Happy Birthday to Us!!!

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Hello, Challenge Community!!! (cross-posted from our Yahoo site)

Today is our Birthday, and I hope we each have a good one! :)

Challengers officially signed up in our Database will hopefully be
receiving Birthday Cards between now and next Monday night, and I
hope you all enjoy writing them and sharing the joy!

I would like to take a moment while I may to thank those folks on
this [yahoo group] list who have *no intention* of officially becoming Challengers
themselves. You are the observers, the promoters of A&S, the good
gentles who are here to act simply as resources and sounding boards
for our many and diverse projects. You may not be Challengers, but
you are most certainly valued members of our Challenge Community, and
we thank you for being here! :)

As of today, we have 158 members of this Yahoo group Challenge
Community, and 90 people officially signed up for the Challenge in
the database! We also have a *bunch* of local and regional
listserves going, seven Kingdoms have Coordinators, and we have held
meetings at Pennsic, Estrella, and Gulf Wars, as well as at Rowany
Festival in Lochac. Challengers come from 17 out of 19 Kingdoms, and
two sitting members of the Royalty are members of our Community.

The fact that all of this growth has occured in just the one year
since I had a little idea, and wrote about it in a few places,
honestly boggles my mind. I'm so glad we have all found one another!

My present to the Community is a newly updated website (which will be
able to be found at ArtsAndSciences50.org as soon as it spreads
through each internet cache, or whatever they're called), with an
expanded FAQ, and a list of Coordinator contacts and local/regional
listserves. I was hoping to complete an annotated webography of
resources on how to do good documentatation, but it just hasn't
happened yet, sorry. I DID archive and remove all of the technically
awkward forums there though (I'll post them in the files section
here, once I've tidied them up a bit), and I discovered that there
were *quite* a few folks on there who have not yet joined us [on the yahoo site], so
I guess I have tracking them all down as another project to add to my
to-do list!

Anyway, my hopes for us for our second year together include Kingdom
Coordinators for each Kingdom, visible representation for us at each
Inter-Kingdom War, and official Challengers hailing from every
Kingdom. Compared to what we've already accomplished, I feel like
these are more like predictions, than wishes! :)

*I* think we are doing a great job by our motto - "to learn and share
of our learning, to create and share of our creation." When I look
at the posts on [our yahoo] list, I see folks experimenting and discovering,
helping others find sources, both within our Community and beyond,
and I hear reports (and see pictures!) of works in progress, and of
them being exhibitted and entered, and even offered to others. What
more COULD we be doing to share our philosophy with the Knowne
World? (Actually, that's a pretty good question, and I invite your
answers!)

My BIGGEST wish for all of us is simple though - that we all keep on
having **FUN**!!!

Happy Birthday to Us, and ENJOY!
Albreda

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Sewing project

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I want to start looking better for when I am representing the Challenge at events, so I've finally got together everything I need (linen, linen thread, documentation of pattern, stitches and seams) to get cracking on my most period dress to date. Nothing fancy, just a linen under-tunic with 6 gores and armpit gussets, but I am really excited about it! I've done most of the cutting, and am going to embark on the neckline today; wish me luck!

Also,the A&S 50 growth spurt continues: we now have four Kingdom Coordinators, for Northshield, Aethelmearc, Ansteorra, and Lochac; and our fliers seem to have been a big success at Estrella (our yahoo group has grown 50% just this week!)

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Growth Spurt!

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No, I haven't posted since before the holidays. Mea Culpa.

That does NOT however, mean that a) I haven't been busy, or that b) things haven't been happening!

We have a new brochure, which will be distributed at Estrella, possible new Coordinators for several Kingdoms, and, perhaps, someone to run a Session at Gulf Wars!

Folks are joining the listserve every day, and volunteers are actually stepping up to spread the word about the Challenge. I'm VERY excited that others find this a project worth not only putting their own energy into, but their own faces and names and time as well. Happy Dance!

