I need a team!

I'm thinking about how best to organize folks for the continueing development of the Challenge, and I'm working with a team model. One team for each Kingdom, an Admin team, and a team comprised of some of the heavy hitters of each of the others for Inter-Kingdom events and our big capstone exhibitions.

I'm also thinking about a timeline, with benchmark goals along the way, both to keep folks motivated, and to keep us all on track. I'm thinking that some big shindigs for "5 'til 50" would be a close enough goal that we could really start working on stuff now, rather than putting off the ideas of 'bigtime' for another five years or so, and would be ending just in time for us to start gearing up for 2015.

I'm staggered that I am already feeling such a heavy need for an administrative team. I just don't know enough about web based data entry and community software applications to solve some issues I see on the horizon: I can't keep inputting everyone's contact info in by hand (we need a form), we may need to move to a different forum provider (since I think this one could get chaotic fast), and I'm even a bit frustrated with my current CMS (I can't seem to nest pages; they either exist and are listed on the front page, or they can't exist, and even then they have numberstring URLs). I just don't know this stuff, and, quite frankly, don't have time to learn it - the backlog by the time I did would kill me, and probably the project. Momentum is everything, and right now the site is getting over 100 hits a day - I daren't do anything but keep on going for now, hoping for help. I'm going to post a note in the tech issues forum asking for assistants, and we'll see where that lands us.

I'm also forseeing needing help just keeping up with everything; even if a task is something that I DO know how to do, that doesn't mean that I have TIME - uploading pdfs, answering questions (I'm working on an FAQ, which should help enormously), keeping track of session records, moderating our online community, etc. I just can't do everything myself, and these are all opportunities for others to get more involved anyway, so why not let them?

Fortunately, I think that folks will be pretty understanding when I vanish for 2 weeks later this month - Pennsic is upon us, and I've gotten nothing done for it! I have expanded my tapestry class to 2 hours, and need to finish collecting my materials for that (including finishing my new loom, darn it!), I still have some warmer tunics and lighter pants to sew for my girls (and I dream of doing a period-cut dress for myself so I'm not teaching in t-tunics again!), and packing? Yeah, right. To top it off, I'm giving my final exam the day we are supposed to be leaving for the 13 hour drive, so... this should be interesting!

Coming home to my inbox afterward is looking like it is going to be even moreso!