Annual Activities
Dec. 5th, 2022 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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twitter_refugeesSome communities and individual blogs have annual activities or events that take place at a particular time. Many of these happen in December or January, so now is a good time to watch for them. Others happen at different times. Many people like to pick several events to space out through the year.
Fannish activities often advertise infandomcalendar and/or fandom_on_dw so watch those if this field interests you. Of these, fandomcalendar offers a convenient Frequency: Annual tag, although not all relevant posts use that tag. fandom_on_dw does not offer frequency tags, but is a popular place to post all types of fannish events.
Other topics can be harder to hunt down because moderators often do not mark their community with interests such as "annual," "yearly," or other helpful descriptors of timing. You can still find them by watching your reading page for things that your friends are doing. Many events have banners that participants can use to promote them, and even with those that don't, you may see friends talking about what things they have signed up to do.
If you like "bleg" posts (short for "blog begging" where you ask questions of your audience) then this is a great topic for that. You can ask your friends what annual events they are doing and/or which ones they recommend for you.
Awards
Most awards take place once a year and honor things done or made during that year. However, they can count a year from any starting point. January-December is the most common but not universal. Other awards have a different cycle, such as quarterly. It's the annual ones that will be most active right now, making them easier for you to find. You can search for these via the Format: Awards tag over onfandomcalendar.
For an example, see the Rose and Bay Awards over incrowdfunding. Check out the 2023 Rose & Bay Award Landing Page for a schedule of dates and activities.
You can read more about awards on Dreamwidth here.
Calendars
Venues with a schedule often manage it with a calendar post. Members can volunteer to handle a particular activity or timespan. This is a good way to get active in your favorite communities. Just pick something you love and volunteer for it.
Most venues that keep an annual schedule will post their new calendar for the next year either in December or very early January. Typically signups open whenever that post goes live, but do check for a schedule because some may go up in December but not actually open until January.
If you host a community, a calendar will help you keep track of planned activities. In addition to keeping things organized, it also gives fans something to look forward to and track so they don't miss anything. You might choose to schedule things like holiday posts, alternating themes, fests, duty times for different moderators, or volunteers who want to post in a particular timeframe.
For example, see the Community Calendar 2023 over inallbingo. This creative bingo community hosts a new fest each month, occasionally more if there is a new fest and a recurring one that overlap. So far there are several fests filled in and plenty of room for more. Do you have a favorite fandom but haven't found your fellow fans on Dreamwidth yet? You could check out this community, because all fandoms and original work, all formats and lengths are welcome.
Fan Fests, Challenges, and Similar Events
Fan fests typically have an active period. Many are annual, although some have two or more active periods within the same year. The best places to find these are infandomcalendar and/or fandom_on_dw. You may also wish to look for fandom-specific communities such as merlin_fests, oz_wishing_well, potterfests, or stargatefests. There are a few other thematic promotional communities such as flashexchanges.
These may take place as part of a community that also does other things, or their community may only do one thing and therefore be active seasonally. The latter can be challenging to find on Dreamwidth because the Interest search function serves up results chronologically, with the most recently updated communities appearing first. So the seasonally active ones will fall farther down the list. In a narrow topic this isn't a problem as they'll all still be on one page of results. In a very popular and busy fandom, however, they can get buried and then missed. To minimize the chance of this, keep an eye on the promotional communities, so you'll see the seasonal communities when they reactivate.
In addition to Dreamwidth, you can find many of these activities over on Archive of Our Own (AO3). Many Dreamwidth activities also have an archive for entries on AO3, which helps connect the two venues. If you plan an event here that will generate fan content, it's a good idea to create a collection for it on AO3 and advertise that as part of your description for the event.
Examples include:
daysofawesome -- Days of Awesome is a annual Jewish character ficathon in honor of the Jewish high holiday season.
fandomtrees -- a holiday gift exchange.
Here Be Dragons Exchange
HBDE AO3 Collection
historamedy365 -- historamedy365
Create 100 icons in 365 days. . . History, drama & comedy claims!
hp_halloween -- Spooky double-drabble exchange for HP Fans
A Halloween-themed Classic Book-Centric Harry Potter double-drabble exchange
ksadvent -- Kirk/Spock Advent Calendar
An annual fest celebrating Kirk/Spock throughout the month of December.
ksspringfever -- K/S Spring Fever
An annual fest celebrating Kirk/Spock Day
marchmetamatterschallenge -- March Meta Matters Challenge
Annual challenge for preserving meta and making it accessible. All fandoms, all formats.
meta_manifesto -- This fest is to motivate the creation of ship, character, fandom or adaptation (or other!) manifestos.
