After participating in an internship with the Office of Letters and Light (Nanowrimo’s parent company), Sarah eventually came on as a full-time employee. Since then she’s actively helped grow Nanowrimo’s community, posting to the blog, videos, Facebook, and more. Nanowrimo’s grown from just a handful of writers to hundreds of thousands, many of them connected through the Internet. Sarah helps make that happen.

She generously agreed to answer a few questions for us. Read on to hear her take on community building, Nanowrimo’s history, productivity, working remotely, and how to motivate writers to get across the 50,000-word finish line.

1. First some background: how did you originally find out about Nanowrimo?

I heard about NaNoWriMo on an online message board I frequented back in 2002. It seems like a life time ago now! I started writing again in 2001 after a long hiatus, so it was perfectly timed to get me a little more committed to writing regularly. I recruited several of my friends, and the rest is history. I’ve won every year since!

2. Apart from size, how does today’s Nanowrimo community look different than when you first started?

The thing that’s most remarkable about it is the changes in technology since 2002. Back then, laptops were hot commodities and much less common than they are now, so when you went into a coffee shop to work on your novel with a couple of friends, yours was the only computer in the whole place. Now, you’re lucky if you can find a free plug. I didn’t have my own laptop then, so I borrowed my Dad’s when I went out to write. I think it was 5 or 6 years old at the time and it weighed a ton. Now when I go to write-ins, the folks without laptops are the exception, and there’s this amazing range of technology – some people even write on their cell phones!

The online community has changed so much since then as well. In 2002, it was much more unusual to be part of a web-based community, and people were far more skeptical about meeting up with groups you met on the internet. I feel like in the 10 years since, the internet has become far more mainstream. We’ve also got so many more ways to connect now – in 2002, it was all based around the website, but now we’ve got Facebook, Twitter, all kinds of other ways that we communicate with participants and the participants communicate with each other.

3. How did you come to be a part of it as an official Community Liaison?

This is actually kind of a long story! In 2003, I signed up to be the Municipal Liaison – that’s what we call our regional volunteers – in my home town of Edmonton Alberta. As NaNoWriMo grew, so did our region here. In 2008, my co-Municipal Liaison and I went down to San Francisco for the annual fundraising gala. We ended up having dinner with Chris Baty that weekend, and he and I started talking about some of the projects we thought the Office of Letters and Light (the parent non-profit of NaNoWriMo) should be working on. Once I got back home, I started working on some of those projects. I went back to school in 2009 and spent two months interning at OLL as part of my program requirements in 2010, and at the end of that, I was hired to do contract work. After a year of that, the Community Liaison position opened up, and we decided I could do that job remotely from home here in Canada. So I started out as a volunteer and gradually got more involved over the years, and now I work for OLL full time. I think the first time I said this was my dream job was around 2004, so it’s pretty amazing to actually be here!

4. What is the most underestimated part of your day-to-day?

Answering email! The sheer volume is pretty overwhelming sometimes, but I’m getting better about putting systems into place. I find that how I’m feeling about my job is directly related to the number of unanswered emails sitting in my inbox.

5. Do you use any tools to keep track of your responsibilities?

I keep thinking that I just need to find the perfect app or website and I’ll suddenly become magically more organized, but it hasn’t happened yet. Despite my fondness for technology, my tried and true organizational method is actually just a notebook and pen. The notebook is divided up into sections based on my major areas of responsibility, and I have a whole section of it that’s just for to-do lists. I used to just have one giant notebook for everything, and that was hard to keep track of, but having things divided up a little better has made it more manageable.

I also date everything obsessively, so I can flip back through meeting notes to find when I talked about something. We use Google Apps in the office, so I try to keep my Google Calendar moderately up to date, and we have a shared Google Doc between everyone in the office where we track what we’re working on. (Although, writing that, I realise how long it’s been since I’ve updated that!)

6. What challenges do you face working remotely in the magical land of Canada?

I think it helps a lot that I started out with those two months when I was in the office in person, because it meant I established relationships with the people in the office. I also go down every November, which helps a lot. But I’m pleasantly surprised by how well I’m able to stay in the loop from here. I have Google Chat open all the time and I chat with my coworkers pretty steadily throughout the day. (It helps that I’m tirelessly nosy about what’s happening in the office.) I Skype into staff meetings every week, and I check in with the people I collaborate with the most on a weekly basis, either by Skype or by phone.

