[sun surfer]

Alright, next I’ll present an idea for how to arrange next year’s categories considering this will be the last with Region and Time Period in their current forms and so some may (or may not) want more of those. It has a few different steps to it, and if we use it then this would be considered a ‘special’ year and we’d return to a more normal schedule the following year.

Rotating Nominations Break

First is the idea of finishing out our current Rotating Nominations cycle and then taking a break from it until the end of the year, with the expectation that we would restart a new Rotating cycle back up the following year. This will give us more months to work with other categories for this year in particular, and so if we want more Region or Time Period months then there’s more room for them.

However, for this to be effective we would need to know ahead of time how many months are freed up and so we’d need to fill up the rest of the Rotating months in the cycle, well, now. Bookpossum had already thought of the possibility of asking for volunteers ahead of time even when everything is running normally. I took that idea and applied it here; the way I envision it working for this year would be, during this month of June, to go ahead and have everyone who still wants to volunteer for a month in this Rotating cycle to do so (ahead of time). Three members are already ineligible for the rest of this cycle because they’ve already volunteered- fantasyfan, bfisher and Bookpossum. Everyone else is still eligible.

We would, during June, take it one month at a time beginning with a volunteer for August, then for October and so on. We’d ask for a volunteer and give so many days (for instance five) for someone to volunteer for the future month. Once someone volunteers, we move on to the next future Rotating month and ask for a volunteer and again give the same amount of time. We continue this until no one volunteers for a future month, or until we fill up all the possible Rotating months for next year. If we get to a month where no one volunteers, then we will stop asking for volunteers and consider that month and the other subsequent future Rotating months in the year ‘freed up’ to use for other categories. Because we’ll be planning in advance and won’t need a ‘buffer’ month in between cycles, we therefore won’t have a Retrospective month at the end of this Rotating cycle should we use this plan. Otherwise, Rotating months will run the same and for those future filled months we will ask for that month’s volunteer to share their list on the first as usual. If we happen to fill up all six possible Rotating months for the next year, then nothing will change from the norm except for filling the months with volunteers ahead of time.

The hope here is that by doing it this way we will end up with at least a few extra months free this year to use for other categories. However, we always love to have as many Rotating volunteers as possible so should the year be filled up with six volunteers then that is also great.

Categories Nominations

Next we would have categories nominations. It would be similar to last year except for one big thing. If we had members nominate two categories each for a later possible vote, then we’d have to pick a specific amount of months to fill by the vote, which doesn’t fit with the objective of this special year (being to add in extra Region and Time Period months if wanted to empty months). So, a better idea for this year would be to allow each member to nominate one category.

This category would automatically become a category for next year, no vote needed. Once the nomination period is over, all nominated categories would be given months on next year’s schedule. Then, all the remaining months, however many there are, would be filled with Time Period and Region categories.

This would allow each member to ensure their favourite category makes it to next year while also (hopefully) giving us room for extra Time Period and Region before they are gone. There will (obviously) be a few caveats here. The nominated categories should be normal ones we’ve used before. Though we love everyone interested participating in the club, since these categories would move on to becoming a month automatically, we’d have to ask that only those who have participated in at least a few months recently nominate categories for this special year. And finally, should someone want even more Region or Time Period this year than the leftover empty months would give, they are allowed to nominate either one as their category nomination (or they can simply not nominate a category leaving one more empty month to fill, which would be the same difference).

Here is one example of how things could go: If four people volunteer for Rotating months, that would fill up August, October, December and February but leave the normal Rotating months of April and June freed up for other categories. If four people then nominate other categories for next year, that would fill up four more months, giving us eight filled months so far. Then we’d have four months left over which would be filled with two Region and two Time Period months.

I’d say that is a median example of what may happen. We could end up with more Region and Time Period months, or less. We could even end up with none, if enough people volunteer for Rotating months and nominate other categories. The range of possibilities is anywhere from nine Region and Time Period months (as there are nine options left total within the two categories- seven regions and two time periods) to none at all. It will depend on how many more people volunteer for Rotating months this cycle and how many people nominate categories that aren’t Region or Time Period. So this would really be a good way for us to decide as a group how much room to give to Time Period and Region for their final outings.

Conclusion

So, what do all of you think?

We would need to start soon to allow enough time to finish up by the end of this month.