Edit: Side note for pyatniski who would probably be into this: at Port Fairy Folk Festival (one of Australia’s premier folk festivals) they have a Saturday night variety show where a bunch of the artists from the festival come up and play something for some theme. A few years back it was “A Tribute to The Pogues”, and you had bands like the Sharon Shannon band, straightforward Irish folk, come and do Pogues stuff on stage. Pretty cool.
The 2020 Port Fairy Festival (in March) was one of the last big events I got to before COVID hit, here’s my favourite track from the last group I saw there, an all-female Orkney Islands folk band.
Nice! I think I almost submitted that track to you at some point. Might have been someone else. Also looks like they have a bloke on keyboards now. He was a stand-in at the point they played in March. They were great to see perform, very personable and down to Earth, not to mention accomplished musicians.
I could really go for a grab bag. I couldnt be as active as usual but I can volunteer to distribute the entries for each category if that would help get one off the ground.
As far as overall organising a grab bag, I feel like these are the main duties:
Starting the threads, setting some dates, and mostly just copy/paste the rules and guidelines from previous grab bags.
This is relatively easy imo.
Being the gamerunner and adjudicator if/when necessary
Help ensure nominated categories are ones that people will be able to submit a track they already know to, instead of having to search out and submit a song they have never heard before in order to meet the requirement.
Adjusting timelines as needed, giving enough time that the game isn’t unnecessarily stressful but also trying to make sure it doesn’t lag too long. This is usually pretty easy since people do a pretty great job of self organizing and such here.
Making a decision when things go off the rails at some point.
Frankly, this role can kinda suck at times. Some people are not going to like it no matter what you do, but its necessary to stop the game devolving into something completely draining and not fun. Sometimes there isnt much to do here, and I have been happy to do this in the past for the sake of everyone being able to enjoy the game, but I don’t have the headspace for this part right now.
Accepting all the entries and distributing them to the correct category hosts.
This takes a bit of time to do and thought to make sure you send entries in a good way, but its a one-and-done deal which a clever cat like Pauwl makes look easy.
Scorekeeping
I think its easier if the person who handles 3 does this, since they know who submitted every entry and can mark it up on the scorecard even if people don’t claim their entries during a reveal.
I can do number 3 this time, and I can do number 4 as well but just know that I might not be able to follow the reveals so much or have the updated score immediately ready at the end of a round. If someone has a bit more time and is likely to be able to do this instead of me, please lmk.
Someone else will need to do number 1 and 2, but if it helps I am more than happy to point you to stuff to copy/paste and make some suggestions about what has made the process easier in the past.
I’m kinda in the zone of devoting ten minutes here and there to such walrus admin nonsense, so, at the risk of inserting myself too often, I think I’d be happy to do 1 & 2. No problem if someone else wanted to, though.
In practice I couldn’t do the announce till Monday now, but if this plan was acceptable I’d welcome and process any sign-ups that appeared in this thread in the meantime.
Good sir if you are willing to put yet more time into Walrus organization after your recent bout then I think we are well and truly to the point of a species of Walrus being named in your honour.
If anyone wants to take 3/4 please speak up before the end of the weekend and I would be glad to pass on the duties. Likewise if anyone particularly wants to take a shot at 1/2 please say so but the goat seems pretty happy to handle it.
