tome_awards

Welcome to the Tales of Middle Earth Awards Planning Community.  Thank you for your interest and willingness to participate!  You might be asking yourself: “I joined….now what?”  This post seeks to answer most, if not all, those questions.

1. What can I do to help?   Please check out our volunteer opportunities below and comment here to indicate where you would like to jump in!

( Current Volunteer OpportunitiesCollapse )

2. What has been previously done by my preferred Task Force(s)?   Before you decide to join a Task Force, you might like to check out their previous threads.

( Previous ThreadsCollapse )

3. How do I join these Task Forces?   Comment here with the Task Force you’d like to join. Then roll up your sleeves and jump into the fray!

4. Who exactly are these people in my Task Force?   Check out the Introduction Questionnaire and get to know the rest of the community. Also, don’t forget to introduce yourself!

5. Who are these Steward people?   Check out this brief description of the Stewards as well as their contact information.

6. Important Links regarding the history of this community!   Can be found HERE.

7. I have more questions! Who do I ask?   Any of the Stewards are here to answer your questions! Also, please feel free to drop me an email at gonotgently[AT]gmail[DOT]com.

According to the previous timeline (see below), we proposed to open nominations for the ToME Awards this month. Obviously, the call for nominations has not occurred, and on behalf of the Stewards, I am posting this as an update.

The primary reasons for the delay are time and resources, always the big bugaboos for projects of this nature. The number of the volunteers who comprise the core group responsible for developing the awards is quite small. For example, a single volunteer is working on the coding for the site, which is a complex and time-consuming task.

Furthermore, the volunteers of this small core group, who are picking away at the tasks required to create effective processes and a user-friendly site, have (like all of you) significant Real Life demands, including life events — some expected and some unplanned — that appropriately take high priority. Thus, time and energy remaining for extracurricular activities, such as developing the awards, are attenuated.

As a result, the Stewards have decided to postpone the call for nominations until next year: April 2014. The Awards calendar will proceed as previously proposed, just substitute 2014 for 2013 and adjust the corresponding day of the week.


Click here for a larger version

So, in summary, the ToME Awards will not take place in 2013. However, we are still committed to bringing the ToME Awards forward. We aim to launch the site and nominations in 2014 and follow the same general timeline as originally proposed. We plan to provide updates here on the community LJ and to other sites (Yahoo groups, etc.) on a regular basis.

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment here, and as always, if you wish to volunteer to help nudge the Awards development along, please do! See the Welcome post above for potential opportunities. The biggest and most immediate need now is website build, a.k.a., constructing My Little Pony. Please see the website build tag (Task Force 3a) at the right for historical posts on the subject.

Thanks for your patience, and stay tuned!

I come bearing skin suggestions. As mentioned in the other post, all I'm good for is drawing up a few graphical representations of what the site might look like (Damnit, Jim! I'm a graphics maker, not a web designer! :^P) and foist the actual implementation on the coding team.

So far, I've drawn up two skins (both were inspired by snoping around the skins available on Artphilia), one based on the banner/icon design that seemed most popular, and one simpler one with some specifics requested by Indy - black font on lighter background, a large(r) serif font, low image use, simple design for more aged browsers/machines, which might (might! see above about the webdesign bit) also be workable for mobile devices and screen readers. I can deliver additional details (or the .psd files) for both skins if so requested, and will add more skins to this post as I get around to making them.

Criticism and questions are of course happily accepted.

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nelyo_russandol has requested mock screens of the ToME site so that we can get an idea of some of the possible designs Team 3B has in mind. Of course, this immediately begs the question of how your sample layout will work in conjunction with eFiction.

At present, I believe I have the most experience working with eFiction skins, so I'm asking that anyone who wants to work on 3B and who has eFiction-related questions, please please PLEASE do not hesitate to email me at DawnFelagund@gmail.com with your questions and quandaries. I am very glad to help. You can also comment here (or on any of my posts), and I'll answer there as well.