It’s the little things you miss out on, being remote – the conversations that happen in passing, as it were. But my coworkers are really great about filling me in on those types of things, and by being a little annoying about asking what’s going on, I keep up pretty well.

Mostly it’s challenging when they’re having a beautiful California day and I’m buried in three feet of snow. Those are the days I wonder what it would take to get a visa to work in the US.

7. Nanowrimo is a remarkable grassroots effort, with volunteers all over the world hosting write-ins and spreading the word. The forums are also an active source of inspiration. In your opinion, what is the most important thing the community does to help Nanowrimo succeed? How do you help foster that?

I think the most important thing the community does is just exist. Writing is so often a solitary, lonely pursuit, and having this supportive community surrounding you makes the writing process so much more appealing.

So much of that community is created by the in-person component, and we have more than 650 volunteer Municipal Liaisons around the world organizing those events. I oversee those volunteers, and I like to think that because I was one of those volunteers for seven years before I worked for OLL, I can really be useful to help those MLs with the challenges they face and celebrate their accomplishments.

I’m also really delighted with the community that we’ve formed in social media. That was a big focus of my internship last year, and it’s just exploded since then. We’ve now got more than 53,000 followers on Twitter and more than 80,000 people have liked us on Facebook. It’s been really great to have those additional ways of reaching out to the community, and it’s also led to lively discussions and a really effective way for folks who don’t have the in-person events to still be a part of the community.

8. You mention “peer pressure is the most important tool to make your word count soar.” Is this something you’ve built into Nanowrimo’s community itself? What other elements of social psychology come into play?

There’s definitely an element of peer pressure built into the community! We provide a lot of tools to track not only your own word count, but the word counts of your friends. We encourage head-to-head challenges, and we’re working on our widgets right now that automatically track those challenges. We also run a Twitter account, @NaNoWordSprints, that’s specifically meant to offer that mix of peer pressure (“Write for 15 minutes RIGHT NOW!”) and support. We’ve recruited a team of volunteers around the world to help with that account this year, and as a result we’re running those word sprints for 12-18 hours a day, all hours of the day, and it’s a place where someone will offer up a challenge and then congratulate you when you achieve it.

Our Municipal Liaisons are also really great at that supportive mix of peer pressure and collaboration. It’s really motivating to know that someone is looking out for you and cheering you on, and I think that presence really helps keep people going when things get challenging.

9. What advice can you give to people looking to start their own writing communities, online or off?

I think one of the things that’s most effective about NaNoWriMo and its community is the sheer breadth of it. You might be writing your space western alongside someone who’s writing a historical romance novel. So many writers are really focused on narrowing the scope of their writing community, but I think you lose out on a lot of potential allies when you do that. Writers have more in common with each other than I think some communities give them credit for. Sure, we have people in the genre forums who get into the nitty gritty details that apply only to that genre, but at the same time, everyone can sympathize when you hit a plot hole so deep you have to redirect your entire story around it.

I also think there are so many tools that are out there for communities, it’s just a case of taking advantage of them. I see so many hashtags on Twitter for virtual writing groups, and Google Plus has actually really taken off with writers, and there are people hosting Hangouts, where people write together or have discussions via the webcam Hangout feature, which I think is extremely cool.

But don’t be afraid to start small. Sure, there are 250,000 people participating in NaNoWriMo now, but it started out with just Chris Baty and 20 of his friends. Sometimes the evolution is gradual, sometimes it snowballs more quickly, but you just don’t know until you start.

10. And of course, how’s progress with your entry this year?

It started out really well but I’ve gotten a bit bogged down this week. Week two is notoriously hard to get through, because you’re past the exciting beginning part but haven’t made it to the point where things start to gel. So I’m a little behind, but I’m going on a writing retreat this weekend that should help a lot. I’ll get there eventually!

For more information about Nanowrimo, or to connect with a local writing group (there are TONS), head over to the official Nanowrimo site. If you’re currently participating, stop reading blogs and get writing! Good luck!

An annual event going back to 2008, the Mario Marathon is an amazing example of building a community through word of mouth, relentless promotion and clever interactions with fans. It’s one of the earliest examples of a gaming marathon benefitting charity, which involves streaming gamers playing the games to a live audience over the course of several days.

