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WIP Sprints: Common goal + deadline. Thoughts?
There's a new WIP feature I've been contemplating. Would love your feedback!
The idea is to pick a topic each month and we all work on todos related to that topic. For example, one month the topic might be "SEO". At the start of the month we share our SEO-related goals, throughout the month we share our daily updates, and at the end of the month we present our progress.
We could kick off the month with a WIP Hangout where we invite a domain expert sharing their insights and helpful tips. Throughout the month we not only share our todos, but also have a central place to discuss questions, best practices, tips and tricks, etc. At the end of the month we summarize our progress and findings. This could be through long-form posts here on the website, or through another WIP Hangout where a selection of participants share their insights.
Every month we could have a new "sprint". You can participate if that month's topic is relevant to you or sit it out if you're focused on other tasks.
The goal behind it is to 1) give you a deadline to work on important stuff that might otherwise go by the wayside (marketing… anyone?), 2) leverage the WIP community to more quickly learn together versus having to do it all on your own, 3) get domain experts onboard by providing them a captive audience (versus doing a random hangout where people may not necessarily be interested in the topic).
What do you think? Would you participate? Is monthly a good time period? What topics would you be interested in? What format would you like?
The idea is to pick a topic each month and we all work on todos related to that topic. For example, one month the topic might be "SEO". At the start of the month we share our SEO-related goals, throughout the month we share our daily updates, and at the end of the month we present our progress.
We could kick off the month with a WIP Hangout where we invite a domain expert sharing their insights and helpful tips. Throughout the month we not only share our todos, but also have a central place to discuss questions, best practices, tips and tricks, etc. At the end of the month we summarize our progress and findings. This could be through long-form posts here on the website, or through another WIP Hangout where a selection of participants share their insights.
Every month we could have a new "sprint". You can participate if that month's topic is relevant to you or sit it out if you're focused on other tasks.
The goal behind it is to 1) give you a deadline to work on important stuff that might otherwise go by the wayside (marketing… anyone?), 2) leverage the WIP community to more quickly learn together versus having to do it all on your own, 3) get domain experts onboard by providing them a captive audience (versus doing a random hangout where people may not necessarily be interested in the topic).
What do you think? Would you participate? Is monthly a good time period? What topics would you be interested in? What format would you like?
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I like the overall idea of having "sprints" and deadline. Makes me think of bit of gamification and pomodoro. I think the topic element could simply be an overall community thing rather than a sprint one. For the format, I see it as a sprint as the "umbrella" and then the todos as the tasks, that would keep it a bit more effortless to categorize it and see the progress.
I participate in something similar through Caveday (except we set our own goals and put a monetary punishment if we don't finish) and through my own community (more focused, shared goals, but it's currently limited to Mt expertise).
I love the idea of bringing in experts to fill in the gaps.
Would you have the capacity to run 2 or 3 different sprints (topics) per month so people have a choice which they participate in?
Also, does WIP have a poll feature to vote on topics?
I think it's a great idea. I joined this indie game dev collective, and they have 3 month builds and at the end release together with newsletter to get more new people exposure: tinymassgames.itch.io/
Beautiful idea.
And I’d say 6 weeks. (37signals.com/06)
More than enough time to build something meaningful, leaves a bit more room for experimenting, adjusting, and hopefully share much higher quality lessons within the community.
I like the idea. Most of the time, when I do SEO or other Marketing things, I don't actually know if they would work, or even if I'm on the right track.
Having people to talk to would definitely help alleviate the self doubt.
PS @marc I've been a marketer (specializing in content and SEO) since 2008 and a brand strategist (focusing mostly on audience research, messaging, and storytelling) + copywriter (sales pages and emails) since 2017. I've even created ad campaigns for companies but don't do that anymore.
I might not know a lot of the tech things, but I definitely know marketing. Feel free to do with that what you will :)
I love the motivation behind this idea but in my case I'm not even at the point where I can think about SEO, so I wouldn't be able to participate in that particular topic.
My personal preference (which would be more complicated to implement) would be to have some kind of individual and/or team events where the goal is to put in a certain number of hours per day/week on your project, with some kind of verification mechanism that people aren't faking the activity or working on bullshit projects (what jumps out at me is having the community agree that your project is 'real' and then having a tracker/screenshot tool like Hubstaff/Upwork with clicks/keypresses/etc.). So it's a means of motivating people to put time into their projects.