1337...

@OneMonkey They have podcasts: nanowrimo.org/eng/audio/by/genre/podcast

That might even get us on the front page one day then, if they're interested in "featuring" us.

brb

and wow this chat-cast died.

I was just surveying the Nano site for ideas.

But the only thing I think we haven't mined out is that they also do videos.

And that's a media too far for me.

ahhh.

I think we've done some good stuff though. The region thing would definitely be handy.

Because it means we can discuss our strategy further on the Nano site itself.

Plus we get to see how high up the leaderboard our collective wordcount rises!

If Poland puts on as bad a show as they did last year I definitely think we'll beat them. There's a claim to fame: Writers.se, more collective Nano words than an entire country.

Anyway I need to slope off now. Good chat everybody!

/waves

hmm. so, my other question: what should we send the MLs in the gift boxes?

I'm back

:)

@AarthiDevanathan How many do we plan to give out?

I think HedgeMage asked a similar question last week and we suggested ballpens with the Writers.SE URL

@HedgeMage one of the things we gotta talk about

Sam (my planning buddy) and I were talking about this, and we decided that we'd do this in two stages

first stage: MLs fill out the survey

What kind of survey is this?

second stage: the MLs that reply/receive gift boxes are evaluated. those with smaller LG's can have like 67% of their LG fill out the same survey and then get a fully sponsored write in or something

@LadybugKiller something between a useability and QC survey

@AarthiDevanathanΨ Sounds like a survey with 60 topics where you fall asleep after page three :)

@LadybugKiller It's mostly aimed to get them trying all the stuff we have to offer -- we care less about the results

@LadybugKiller 17 questions, mostly radio buttons

Bach to these gift boxes: Besides the obvious pen and paper, I wonder if a small (and cheap) device exists which is a kind of ass-kicker, like showing "go write" every hour.

hmm.

i know we wanted to get, like, promting dice for the free-form brainstorming activities.

idk, @HedgeMage knew about them.

Something like that: mytinyreminder.com with an Writers.SE sticker. But this one is too expensive for ... how many MLs?

@LadybugKiller dunno, we gotta figure that out.

@AarthiDevanathan Yeah, let me check the price on those

$6.71 ea. is the best I've found in a quick search

I do think those are really cool

Do stickers for Writers.SE exists? I mean for the gift boxes.

They do not... we're still on the beta "sketchy" theme

So what?

You can make sticker with sketchy themes also.

she's got a point. we'd send stack stickers anyway.

SE usually won't give us anything branded until there's a permanent theme designed (even if we haven't graduated to using it yet)

We can do something with the URL on it, though.

(I think)

yes

fitness has stuff like that.

SE gives us what makes the site rock. I least I hope that. And I still do not know why the sketchy theme isn't sufficient.

@LadybugKiller i mean, we're always happy to prep/ship swag.

@LadybugKiller I have no idea. People who understand graphics and marketing (not me) made that decision

@LadybugKiller but if someone started a meta post about what our site's look should be, our graphics guys might design something eventually ;)

They really do rock, and might try to churn out our design in time for NaNo if I begged, but I don't want to do that to them.

They are swamped without me jamming last-minute requests down their throats.

mmhmm

Again, I do not want a new design. Nobody at Nano knows it's only a sketch. Even if they do, so what. It's sketchy, but recognizable. just convince them to make some sticker with what we have.

Them: SE, not Nano guys ;)

If you want, I write that damn question on Meta, but honestly I do not see a need for that.

@LadybugKiller I will ask... that's all I can promise.

The sketchy theme is temporary, however, so whenever the site exits beta and gets its own theme, sketchy-themed merch would no longer match

True

Did I ask for more, @HedgeMage? ;)

@sjohnston So what?

I know I repeat myself

@sjohnston limited editionnnnn~

@LadybugKiller I just figure if we are going to theme the merchandise, it doesn't make sense to match it to a temporary theme. So I would say either don't bother theming it, or get a "real" theme before making merch to match it.

We have a time issue and we have a something-to-present-issue. Do you really want to not something simple as stickers, just because there is no final design? Companies change their logos every two years. (well, my does)

Why should it hurt using the sketchy theme?

And does it hurt more not doing it?

I have no idea -- I'll ask people who know more about marketing :)

we've been making stuff with the URL only for sketchy sites and it's been fine.

and i'm sure we can slap on a fountain pen to the URL and make it stickers.

and on that note, i'm out. my day ended a while ago. /waves

Bye, @Aarthi

see you, @LadybugKiller

Any more questions, @HedgeMage? Or is this enough stuff for the first round? :)

I think that's it for the moment.

@AarthiDevanathan do you have any?

Already gone

in that case...

--End NaNoPrepChat--