The team of Mario Marathon volunteers has done an impressive job growing their community each year – no easy task considering the long downtime between each event. The Mario Marathon has reached over 500,000 gamers to date, and through them raised over $125,000 for Child’s Play.

Following our recent experiment in online charity gaming, we reached out to Mario Marathon co-founder Brian “Shirt Guy” Brinegar to learn more about how it’s done. Read on for his insights on community building and how to motivate members for a common good.

Wavedash: Thanks again for the chat! To start off, are you surprised that charity gaming marathons have caught on to such a degree?

Brian: I was not entirely surprised. Gaming marathons are a fun way to bring the gaming community together to support a cause and they are relatively easy to get started. We’ve also tried to support the community by providing some documentation on how our events have been created.

WD: Are you finding it harder to differentiate yourself from the increased competition? How do you keep potential new viewers from saying “Oh great, another marathon”?

Brian: I always spend an excessive amount of time and money trying to top the previous year. I hope this shows when someone happens across our stream. We try to add a level of interaction and attention to detail that would be hard to establish on the first go around. We also have a huge advantage of being established as one of the early marathon groups which provides some additional access to get the word out.

WD: How did you grow your community of stream-watchers in the early days?

Brian: Initially, we were just very very lucky. At the beginning of the first Mario Marathon we were featured on both Penny-Arcade and Kotaku. This provided us with a ton of traffic. For the second year we weren’t sure
what access we would have to major gaming sites like these, so we pounded the pavement, sending information to every media outlet we could find contact information for. We also try to keep past donors and supporters informed of the annual event via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.

WD: What are the best fan interaction ideas you use to keep viewers engaged?

Brian: It’s all about constant communication. The Internet provides the opportunity for a vast amount of two-way communication unavailable in any other media. We use channels such as Twitter, Facebook, IRC Chat, Fanart, and Skype to facilitate this communication as well as a way to hold contests and audience challenges. This year we’ve added something we call “React Time” which lets the audience applaud, boo, taunt, and laugh at the team by clicking buttons on our website. A system analyzes these reactions and triggers actual sounds we can hear.

WD: Aside from those who donate loads of money, who are your most valuable viewers/chatters? Are some members better for a healthy broadcast than others?

Brian: Everyone that watches the Mario Marathon is very important. Those ofus who put the event together really are nothing without the people who support what we’re doing. Every person who donates, helps to spread the word, or interacts during the event plays an important part in making it successful. There are also a small number of people who stick around throughout the year, act as moderators, and generally provide feedback and ideas for improving the event. These people really add to Mario Marathon in an unmeasurable way.

WD: What viewer behavior has surprised you the most?

Brian: The fact that viewers show up to watch a few old guys play video games for days on end pretty surprising all on its own. Beyond that I’m surprised by the dedication and support the community provides. Many
people go out of their way to provide support that we could never expect. For example, this year viewers have stepped up and contributed prizes, an amazing T-Shirt design, and what will ultimately be an amazing promotional poster/prize. This kind of support comes from all over the world. Its a surprise to anyone I tell about the event.

WD: What is the optimal time to announce a marathon and start generating buzz, but not fall off people’s radar?

Brian: We’ve announced Mario Marathon about 5-6 months out each year. Since we only hold one real event each year this gives us plenty of time to promote the event. Also, because Child’s Play Charity runs their donation drive in November and December it’s important for us to get on their schedule before they stop updating the site for the year. Keeping the buzz going can be very difficult. We start a media blitz about two weeks prior to the event. This includes press released to print and television, e-mails to gaming sites, etc.

WD: How do you reconnect with viewers from previous marathons? Do you see the same viewers returning year after year, or is it largely fresh faces?

Brian: Yes, there are a lot of names that pop up year after year. We have over 1,100 attendees from previous years signed up to attend via a Facebook event. Of course, there are a ton of new people every year, some stop in for a few minutes, others become a part of the community and stay connected year round.

WD: The “achievements” are great! What benefits have you seen since they were implemented?

