Hey all!

We missed HW's first birthday!

But we will celebrate its year-and-a-month on the 20th of this month to make up for it.

Any ideas of what we should do?

You should ask some of the people in the Introductions thread...they're pretty good at over-celebrating lavishly. Maybe we could do a big 'off-topic' day! (kidding). I don't know, I'm not much of a planner.

eruheran

I don't know how one does forum celebrations... If we were like, something big and famous we would release an anthology or something... but for a year that's not exactly realistic.

Um... um... clueless. Have you done something like this before?

Oh! I know, change the theme of the forum to something ridiculous for the day!!! No one can ignore it then...

Changing the theme would be fun, but a lot of hacks and things would break. :P Good idea though.

Did you change the HW logo to gold? Or am I imagining that it used to be blue?

It's blue on the homepage. It's gold on the forum. and he added a little button underneath that says 'fantasy' which might be what you're noticing because I sure noticed it.

Yeah, I knew the fantasy button was new. I like the change by the way. I think it stands out better.

Considering that HW now refers to the whole thing, I deemed it appropriate to add that to the HWfantasy logo. I still need to get it on the home page though.

One thing that we could do for prizes is to create blog buttons that people can embed on their blogs, commemorating stuff like "most posts on HW" and stuff like that.

Jay and I were considering annual awards given to HW members for their accomplishments. So far we have:
- Most Prolific Poster (based on average number of posts per month since joining): possible winner being calculated
- Most Active Referrer: possible winner being calculated
- Most Consistent Blogger: this would go to Neil of Erk at this point, I believe.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

That sounds cool. I'm trying to think of things to do, but I'm not sure what. This celebration planning is hard when it's not tangible stuff. I think those would be good ways to celebrate.

Okay jay, shoot me down if it sounds silly. How about the goofiest poster. We could all send in our submissions through PMs to a designated person. Tally up the submissions and dub them with whatever wacky title you want.

You like the idea, huh? How about something simple then, like just changing the color of all the text on the board index?

Prizes sound interesting... trust Airianna to come up with the craziest.

I'll keep thinking.

:P I can be serious.

I'm thinking, since this is a fantasy forum, and as long as it's a year and a month anyway, shouldn't we do a year, a month, and a day?

Online users at one time, good idea.

Changing bits about the forum style, good idea. (What about easter eggs?)

Chat party, good idea.

Goofiest poster? How about coolest poster? Most fantasy poster? (I am honestly not really one for goofy...)

Year, month, and a day... that is awesome. Wish I had thought of that. Good idea.

Works for me.

Yeah, for that one we'd have to announce it and take nominations.

So that puts the celebration date on October 21st, right? Which is a Thursday. (Did you realize the birthday was right on the autumnal equinox? Cool!)

It was? As in without the extra day?

That might be cool enough to make us go back.

I mean, a month ago. I'll check the exact date, but the autumnal equinox has to be in September, right?

Oooh... easter eggs would be soo cool!!!

23rd of September. I looked it up.

Yes, I think Easter Eggs will be fun to do. What would we put in them? (Leave it to me to hide them. ).

Taxi?



Or a literal easter egg?



(I had fun finding these on my Palm OS PDAs...(which reminds me...))

A cool treat that is hidden on the site somewhere and that people run to find.

Hm... what usually goes in easter eggs? Just the finding them will be the most fun, regardless of what they are. You could always hold a contest; the first person to find them all wins a prize! That would help get more people on the forum that day too.

All kinds of things, depending on where they are hid.

What about short stories or Drabbles that we all write for them? That would be cool.

Yes, that would do that too. Cool.

Ooh, this is exciting! I like the Easter egg idea... and I think it would be neat to try and break the record for most users online at one time, too.

Cool! I like both the Easter egg (I think we should call them birthday eggs, though) and record break ideas!

Just to let everyone know, I actually won't be able to be here on that day, because I'll be on a trip with no internet access, but I'll help with whatever I can beforehand!

Birthday Eggs, nice idea.

Alright, sorry to not have you. Thanks for the help!

I might add a :P smiley...

I prefer less smileys rather than more. Haha.

Okay, so all of this is apparently hush hush at the moment since it is under HRM only, but my question is, when are we going to let everyone else know what's going on? I understand this is where we are doing all the planning, but don't we need to let everyone else know that we are at least having the celebration on the 20th (or did we decide the 21st based off of Janin's idea of a year, month, and day?).

Some people know that we are going to celebrate on the 20th. We will probably announce some things a week before hand or so, so they can prepare to be here on time. Other things we will surprise them with.

Okay, sounds good, I was just wondering when everyone was going to be told. My other question is, has anyone thought about how we are going to announce these changes and surprises? Will it just be written out on a thread, and if so what would that thread get posted under? What are the logistics of the Birthday Bash? I’m just trying to get a feel for how this is going to work.

Somethings we can announce in advance. I imagine we'd put it under Announcements, in place of the last celebration thread. A lot of people might not notice it, but on the day of the celebration we'll do surprise things (like change the color of something) that no one can ignore, and of course they'll want to know why.

What we could do, if we really want to make sure everyone knows about it, is sticky it in every forum.

There is a Global thread type, that is cloned in every forum on the site. We will probably use that. I am also looking for a hack that will prominently 'announce' announcements.

I think the color idea would work, but so would the sticky idea. I don't know much about global threads, but your description Sir Emeth makes it sound like it would work. That makes sense.

What would a hack do?

Place a banner at the top of the site that gives a compelling headline and a link to the full announcement post.

Now that, would be cool.

I like the banner and confetti idea. Methinks I could rig that up.

This is probably a dumb question, but is the timezone differences for some people going to affect anything?

It isn't a dumb question. It is a good point.

Pick somewhere in the early afternoon EST, and everyone should have the best opportunity, methinks.

Haha, good to know. Sometimes I think I should be able to figure out timezones easier than I can :P



Sounds good.

Could it be like maybe noon EST? That would be good for me and Elanhil....but if not, that's fine.

eruheran

Hey, could you time the release of the scifi forum with the birthday or would that be too much at once?

That... sounds like a good idea. Gives us some time to get everything solid anyways.

And yes, noon EST is great.

Okay, so I think that (at some point in time) we should announce we are having a birthday party, date and time. We should announce that we are releasing the scifi forum that day. (everyone really wants to know when we are releasing it, setting a date will quiet them for a while. ) We should announce the non surprise elements; like a chat room party, an attempt to get the most users online at one time, or whatever. I think we should make it a global announcement.

Anything else?

Announce it tomorrow. That will give everyone exactly two weeks.

Only announce stuff that they will have to do stuff on. The rest can be announced on the day or be a complete surprise.

What is the stuff we have to do stuff on? I got confused.

A year, a month, and a day, right?