Also available on several other venues.
mgsx -- Metal Gear Solid exchange is a low pressure, single-fandom, all ratings accepted freeform exchange for the Metal Gear series.
newyearcntdown -- New Year's Countdown
A once-a-year one-a-day challenge!
Sapphic Stocking Stuffers
worldbuilding_exchange -- an exchange with a worldbuilding theme.
Year-End Year-Start Prompt Meme
YEYSPM AO3 Collection
yuletide -- This community is for participants and enthusiasts of the annual obscure fandom fiction exchange project, "while we tell of yuletide treasure."
Social Fests, Challenges, and Similar Events
Some activities have a different theme than fandom, although many of them do overlap with fans and their interests. These can be small or large, and they take different formats. However, most of these involve some form of doing stuff on your own blog, such as answering a challenge or prompt. All of them focus on socializing and interaction, typically with some sort of theme for inspiration. Finding the smaller ones can be hard. The popular ones will be all over your reading page as people post banners and content related to them.
Holiday Love Meme 2022
snowflake_challenge is among the biggest events on Dreamwidth, with plenty of fannish content but not all participants are active in fandom. It runs in January and posts prompts every other day. Visit the community now and you can scroll back through previous years to see what to expect. You will probably see banners for this plastered all over your reading page next month, because so many people particpate. However, a significant number of participants are active only during Snowflake. To spot them, just check people's blogs -- some only have entries in January. If you're looking for more active folks, you'll need to do a little extra work here to avoid those, but there are plenty of year-round bloggers who also participate. This is one of the best opportunities to make new friends, so mark it on your calendar now.
sunshine_challenge is not as big as Snowflake but is related. This is the June event. It tends to feature a set of prompts all around the same theme, and you can make whatever you want to share based on that. The 2022 set featured stones. Content does not need to be fannish, but often is.
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth runs April 25-May 15, originally created to promote this platform and encourage activity here. The idea is to create content -- any kind of content -- which is only visible on Dreamwidth during this event. (You can reveal it on other venues afterwards if you wish.) This event used to be huge, died down for a while, and is currently in revival. You may see banners for it, along with friendship memes, love memes, questionnaires, challenges, anchor posts, and other goodies. This is not only a good time to make new friends, it is also one of the best opportunities to attract new readers to your own blog. Think about your main topics, what you want to be known for, what people should subscribe to your blog to get. Then plan to post lots of that during this event. It's probably the biggest that is not primarily about fandom.
Other Annual Activities
Some annual events don't fit neatly into any of the large categories. These are among the hardest to find, but well worth hunting if you want something outside of fandom. Watch your reading page or banners or friends talking about these events. You can also ask your audience if they know of any.
getyourwordsout -- Get Your Words Out
A year-long writing challenge and support group; membership opens in December each year
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is not held within Dreamwidth, but many bloggers here participate in it. You will see lots of folks participating in November. Many post their daily word count, some post excerpts, and so on. There have been various support communities, but these tend to come and go. If this appeals to you, use the Interests search box (upper left in your top menu bar) in October.
There are many variations on this theme that you may also see popping up here. All of them make excellent blogging fodder, and if you participate in them, by all means blog about that. It helps to include a link to the event's website so readers can learn more about it.
9 Alternatives To NaNoWriMo
NANOWRIMO VARIATIONS YOU HAVE TO TRY
Among the ones you're most likely to see on Dreamwidth:
NaBloPoMo -- Make a blog post every day for a month. Originally in November, but people do it in other months too.
NaNoCraMo -- National Craft Month is in March. There are many ways to celebrate it. This often inspires a spike in people posting pictures of their crafts, making it one of the few events that isn't mostly or wholly focused on words.
NaPoWriMo -- Write a poem every day for a month. This runs in April. Poem-a-Day is about posting or sharing a new poem every day (your own or someone else's). Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 29, very popular among bloggers, although it can also mean literally carrying a paper copy to share. These are all part of National Poetry Month.
threeforthememories -- Annual fest for sharing 3 photographs each member has taken the previous year.