Brian: We’ve always had an internal list of promotion “achievements,” which are goals for promoting the event each year. Last year, for Mario Marathon 3, we made this list public in the form of achievements. The thought
was that some of our viewers may have connections or resources we do not have internally. If they are willing to use their connections to help promote the event we want to provide some direction. The achievements also act as a kickback to the various groups that do support us. Having an achievement titled, “Can I has Joystiq?” does a little to show how much we value Joystiq’s support.

WD: Do you have any plans to further “gamify” your event, like you did with achievements?

Brian: Absolutely, I’m very interested in the ability of games to teach and influence people’s actions. For example, I use my Discover Card to buy almost everything because I earn points which I can use to receive “prizes” (cash back bonus rewards). This is a very simple game, but it influences what I do. Some games, like Animal Crossing reward players for returning each day. We try to use these concepts to promote engagement and reward those that participate throughout the event. This year, we’re introducing a feature called “Social Trivia” which lets people all over the world participate in a multi-day trivia contest. Our structure of donations unlocking levels is another game-like element, there are very small measurable and achievable goals that all add up to a huge amount of money for Charity. If we started with a single goal of $125,000 it seems insurmountable. Lastly, we are adding a set of audience participation games, which will let members of the audience actually plan some custom games with the team, right from their web browser. Think 1 vs. 100.

WD: Is a charity gaming marathon a good way for an existing gaming community, website or company to engage with members? Why or why not?

Brian: The internet provides an amazing number of new ways to communicate with lots of people, be it live video, social networking, or a custom online game, all of these things that bring people together are going to engage and likely grow a community. A gaming marathon is a popular way to bring these technologies together, but I believe it’s the massive amount of communication that really engages the members of a community. The one advantage that a charity event provides is a sort of beacon for everyone in the community to point at an say, “Look at this! Look what we were able to accomplish as a community.” I hope that the members of the Mario Marathon community realize how much they have accomplished and how important they are to the process.

WD: Finally, do you have any parting tips on how would-be marathoners can find and grow an audience?

Brian: Just ask. Ask people to share on Facebook, post on message boards, and send out Tweets. This kind of first hand word-of-mouth support can go along way. Of course, the group hosting the marathon needs to do their share of work to make sure the show is something people want to share, but once you’ve got that setup, just ask.

~–

To donate money to Child’s Play through the Mario Marathon, visit their donation page. For more tips on how to run an online charity event, visit the Mario Marathon’s handy how-to guide Notes On Running a Gaming Marathon.

The fourth annual Mario Marathon webcast kicks off on June 24th.

UPDATE 3/27: All done! Original details of the marathon are still available below.

Huge thanks to everyone who participated. Special shout-outs go to the r/pokemon Reddit community and to Serebii.net. Both communities were hugely supportive in the chat.

The final playtimes were:

• Pokémon Blue: 8:30
• Pokémon Gold: 4:39
• Pokémon Sapphire: 11:57
• Pokémon Diamond/Pearl: Roughly 11 hours. Had to be cut short due to an unfortunate software crash during the E4.
• Pokémon Black: 5:57
• Total time: ~42:10

As of the end of the marathon, you all helped raise $385 for Japan. Thank you so much again to everyone who donated, and to everyone who helped spread the word.

The fundraising page will continue to be available for the next few weeks. If you would like to donate, visit http://www.mercycorps.org/fundraising/jasonm3d.

Grats everyone!

——
Original post:

>> Participate in the Pokémon Marathon for Charity

Some good friends of mine are currently undergoing a weekend Marathon of all 5 generations of Pokémon games, all in the name of raising money for victims of the Japan Earthquake. @JasonThinks, the generous mastermind behind the event, asked if I would be interested in taking on one of the games, and if they could use Wavedash as a landing spot. Of course I said of course. And so, the great Pokémarathon is underway!

How does a gaming Marathon help the victims?

Charity gaming marathons have been growing in popularity for the last several years, ranging from fan-run to quite extravagant. The goal is to pick popular and/or nostalgia-laden games that gamers would enjoy watching played live. This usually involves a series or genre, such as “all Zelda games.” While watching, viewers have the opportunity to donate to that marathon’s cause. It’s a wonderful grassroots gaming phenomenon that has a real impact on the world.

Sounds nice. What are you marathoning exactly?

We’re attempting to run through the 5 primary Pokémon games by Sunday night.