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Surreality and progress

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A dear old friend of my husband's is getting married this weekend in Atlantia (best wishes, Bronzey!), and my husband called to have a nice chat with her and tell her that he couldn't make it. He asked her if she had heard of A&S 50, and she proceeded to describe the project to him in fair detail. Then he told her it was my baby. Too weird.

I have far too much to do this month already, but I thought I should at least write down my to-do list for A&S 50 for 2008:
* establish, once and for all, if the database is editable by users, and find an alternative if it is not (the first half I can probably do now, but the second? Yeah, right.)

* write to the Kingdom MoASes, officially letting them know about the project, and what interested folks should do. Include press releases if folks want to use them in newsletters. (frighteningly, I've had about a half dozen requests!)

* get my stacks of email/paper contact info data uploaded onto the database

* post the files on persona creation, teaching, and documention guidelines to the website (since these seem to be among the few categories of info not already compiled elsewhere on the web).

* personally, work with some new resources I've just got on my persona development (Victoria County Histories ROCK!)

* also personally, pull SOMETHING together to enter into Northern Lights on March 1, while simultaneously putting together the second issue of our new regional newsletter for the same day.

This month though? Getting over the cold I picked up over T-day, finishing issue #1 of the newsletter (Peaks' Progress), finishing a quilt a dear friend asked me to finish for her just before she died so I can give it to her family for Christmas, and, of course, the regular hassles that come with December. Eight years sounds like a really long time, until I see just how much A&S stuff I have NOT gotten accomplished in the almost seven months to date. :\

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Joy!

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Enough folks have asked for the 'how do I run a Session' info that I have put it, and the corresponding Level Number System and Contact Info sheets, in the files section of the Yahoogroups.

I'm going to do my mass database updates (all the paper Contact Info forms I have), and the MOAS letters (to Kingdoms first, then EK MOASes) in January, and with other folks starting to run Sessions, we're just going to keep on growing!

Plans to change out the website are on indefinate hold, since the database on Yahoogroups works great, as does their file system. That said, anyone who wants to help me collect and organize handouts for the website itself is heartily invited to let me know! The one thing we do NOT have between the two systems is a facile threaded forum. Our web guru, Alexandr, has one on our proto-Joomla site, so there IS still motivation to make that happen at some point, but I'm feeling WAY less crunch about it now; unless we get someone on the project who WANTS to do the website (rather than Alexandr who is willing to help me do it), it will probably sit there until either a) our numbers/needs grow big enough that I have a pool of folks to beg for help, or b) we hit the 5 year mark, and my plans for online galleries demand it (if Yahoogroups doesn't have even better functionality by then though, I'll eat my coif!)

And, last but not least, can I just say how darned right spiffy it is read someones blog and see them mention that they are doing this cool thing they are really excited about, and how they are doing it for their A&S 50 Challenge??
Happy Albreda! :D

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Gilding!

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I helped run Mimir's Well this last weekend, and it went really well, for a first time. One of my duties was to recruit teachers, and I begged and pleaded well enough that **4** Scribal Arts teachers came from Aethelmearc to share their wisdom with us, and one of them taught GILDING!!!!

Long-time readers may know that trying gilding with real gold has been one of my Challenge goals from the very beginning, and now I have done it! The real loose leaf wasn't all that different from using the fake loose leaf stuff, but the patent gold is on a paper backing which is just WAY easier to work with, although thinner, so you need to put more layers. Gee shucks. ;) (I loved that part!)

The part that I thought was the absolute NEATEST was trying different period sizes or glues, to get the first layer of gold to stick to the paper/vellum/etc - I tried period gesso, fish glue and garlic juice glue (which stank the most). It was AWESOME, and THL Mea the Bold of Aethelmearc, actually included recipes for all of them in her little booklet that she gave us! She even sent us home with our gold scraps to make shell gold with (mix real gold scraps with gum arabic)!

I learned a bucket, and can tick off another big item off my Challenge wishlist. Hurray!!!! No one came to the A&S 50 meeting, but I had so much to do, I was ok with it. Folks know where to find me anyway...

I also put embroidery, spinning, my first lampworking, and a whole bunch of illumination doodles in the exhibition (which I ran, and which went great!)