Active for a limited time in January.
Does anyone else know of other annual events or communities? Share a link and I'll add them to this list.
Fannish activities often advertise in
fandomcalendar and/or fandom_on_dw so watch those if this field interests you. Of these, fandomcalendar offers a convenient Frequency: Annual tag, although not all relevant posts use that tag. fandom_on_dw does not offer frequency tags, but is a popular place to post all types of fannish events. Other topics can be harder to hunt down because moderators often do not mark their community with interests such as "annual," "yearly," or other helpful descriptors of timing. You can still find them by watching your reading page for things that your friends are doing. Many events have banners that participants can use to promote them, and even with those that don't, you may see friends talking about what things they have signed up to do.
If you like "bleg" posts (short for "blog begging" where you ask questions of your audience) then this is a great topic for that. You can ask your friends what annual events they are doing and/or which ones they recommend for you.
Awards
Most awards take place once a year and honor things done or made during that year. However, they can count a year from any starting point. January-December is the most common but not universal. Other awards have a different cycle, such as quarterly. It's the annual ones that will be most active right now, making them easier for you to find. You can search for these via the Format: Awards tag over on
fandomcalendar.For an example, see the Rose and Bay Awards over in
crowdfunding. Check out the 2023 Rose & Bay Award Landing Page for a schedule of dates and activities.You can read more about awards on Dreamwidth here.
Calendars
Venues with a schedule often manage it with a calendar post. Members can volunteer to handle a particular activity or timespan. This is a good way to get active in your favorite communities. Just pick something you love and volunteer for it.
Most venues that keep an annual schedule will post their new calendar for the next year either in December or very early January. Typically signups open whenever that post goes live, but do check for a schedule because some may go up in December but not actually open until January.
If you host a community, a calendar will help you keep track of planned activities. In addition to keeping things organized, it also gives fans something to look forward to and track so they don't miss anything. You might choose to schedule things like holiday posts, alternating themes, fests, duty times for different moderators, or volunteers who want to post in a particular timeframe.
For example, see the Community Calendar 2023 over in
allbingo. This creative bingo community hosts a new fest each month, occasionally more if there is a new fest and a recurring one that overlap. So far there are several fests filled in and plenty of room for more. Do you have a favorite fandom but haven't found your fellow fans on Dreamwidth yet? You could check out this community, because all fandoms and original work, all formats and lengths are welcome.Fan Fests, Challenges, and Similar Events
Fan fests typically have an active period. Many are annual, although some have two or more active periods within the same year. The best places to find these are in
fandomcalendar and/or fandom_on_dw. You may also wish to look for fandom-specific communities such as merlin_fests, oz_wishing_well, potterfests, or stargatefests. There are a few other thematic promotional communities such as flashexchanges.These may take place as part of a community that also does other things, or their community may only do one thing and therefore be active seasonally. The latter can be challenging to find on Dreamwidth because the Interest search function serves up results chronologically, with the most recently updated communities appearing first. So the seasonally active ones will fall farther down the list. In a narrow topic this isn't a problem as they'll all still be on one page of results. In a very popular and busy fandom, however, they can get buried and then missed. To minimize the chance of this, keep an eye on the promotional communities, so you'll see the seasonal communities when they reactivate.
In addition to Dreamwidth, you can find many of these activities over on Archive of Our Own (AO3). Many Dreamwidth activities also have an archive for entries on AO3, which helps connect the two venues. If you plan an event here that will generate fan content, it's a good idea to create a collection for it on AO3 and advertise that as part of your description for the event.
Examples include:
daysofawesome -- Days of Awesome is a annual Jewish character ficathon in honor of the Jewish high holiday season.fandomtrees -- a holiday gift exchange.Here Be Dragons Exchange
HBDE AO3 Collection
historamedy365 -- historamedy365Create 100 icons in 365 days. . . History, drama & comedy claims!
hp_halloween -- Spooky double-drabble exchange for HP FansA Halloween-themed Classic Book-Centric Harry Potter double-drabble exchange
ksadvent -- Kirk/Spock Advent CalendarAn annual fest celebrating Kirk/Spock throughout the month of December.
ksspringfever -- K/S Spring FeverAn annual fest celebrating Kirk/Spock Day
marchmetamatterschallenge -- March Meta Matters ChallengeAnnual challenge for preserving meta and making it accessible. All fandoms, all formats.
meta_manifesto -- This fest is to motivate the creation of ship, character, fandom or adaptation (or other!) manifestos.Also available on several other venues.
mgsx -- Metal Gear Solid exchange is a low pressure, single-fandom, all ratings accepted freeform exchange for the Metal Gear series.newyearcntdown -- New Year's CountdownA once-a-year one-a-day challenge!