• Pokémon Blue (Done in 8:30!)
• Pokémon Gold (Done in 4:39!)
• Pokémon Sapphire (Done in 11:57!)
• Pokémon Diamond/Pearl (Done, minus the E4 due to a software crash, in 11 hours)
• Pokémon Black (Done in 5:57!)
  Total time: ~41:30

Who are you donating to?

The Pokémarathon is driving donations to Mercy Corps, a non-profit currently running several online benefits for Japan. It’s easy to set up a donation page, so individual fundraisers don’t need to mess with Paypal, pledges or transactions. Their widgets and share features take care of it for you.

For more information about where donations to MercyCorps go, visit their Japan Earthquake Relief homepage.

How do I watch? And how do I donate?

You can watch, chat and donate at the following page:

http://www.wavedash.net/pokemon-marathon-for-japan/

If you would like to donate directly, you can use the widget currently sitting in the sidebar.

Our heart goes out to the victims and their families. Hopefully we gamers can continue to band together and provide assistance. Thanks to Jason, UTDZac and the rest of the crew for putting this event together, and thank you to everyone participating in the chat.

You’re at a party and a stranger smiles at you. What do you do?

You smile back. Maybe you say hi. Maybe you wink. Then you introduce yourself and shake their hand. You present some acknowledgement that opens the connection. Then you both move on – it’s a party, after all.

The amazing part comes later in the party. Even if you went there without knowing anyone, so long as you return every smile, you can walk up to those people at any time and strike up a conversation. Even better: they will walk up to you and strike up a conversation.

Building an online community works the same way.

One of the most important tools in a Community Manager’s kit is availability. This is what makes you different from the marketing department. It’s what separates you from being strictly customer service. It transforms you into QA’s secret weapon.

When people talk to you, talk to them.

Some Ways Community Managers Make Themselves Available

• Responding to Facebook messages
• Accepting friend requests
• Following fans on Twitter
• Following up in forum threads
• Answering @replies

The emphasis here is on interacting after the initial contact. You can’t conceivably reach out to every player, nor can you launch into a deep conversation in every email chain. But you can respond in such a way that shows you’re listening.

Proving that you’re listening is often more important than what you say back. It proves that you’re present, and leads to more people being willing to strike up a conversation.

Boundaries Are Still Important

Respond as much as possible, but keep your goals in sight. If you make yourself too available with no overall strategy, then you will get overwhelmed with short interactions that don’t benefit anyone.

Even worse, you’ll set the expectation level too high, and people start getting angry that you don’t respond to 100% of your Facebook pokes.

An example: I always accept friend requests from players. Simply responding to these requests gives me a direct line to communicating with our influencers. It takes on a Twitter-like style, where I can post a status update about a new feature or a bug, and immediately receive feedback. It also creates Pulse for me to check – their game-related posts appear in my feed, so I can check on overall sentiment at any time.

The downside? I now receive a significant number of Facebook messages regarding in-game bugs and issues. While this is great in many ways, direct messages are woefully ineffecient for us when tracking and resolve bugs. For problem resolution, our forums have much better tools.

It also frustrates people when they send me a message, and I’m unable to respond.

To fix this, I make sure to establish expectations early and often. When a player contacts me about a bug, I still respond – but I ask them to make a forum thread and forward it to me. This way I’m still establishing that connection, and our workflow is maintained, and I’m not struggling to keep track of a dozen private messages. I also post status updates that remind my friends that the best way to get in touch with us is through the forums and email.

Return the Smiles

Once players start reaching out to connect with your Community team, you have received a gift. Every connection puts you in a position to take advantage of serendipity. You’ll observe new behaviors in your game, or you’ll randomly come across a hugely influential and interesting Fan Page you never knew about.

This takes time, and the benefits aren’t immediately apparent. What’s the difference between closing a dozen bug reports, and adding a dozen Facebook friends? The former has an immediate benefit, and the latter just leads to more work. Now you’re getting status updates, wall posts and Facebook messages that don’t factor into your daily duties.

But you’re also now exposed to new kinds of information. Once your players are reaching out to you, your interactions take on greater value.

That’s a good thing.

Image by Borderlys

Today, 4-16-10, is Foursquare Day. Rejoice, Foursquare users! (Foursquarers? Foursquares? Foursies?) Finally, you have a day of celebration where you can attend parties filled with Foursquare users. And earn a special badge. Also, you can check in to places. And stuff.