Now we're gearing up for next year, and the same teacher says she'll come back and teach how to make both period pigments and period gesso! (She even gifted our local scribes, in the form of me, with a box full of vials of period pigments! OOOOOHHH!!! I can't WAIT to try those out with the crew!!!! Mea - you ROCK!!!)

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Database Bliss!

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Ok, so it isn't on the website, but we actually now have a searchable database for our Contact Info! Hurray! It is on the Yahoogroup site, and is working well. :)

I'm really excited about this, since a) it has been a real thorn in my side, and b) I feel that this is really the heart of the infrastructure that I can provide folks - the ability to discover and forge relationships with others who share their passions and who want to share their interests with others, across the shire, or across the Knowne World. Joy!

The new website may be, well, the old website, but just with more stuff. With the yahoogroup handling both the threaded forum and the database, I'm just not feeling the need to keep pulling my hair out over Joomla. I'm hoping we'll get a flashier site eventually, but the rush is OFF! Hurray!

And good timing, too. My husband, Owyn, had hernia surgery last week, and I'm helping to run our fist shire A&S and War College (Mimir's Well, see mountainfreehold.org for details) this weekend, including doing all of the scheduling, a solid majority of the recruiting (indluding 4 OOK C&I teachers!), I'm running both the exhibition and the youth program, AND I'm running an A&S 50 session, natch! ;)

(I REALLY want to go to the gilding class I begged for someone to come teach, but probably won't get to.... ::pout::)

Not having the lack of a workable database hanging over my head is going to make for a MUCH nicer holiday season. I might even make some art! :P

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Over and Under

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No, not weaving patterns, just over and under estimating the new website; underestimating how frustrating Joomla can be (how dumb is it that it doesn't automatically make text fit the space assigned to it?) and overestimating how much time my kids will allow me to work on it.

I know we have 7.5 years still, but I'm hoping that the Challenge will grow, and I *really* want us to have the infrastructure to grow into when we do. Websites just aren't my forte, and I'm donig my best not to let that stand in our way...

In better Challenge news, group projects are well underway, and overcoming fear of entering displays/competitions are forming an entire Challenge for another individual. Wow, wow, wow. I love hanging out with inspiring people!

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Canterbury Report and Recovery

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Well, Wrong Way reports that Canterbury went very well (she got her Kingdom level Service award too, Congrats!) - and that a bunch of folks came by the A&S 50 booth, and that most of them were already on-board with the Challenge. Hurray! She also said that lots of other folks were interested in attending, but too busy RUNNING the event to get to attend. She plans to hold A&S 50 Sessions at some of their local events this fall, to give everyone a chance to get involved. All in all, good things! Thank you, Teresa Wrong Way Giani!

As it turns out, it was a VERY good call for me not to attend the event - I got sicker, my husband was down for 24 hours, and both of my kids got it too. Then we had a massive 'pack away that stuff from Pennsic, we have a houseguest coming' cleanup, and then he came, and it was wonderful, but tiring! My house looks FAR nicer, but the website? Not so much. I'm still recovering from it all, but hope to pick up the pace considerably this weekend, including a conference call with our webguru, Alaxandr. My goal at this point is to have the site up for Oct 1. It probably won't have either the forums or the Contact List database or its front end up yet, but every journey begins with a single step. Did you know that walking is considered to be a form of controlled falling? Sounds about right!

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How NOT to infect 50 people

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I'm really bummed out, but it looks like I'm not going to Canterbury afterall; I'm sick. :( The A&S 50 Session WILL be happening though, with Teresa of the Wrong Way Giani running it! Hurray! (I LOVE LOVE LOVE adaptable people who can take something on at the last minute and run with it! I will also admit to being nervous about the first time someone else runs a session, but my trepidation is WAY down, now that I know that first person is going to be Wrong Way!)

I AM still really bummed out, though. I wanted to go the event, for starters - it looks REALLY cool (and I even dug around and found out that my sideless surcoats - made for Viking stuff - would have been tolerably ok for 14th Century!) - and I was looking forward to trying the Artisan's Row concept too. :( Hopefully they'll hold the event again next year, and I can get a second chance at it?

