Welcome to Gaia! ::

After having such a large hand in this past ball, I was thinking of things we could do differently that might help us make our next ball even more successful. I'm going to list some ideas, but I want you to also! Let's work out some kinks early on in the game! heart

1) Let's set the deadline for all test threads (including art and banners) to be ready one month before the ball actually starts so we can effectively deal with crises.

2) Since our roleplaying event advertisement attempts didn't seem to attract too many people from outside the ball, let's try to focus on advertising in roleplaying guilds, Gaia Online Magazine, the Newbie Supporting and Training guild, and any roleplay threads that you are a part of. We already have Castle Gaia up that we could use to quickly provide information for people who are interested.

3) I propose that we have the main host and secondary main hosts be hosts of two separate rooms. I have a couple reasons for this one, but it basically comes down to not wanting to waste leadership potential by having two super strong leaders in the same room. I also think it would help more evenly distribute the load across all of the rooms.

Tell me anything else you've considered! heart

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Advertising
- Have an announcement letting people know about the ball a week in advance
- Reveal the theme close to when the ball launches
- Try a continuous roleplay to advertise the ball again
- Advertise in roleplaying guilds and guilds with a ton of influence
- Let people know that it's a walk-in RP in the announcement
- Make a banner to go in the announcement/code the announcement
- Send anon invites (if legal)

Fundraising
- Evenly distribute artists amongst the rooms
- Don't offer to do more art/graphics/etc than you can realistically do in a relatively short amount of time.

Ball Planning
- Secondary main host be a room host not in the same room with the main host
- Early deadlines for art and test threads
- Pair a secondary with somehow who has a ton of experience

Ball Event
- Have smaller file sizes for images to help people with slow computers
- Have fewer rooms
- Have a description of each room and a link in the introduction thread
- Make it more obvious that it is a walk-in RP somewhere in the introduction, ans say that everyone in welcome to join
- Mules do posts that need to be updated frequently
- Have a link to the FAQ post and main plot within each room
- Have shorter intro stories so people will actually read them
- More uniformity within rooms (ie: posts in same order, include an FAQ in each room, etc)
- Have a manga
- Beware of photobucket meltdowns!

Other
- How to interact with/handle problems in non-stickied threads that mislead people about the policies of the ball

You mean if we could ask about an announcement a week in advance in addition to the one we already get? We may or may not be able to get that, but it never hurts to ask! biggrin

An advanced anouncement would give users time to prepare their Ball costumes if they are going to participate. There would be less "TEKTEK ME A COSTUME," threads. (Sorry, I find those kind of annoying.)

This!
I was thinking about how boring it looked. I mean, Chibi, you did an amazing job writing an whole announcement in 5 minutes, honest! But the announcement looked... less flashy than cash shop stuff. AND COME ON THIS IS THE BALL. We spent a year preparing for it, as opposed to however long it takes for Gaia to pump out a new item. Right, right?

Are we allowed to code announcements? o:

I was also thinking about something else to suggest, except I can't exactly remember it right now...

I have a suggestion. More for making updating the ball threads easier than anything else, but how about we suggest that each thread have the majority of there important posts be done by mules that every member of that particular room can access? That way, a particular person doesn't need to be on in order for the front page to be updated, anyone who is on can do it.

Haha, yeah!
I think they did do that before. My memory is slightly fuzzy. But this time we got a little messed up with the announcement, and we were actually lucky to have even gotten it!
So I wouldn't say this is too far fetched.

There were a few, and one both Kan and I reported it and nothing was done.

Agreed, I mean I posted there as well as many other people both saying that it was a scam, but no one cared or listened.