If you’re neither a Foursquare user nor a social media news junkie, you probably have no idea what that means. In fact, to the non-koolaid-drinker, the idea of a Global Social Media Holiday is exactly the kind of self-indulgent narcissism that is “wrong” with Social Media. Can you do that? Can you just… declare a holiday? And then get thousands of people to celebrate it?

Yep. You can now. And for online communities it’s really, really smart.

According to the official Foursquare Day website, here’s how it started:

Nate [Bonilla-Warford] is amused by simple number relationships like squares and primes and he makes a big deal about Pi Day each year. The thought struck him that since four-squared equals 16, it would be great to check into Foursquare on the 4^th 16^th of the year, otherwise known as 4 / 16 or April 16^th.

Nate floated the idea on Foursquare’s Getsatisfaction.com forum on March 12, 36 days before April 16th. An entire week passed with no activity before Kenneth Glanton suggested a Foursquare Day badge. He shared the idea with many of his friends on Twitter. Prompted by Ken’s enthusiasm and the recent excitement over Foursquare’s success at SXSW, Nate wrote up the Foursquare Day proposal and started a Facebook event on March 22, with 25 days left.

Nate then joined forces with Laura Petrolino and Jessica Barnet, which led to the creation of a Facebook Fan Page, multiple blog posts, and an official Foursquare Day Twitter account.

The idea took off. Users are hosting over 150 events all over the world today. Users. Not Foursquare. The Foursquare users. Foursquare Day is grassroots community building at its finest.

This is different than a corporation hosting hundreds of mini events. With social media, average users now have the ability to coordinate a network of simultaneous events. An influential blogger will suggest an idea, that idea gets put in motion, and then hundreds of people around the country think “wow, that sounds fun” and duplicate it.

For another example, look at mommy bloggers. Mom’s Nite Out started in similar fashion, with influential blogger Maria Bailey suggesting a national “night off” for moms to get together and have fun.

From the official Mom’s Nite Out website:

The National Mom’s Nite Out is the first nationally organized celebration of motherhood Intended to bring together today’s moms, physically and virtually, The National Mom’s Nite Out will unite over 150 social media groups, companies, local playgroups, mommy bloggers and mother social networks in giving moms a well deserved night off.

It worked. Hundreds of events popped up around the country. Power members among the mommy blogger community took it upon themselves to host them. “Hey, is anything going on in New York City? No? Ok, I’ll host one!” This led to a trickle down effect as more bloggers and readers followed suit.

Live events have a dramatic effect on your online community. When your users are the ones empowered to host live events for like-minded people, it multiplies that effect exponentially. They create a positive feedback loop, not only by instilling a strong sense of camraderie, but also by exposing your community to non-members in a fun and interesting way. How many people who don’t watch football attend Super Bowl parties?

This is exactly the kind of emergent behavior that Foursquare needs to target in order to melt faces.

Viral live events have a profound impact on gaming communities, too. Just look at any video game that has a robust grassroots tournament scene. Almost always, these tournaments developed in the living rooms of average gamers. They invited others to play, who in turn invited others to play, and so on until suddenly you have 6-figure prizes and rockstar professional gamers.

The lesson: powerful viral growth happens offline.

We’ve been experimenting with using Twitter at live game tournaments. Already it’s proved extremely useful for delivering match results which, coupled with Livestreaming, bring real-time updates of your event to those not in attendance. Several corporate tournaments use Twitter to fantastic effect – for instance, Magic: The Gathering’s live event coverage is a thing of sheer beauty. But while the big players in eSports have adopted Twitter, grassroots tournaments have not. To help, here are 5 ways to instantly improve your Twitter feed during a live event.

Aside: for this article, let’s say we’re hosting an aptly-named Super Smash Bros. tournament called the “Best Official Awesome Smash Tournament,” or BOAST.

Hosting an event entirely unrelated to grassroots gamingt? These practices still help! This is the best way I’ve found to organize a complex, constantly-updated Twitter stream for events that need to disseminate lots of information quickly. The goal is to create a feed that immerses your Twitter followers while also engaging your event attendees.

1) Use consistent formatting when reporting results.