Sapphic Stocking Stuffers
worldbuilding_exchange -- an exchange with a worldbuilding theme.Year-End Year-Start Prompt Meme
YEYSPM AO3 Collection
yuletide -- This community is for participants and enthusiasts of the annual obscure fandom fiction exchange project, "while we tell of yuletide treasure."Social Fests, Challenges, and Similar Events
Some activities have a different theme than fandom, although many of them do overlap with fans and their interests. These can be small or large, and they take different formats. However, most of these involve some form of doing stuff on your own blog, such as answering a challenge or prompt. All of them focus on socializing and interaction, typically with some sort of theme for inspiration. Finding the smaller ones can be hard. The popular ones will be all over your reading page as people post banners and content related to them.
Holiday Love Meme 2022
snowflake_challenge is among the biggest events on Dreamwidth, with plenty of fannish content but not all participants are active in fandom. It runs in January and posts prompts every other day. Visit the community now and you can scroll back through previous years to see what to expect. You will probably see banners for this plastered all over your reading page next month, because so many people particpate. However, a significant number of participants are active only during Snowflake. To spot them, just check people's blogs -- some only have entries in January. If you're looking for more active folks, you'll need to do a little extra work here to avoid those, but there are plenty of year-round bloggers who also participate. This is one of the best opportunities to make new friends, so mark it on your calendar now.sunshine_challenge is not as big as Snowflake but is related. This is the June event. It tends to feature a set of prompts all around the same theme, and you can make whatever you want to share based on that. The 2022 set featured stones. Content does not need to be fannish, but often is.Three Weeks for Dreamwidth runs April 25-May 15, originally created to promote this platform and encourage activity here. The idea is to create content -- any kind of content -- which is only visible on Dreamwidth during this event. (You can reveal it on other venues afterwards if you wish.) This event used to be huge, died down for a while, and is currently in revival. You may see banners for it, along with friendship memes, love memes, questionnaires, challenges, anchor posts, and other goodies. This is not only a good time to make new friends, it is also one of the best opportunities to attract new readers to your own blog. Think about your main topics, what you want to be known for, what people should subscribe to your blog to get. Then plan to post lots of that during this event. It's probably the biggest that is not primarily about fandom.
Other Annual Activities
Some annual events don't fit neatly into any of the large categories. These are among the hardest to find, but well worth hunting if you want something outside of fandom. Watch your reading page or banners or friends talking about these events. You can also ask your audience if they know of any.
getyourwordsout -- Get Your Words OutA year-long writing challenge and support group; membership opens in December each year
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is not held within Dreamwidth, but many bloggers here participate in it. You will see lots of folks participating in November. Many post their daily word count, some post excerpts, and so on. There have been various support communities, but these tend to come and go. If this appeals to you, use the Interests search box (upper left in your top menu bar) in October.
There are many variations on this theme that you may also see popping up here. All of them make excellent blogging fodder, and if you participate in them, by all means blog about that. It helps to include a link to the event's website so readers can learn more about it.
9 Alternatives To NaNoWriMo
NANOWRIMO VARIATIONS YOU HAVE TO TRY
Among the ones you're most likely to see on Dreamwidth:
NaBloPoMo -- Make a blog post every day for a month. Originally in November, but people do it in other months too.
NaNoCraMo -- National Craft Month is in March. There are many ways to celebrate it. This often inspires a spike in people posting pictures of their crafts, making it one of the few events that isn't mostly or wholly focused on words.
NaPoWriMo -- Write a poem every day for a month. This runs in April. Poem-a-Day is about posting or sharing a new poem every day (your own or someone else's). Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 29, very popular among bloggers, although it can also mean literally carrying a paper copy to share. These are all part of National Poetry Month.
threeforthememories -- Annual fest for sharing 3 photographs each member has taken the previous year.Active for a limited time in January.
Does anyone else know of other annual events or communities? Share a link and I'll add them to this list.