Oh well, at least the Session will still be happening at what I'm sure will be a VERY happening event! Hurray! Hmmm... maybe I can drag my laptop into bed with me and make some more progress on the website... presuming that my computer can't pick up my virus! ;)

To all of you heading to Canterbury this weekend, ENJOY! (and tell me all about it, so I can live vicariously!)

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Artisan's Row

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I've been invited to present A&S 50 as part of an Artisan's Row at Crossroads to Canterbury this weekend, and, since the offer included use of someone's pop-up tent and the assurance that my lack of 14th Cent or even *period* chairs/tables, etc will be no problem, I accepted.

How it goes, I'll tell you next week! I'm going to bring some modern chairs and card tables (yuck) and I need to find more table cloths and blankets to throw over things so they look better. I'm going to have flowers on the table (if I remember to buy them!) and I'm hoping to do some baking later this week so we have munchies and lemonade during our chats. I'm going to have Contact List sheets and my spinning and an open door. That and an actual Session on the schedule (right before Court, but that couldn't be helped; maybe they'll run late), and that's all. I'm hoping folks will be dropping by over the course of the weekend; using the space to schmooze, hold informal mini-lessons, talk A&S, get excited and comfy.

It should be interesting! We are even going to try and camp right behind the booth so I can be in the booth and near my kids while they nap at the same time. I've never merchanted before, so sleeping 'on the strip' will be a new experience for me - I hope my girls don't make a ruckus at 3 AM and tick everyone off! Fortunately, my husband isn't fighting in the tourney, so he can help with the girls. I'm not going to be at the booth all of the time, just 'live' there. I'm hoping that folks are interested, but I might have to have 'hours' when I am open, just so I can get a break between waiting for folks to drop by.

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Progress!

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Forward momentum is officially happening! I've been working on our new site, both structure and content, and even - gasp - got into the studio yesterday, and set my first ever 14th Cent sleeves! (It was on an undergown, and I doubt I'll get an actual dress done for Crossroads to Canterbury, ie next weekend, so I probably won't even get to wear it, but *still*! And heck - it counts as a new thing too!!!)

And did I mention yet that we have a Yahoogroup now? Hurray! Folks are finding it, and are *starting* to chat some, so I'm feeling a bit less like things are languishing now. Random emails about folks' progress on their Challenges keep coming in, too, which can only be a good sign! :)

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Joomla Blues

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I have a book. I have a host (hurray, Alexandr!) I even have some templates, and I rudimentary understanding of how modules work.

What I do NOT have is the gist of how to enter our data into the CMS itself... I know I am missing something really basic here; maybe I need some chocolate first.

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Butt in Gear

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I've been trying to motivate since I got back from a family vacation on Tuesday. Note the word 'trying.' My girls have been grumpy/growth-spurting, and I'm splitting my remaining energy between catching up on my email/A&S 50 stuff and (finally) babyproofing our living room (the girls have had a bedroom size baby yard until now).

But today I WILL srite up that outline for our web guru, so we can get the ball rolling on the domain transfer. The public side of the project is much languishing right now for lack of the new site, so today I start to change that.

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Growing Pains

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Well, we have an honest-to-God Web Guru helping get our new site up and running now, and he is even thinking of offering us FREE hosting - Joy! The downside? He says that transferring the domain name may take WEEKS.

Ok, ok, the forums are hardly *jumping*, but I better be able to figure out how to archive that data (namely those introductions!) so I can put it up, as is, on the new site. Meanwhile, this blog will be IT for the Challenge. Folks will be able to comment here (gasp), and I supposed I could put up a copy of the intro letter here for new folks who want to take a peak, but OY; talk about a long detour to a better highway!

Anyway, we have to figure out what we're doing first, so we're good for the meantime. I'll let you all know when things get rolling!

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Getting Stuck In

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I've been home from War and the Pity Party/Post-Revel for about 20 hours now, and I've spent my day alternately working on web design issues and playing Civ 4 when I got frustrated with the former. Unpacking? Yeah, right.