Keep things clear and consistent in your results. You can add more tweets to pump up excitement, but the results needs to be as easy to read as possible. Include the screen name and a clear verb. You can always add another Tweet (perhaps on your primary account – more on that later) designed to stoke a frenzy about an upset. But when reporting results, keep it clear and consistent, in the same format every time.

• Bad: “OMG Logic got beat. DrDrew is too good!”
• Good: “DrDrew beats Logic”

Decide your verbs in advance. “DrDrew beats Logic” means something different than “DrDrew eliminates Logic”. In a double elimination bracket, you’ll be using both. “Beats” when talking about the Winners Bracket, and “Eliminates” when talking about the Losers Bracket.

Results will be coming at you fast, so don’t get bogged down in too much information. When streaming tournament results, all you need is Noun Verbs Noun.

If you’re using Twitter to announce active matches, provide all the necessary information for people to watch it. If it’s on a livestream, include the link. If not, include the station where they are playing.

But wait! Results? Announcements? Livestream links? How do you keep all of this crazy information organized?

2) Use #hashtags to organize your content

During your live event, hashtags serve two functions: to label your content for quick scanning, and to organize your feed. If someone is only interested in 1v1 results, they can search for it. Also, followers will know at a glance whether your update is a player interview or a livestream announcement.

• Bad: DrDrew is playing Logic on the livestream!
• Good: Now streaming: DrDrew vs Logic! #Livestream http://bit.ly/link

Keep your hashtags short and simple. #1v1, #2v2, etc. The longer the hashtag, the less room you have for the announcement – and even less for retweeting.

Hashtags are especially handy if you’re running more than one tournament at a time. They allow your followers to filter your content based on what game is being played.

Hashtags to consider:

• Tournament format – #1v1, #2v2, #CTF
• Game name – #Smash, #SF4, #Tek, #WoW, #Halo (remember: shorter is better!)
• Content type – #LiveStream, #Live, #Stream, #Podcast, #Interview, #News, #Nowplaying

Then, select an official hashtag for your event. Tell all of your followers and attendees about this hashtag, and encourage them to use it while tweeting. For our sample tournament, we’ll use #BOAST.

The official hashtag encourages engagement both with your attendees and your followers. Make sure you retweet great comments that use your hashtag. Promoting your followers is a good thing! And, it further builds buzz about your event.

Bonus Tip: Brightkite Wall lets you create a live “wall” of filtered Twitter results. Set it to full screen and hook your computer up to a TV/projector, and you have a live, real-time display of your Twitter account and #event hashtag. You can use it as a display board for what’s going on (creating a live brochure), or as a way to encourage everyone at the event to participate in the Twitter stream.

3) Respond to and retweet people that are talking about your event

I mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. If someone at the event tweets “Big name player is playing other big name player!”, retweet them. If someone NOT at your event tweets how excited they are, or if they just saw something cool on your livestream, point it out.

Of course, follow good retweeting practices.

When applicable, add a hashtag or link that explains what they are discussing.

The primary purpose of your livetweeting is to provide a service for your followers. But, this is Twitter. Even on event day you want to be promoting yourself, followers and conversations. Get people to join in, and then reward them.

4) Make an Event-Day Twitter Plan

Don’t just go into The Big Day with the intent to tweet the hell out of it. Figure out what information is most valuable to your followers. Are you targeting the people at your event? Or are you targeting everyone NOT at your event? (Hint: you should be doing both.)

Your Twitter stream serves two purposes: for people at home to know what’s going on (and spread the word – “Hey, check out the live stream!”), and as a live program guide for those in attendance to figure out what to do next.

Keeping a live Twitter up-to-date is constant work. If you’re flush with volunteers, make sure you have enough social media help. And, make sure they know what to do.

Do not assign Twitter duties to the poor soul running your bracket software! Ideally, you’ll have someone with enough availability to be constantly feeding links, results and updates. If not, you’ll have to spread responsibility around.

This means you need to have a concrete plan, and you need to communicate that plan to your volunteers. Are they expected to post live results as they come in? In what format? Do they know about your hashtags? Will your venue have internet, or are you updating via cellphone?

And finally, are all of your social media assets, such as your Facebook page and Justin.TV account, integrated with Twitter?

5) Create an alternate Twitter account for live events.

