Hosting is fun! It has three phase: (1) announcement, (2) selecting the top 5 from those submitted, and (3) announcing the winner and next host.
The simplest way to do each phase is to go back through the Themes & Competition tab under Discussions to find the previous announcement/description for this challenge. Then, cut and paste, changing the start-stop dates and the tag to use and adding your own personality to the announcement (e.g., if there is to be a particular theme or focus).
Announcement Steps:
Step 1. After you’ve created the announcement, open the Themes & Competitions window, select New Topic and VERY CAREFULLY type in your title – that cannot be edited once posted, unlike the text itself.
Step 2. Paste in your updated description/directions.
Step 3. Post
Selecting the Top Five (this varies from person to person so this is my process):
Step 1. At the end of the submission period, go to the tag and pull up all entries.
Step 2. Decide whether I need to print or can do it on screen.
Step 3. Mark a few of the ones that I believe rise to the top. Try to be conscious of the criteria that I’m using, adjusting it as I add to or take finalists out of the pool. Work among the top choices to narrow it down to the final five. This is hard as you are balancing your subjective judgment with some criteria that makes the process as fair as possible. Note, even if someone has multiple wonderful entries, I only choose one per person to put in as a finalist.
Step 4. Create the Voting Announcement
Voting Announcement (also many ways to do this, so my process):
Step 1. Create a ‘word’ file that I will paste into the announcement. For this file, I enter the finalist ‘handle’ (the @name), give the photo its number, decide on the order to present so it’s random. And write the text giving the directions of the voting period. You can use the prior round as your base if that’s easier. Keep it simple.
Step 2. Open Themes & Competitions tag and create New Topic, and like above, carefully give it the title.
Step 3. Paste in the word file framework and text.
Step 4. Populate the photo that in each spot, using the share function under the photo in the submitter’s original file.
Step 5. Let folks vote (and make sure you tag the winners so that they know – just put their handles in the first comment slot after you post.
Announcing the Winner
Step 1. Count up the votes
Step 2. Post the winning photo and let the winner know it’s their turn.
I’m sure others will weigh in with tips as well! Enjoy!
@lsquared I do the same using EXCEL-- I thought of it as being safe, so I didn't do any errors in adding points! I'm glad you mentioned that as it's very useful to do it that way.
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The simplest way to do each phase is to go back through the Themes & Competition tab under Discussions to find the previous announcement/description for this challenge. Then, cut and paste, changing the start-stop dates and the tag to use and adding your own personality to the announcement (e.g., if there is to be a particular theme or focus).
Announcement Steps:
Step 1. After you’ve created the announcement, open the Themes & Competitions window, select New Topic and VERY CAREFULLY type in your title – that cannot be edited once posted, unlike the text itself.
Step 2. Paste in your updated description/directions.
Step 3. Post
Selecting the Top Five (this varies from person to person so this is my process):
Step 1. At the end of the submission period, go to the tag and pull up all entries.
Step 2. Decide whether I need to print or can do it on screen.
Step 3. Mark a few of the ones that I believe rise to the top. Try to be conscious of the criteria that I’m using, adjusting it as I add to or take finalists out of the pool. Work among the top choices to narrow it down to the final five. This is hard as you are balancing your subjective judgment with some criteria that makes the process as fair as possible. Note, even if someone has multiple wonderful entries, I only choose one per person to put in as a finalist.
Step 4. Create the Voting Announcement
Voting Announcement (also many ways to do this, so my process):
Step 1. Create a ‘word’ file that I will paste into the announcement. For this file, I enter the finalist ‘handle’ (the @name), give the photo its number, decide on the order to present so it’s random. And write the text giving the directions of the voting period. You can use the prior round as your base if that’s easier. Keep it simple.
Step 2. Open Themes & Competitions tag and create New Topic, and like above, carefully give it the title.
Step 3. Paste in the word file framework and text.
Step 4. Populate the photo that in each spot, using the share function under the photo in the submitter’s original file.
Step 5. Let folks vote (and make sure you tag the winners so that they know – just put their handles in the first comment slot after you post.
Announcing the Winner
Step 1. Count up the votes
Step 2. Post the winning photo and let the winner know it’s their turn.
I’m sure others will weigh in with tips as well! Enjoy!
Pretty similar to what I do, except I probably over think the "selecting finalists" portion
I also made an excel spreadsheet that I can log the votes into, and it automatically counts them. But I'm an engineer.