I've gotten SIX people who have said that they'd help with website/database stuff, but I have to know what to ask them to help WITH, so I'm learning and diagramming, and panicing some more. I need nested pages, a new hosting service that I can't afford, forms and database to go with them for contact info entry, and, if possible, better forums (the ones we have are ok, just not great.)

I have a STACK of contact info data to enter, and I just really don't want to have to do it twice, plus my main web guru is really only available to help for the next 10 days, so I'm hopeful that we can get something accomplished in that time, and I can enter it all once on the NEW site, and be done with it. Content for that new site, including guidelines for running sessions, will be coming shortly thereafter, the guidelines by the end of the month for sure, even if I have to put them up on the old site, or even here, if the transition takes more than a couple of days.

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Hi ho hi ho its off to War we go...

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Well, if we make it out of here before dark, I'll be happy. My stint as summer school teacher ends today, and I have NOT been able to prepare for War as much/as well as I would have liked. My girls don't have enough garb, and neither do I (not having been to War since before I had my girls means much of my garb no longer fits), and I haven't had the time to prep the history component of my Tapestry class as I wanted to (I still have the techniques part complete though, and that's the bulk of the class).

I suppose that no one is EVER completely ready for War, but with working the day I'm leaving for the first time (I give exams in an hour), AND taking children for the first time, AND, honestly, handing over of much of my control over the packing process to my husband... well, I'm nervous. I'm confident that we'll all survive as long as the weather stays reasonable, but otherwise? All bets are off.

One thing that I'm fairly certain will turn out ok? The A&S 50 meeting! Hurray! Hope to see you there - Mon, Aug 6, in AS 6, at 7 PM!!!

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Pre-pennsic lull (thank the gods)

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It is a really good thing that the pre-pennsic activity lull is almost as well understood as Scadian time, or I'd be doomed. This is my last week teaching summer school, we have family coming in from out of town (to stay and catch an early flight), and, of course, the inevitable last minute sewing and packing for Pennsic.

As a result, the Challenge is taking a back seat for a week. I've got about a dozen folks to put on the contact list, and a Challenge to do list almost as long as my Pennsic sewing list, but it is just going to have to wait for late August.

Things on my Challenge to-do list include:
*FAQ
*Press release (so folks can stop copying the site's ENTIRE front page!)
*contact list update
*figure out/beg someone to help with getting contact info in a form system
*work on Laurel list (some day!)
*mass email folks from previous sessions about publishing their contact info
*write up details on how to run A&S 50 sesssions so others can start doing so
*work up organizational structure for the whole project
*remember, whenever I get too bogged down in the administration of it, that this Challenge is supposed to be fun, and go and do some of my own art to prove it...

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The Buzz

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I've been hearing from lots of folks that they have been hearing about the Challenge on List X or Blog Y, so I googled the Challenge and read some blogs. Wow. Folks are copying the entire front page off the website into their blogs and newsletters. Folks are talking and talking and talking about this. Folks are feeling oddly guilty if they are NOT doing the Challenge.

Yikes.

One thing came up that I really feel needs addressing though; someone said that they didn't see the point in 'banging out' 50 things for some arbitrary target. I couldn't agree more! Our motto isn't "do 50 things and be done with it," but "to learn and share of our learning, and to create and share of our creation." If folks aren't taking, as their 50, those things that will *take their work to the next level,* well, I just feel like they are cheating themselves.

Likewise, the SHARING part of the Challenge is critical - any of us can work on 50 things in isolation, and feel good about it, but we'd miss the Community aspects of the Challenge - shared passion, shared discovery, shared support. Sometimes we'll be of equal experience, and can learn together; other times we can mentor each other, and, as my mother likes to say, we often find out what we do NOT know by trying to teach someone else, so everyone benefits in these relationships too. It is our Community that is our greatest strength, and the part that makes the SCA work - I doubt we'd be approaching AS 50 if we didn't love getting together so much...

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I need a team!

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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!

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