People don’t like spammed-up Twitter feeds. No, you’re not splitting your market. You’re not cannibalizing your followers. If you have marketed your event’s Twitter to provide news, updates, contests and conversations, then you probably have a lot of followers interested only in the occasional update. On the day of your event, when you’re spamming 30 updates an hour, they will unfollow you. Fast.

Create a new account, and keep it on brand. In our example, we have twitter accounts “@BOAST” and “@BOAST_Live”.

Promote the new account beforehand. Make sure all of your followers and attendees know about it. If you’re creating a landing page, the live account is the one you attach to it.

Don’t neglect your primary account! Crosspost your biggest news there. Remind your followers that you’re hosting a kick-ass tournament that day. Say “Hey, follow @BOAST_live for live updates from BOAST!”

Good luck

It’s a beast to keep up with, but once you train your team and put in the preparation, you’ll have a fantastic compliment to your livestreams, liveblogs, Flickr pools and other social media assets.

I started this blog as more of a scratchboard. A placeholder for ideas spread across various interests, including fiction, copywriting, creative agency life, social media, online community building, and video games. The old tagline, “Writing, Gaming and Brazen Geekery” expressed this.

As a personal project, that’s fine. As a blog? Ineffective.

Now I have a subject. For the past several months I’ve been diving back into online community management and social media management, with a particular focus on gaming communities. It’s a subject I’ve been immersed in for almost a decade. I’m good at it, and I love it. So, as a start to a new personal brand, Wavedash.net is relaunching.

What is a Wavedash?

From SmashWiki:

A wavedash is a technique in Melee that causes a character to slide along the ground without walking or running. It transfers the momentum of the air dodge into a spurt of ground-based movement. Like l-canceling and Short Hopping, wavedashing is considered an advanced technique, and one of the first techniques smashers learn when they train for tournaments.

How’s that for confusing? Wavedashing is a technique used in Super Smash Bros. Melee to move without changing direction. It lets you do standing attacks while moving. You can do it out of a shield. You can use it to change the way you land after jumping. It’s considered the gateway to advanced play: wavedashing doesn’t make you good, but because of the complex hand motions it requires, learning it puts you on the path to competitive play. It’s like learning about foreshortening when painting.

There’s a reason why this site is called Wavedash. The technique is an example of emergence in a gaming community, facilitated by modern technology. At the time, thousands of Smashers were talking strategy on one website, Smashboards.com. They shared techniques, exploits and crazy bugs. At the same time, all of these gamers from all over the world voluntarily began hosting tournaments. They created their own meetups, shared ideas and evangelized the game to their friends.

Bear in mind that this was already years after SSBM had been released.

Wavedashing was the first truly “advanced” technique that Smashers collectively identified. It’s an exploit of the phsyics engine. It doesn’t exist anywhere in the rulebook. Nintendo has never spoken the word out loud. But if you wanted to compete in the dozens of tournaments popping up, you learned to wavedash.

Since then, wavedashing has taken on a bad rap. Casual players talk about banning it. Funny thing is, it doesn’t actually do anything. It’s not a powerful strategy. Some top players don’t use it at all. But it’s become so synonymous with competitive play that it represents the entire competitive Smash community, complete with rules, philosophies and strategies that are anathema to the casual.

I’m fascinated by this emergence. The Internet has created a way for fans of a game to connect and have conversations. This leads to completely new rules that the designers never foresaw. More importantly, it leads to the creation of a frothing enthusiastic fanbase that promotes the game. With zero support from Nintendo, the Wavedashers made the competitive Smash community into one of the largest for any game on any platform.

This is Grassroots Gaming

Esports like MLG and NVGA have finally taken off. Game companies the world over have identified the value in having a dedicated community. “Community Manager” and “Social Media Manager” are both real job titles. Just look at Bungie, Blizzard, Valve and a dozen other developers who have given their fans a place to play. It translates to real dollars.

Grassroots gaming is different. It’s the holy grail that all of these companies, from the competitive league to the publisher, want to grab. It combines the hardcore fervor of competitive play with the friendly frolicking of social media.

In short, “grassroots gaming” is about harnessing emergence to turn fans into community builders. It’s about tapping the casual fan as well as the hardcore, and exciting them about getting their friends to play. It’s part word of mouth, part marketing, part community management, and part chaos.

There’s the Wavedash wheelhouse. Welcome.