I also want to offer some reassurance: You do not have to know anything about eFiction in order to make a site design that will work perfectly fine in eFiction. In fact, for those of you who want to make some mock designs for this stage of the process, I'd actually encourage you not to even worry about eFiction at this point. Simply make your sample design in HTML and CSS just like you would for a new webpage you were setting up.

( For the curious, more details on how eFiction skins work beneath the cut!Collapse )

Juno and Elleth, I know you both volunteered to design things for the TOMES site. Russandol asked the following here in this thread:

It would be excellent if Juno and Elleth could work on some mock screens, if they can. Perhpas once they have a couple of alternatives they can be voted on by all?

This could be a nice way to show how you would envision the TOME site. :) Please let nelyo_russandol know.

On a personal note, in two weeks time (give or take), I won't be able to keep track of this taskforce and pass on requests from other teams (and viceversa) that much as I like due to a rl-change. Just that you guys of this specific taskforce know. :)

LJ is having issues, 3rd try...

This is intended as a follow-on to nelyo_russandolpost From Taskforce 3 to ALL - 2013 is here and our deadline is nigh! and an update per the status of the awards development that was posted on 23 September 2012 and for your comments on said updates.

Please chime in, Tomie community!

( Itemized status of Task Force action items, etc. below the cutCollapse )

Below the cut is the revised timeline for the TOME Awards development. This highlights that we don't have much time remaining until inception of the nomination period, which now starts on 08 April insteand of 01 April to allow a bit more time to put as much as we can in place.

( Awards development timelineCollapse )

Pop cultural tip of the day: Bueller is a reference to the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
Used as filler when nobody responds to a question or statement.
Person 1: Has anybody seen my hat?
Person 2: ...
Person 1: Bueller?

Just wanted to call attention to Russa's call in the previous post. A few volunteers have responded, but just a few.

The bottom line:

Are folks still interested in seeing the TOME Awards go forward in April 2013?

If so, we all have a lot of work to do. I realize that everyone has significant RL demands, and because of that, the heavy-lifting cannot fall to just a few people.

In an effort to help Russa jumpstart the process, I'll update the timeline and provide a summary of pending items (specifics, too) for all Task Forces tomorrow.

Anyway, I'm dusting off the Whip o' Motivation! ;^)

A New Year has arrived and with it, the upcoming launch of the TOME Awards. 

Wait... you haven't heard of the TOME Awards? Then go to our Welcome post at once, then come back and sign up!

We have already implemented a few cool features on the standard eFiction code, but there's still a lot to do on the development of the site and the associated procedures to run the awards smoothly, as well as organising the awards season itself.

So, first of all we must know how much effort we will collectively be able to pour into this project. You're most welcome to join the most active taskforces, now that some others have all but completed their allocated tasks.

How much time will you be able to dedicate to the job? Even an hour per week will make a difference! Please make sure you are willing to commit to what you say, or we won't make it. Wherever you can, include/exclude the tasks you'd rather help/not help with:

1 - eFiction tweaking (TF 3a)
2 - eFiction design (TF 3b)
3 - site testing (both during development and before launch - TF 3a)
4 - documentation, i.e. manuals/procedures/FAQs for admins (TF 3a/3c), liaisons (TF 12a) and users (TF 4/5/6/7/any user!)
5 - dry-run of awards with test site and procedures (TF 3a/3b/3c/12a/any user)
6 - hosting contract (TF 3a and Stewards)
7 - build and test new site (TF 3a/3b/12a/any users)
8 - train up as admin (TF 3c)
9 - retake the old chestnut of funding (looking at TF 12b)
10 - award season volunteer planning (TF 8)
11 - award promotion, closer to the time (TF 10)

Have I missed anything? Please shout if I have...

So let's crack on so that we can enjoy the awards season in the originally planned timescales - starting in April 2013!

Howdy all Team 3B (Design) members! As Russa's last post shows, 3A is making progress on getting the site development needed for the ToMEs completed. We're at the point where we feel we can start communicating back and forth with those of you working on the site design to get a basic skin designed. Since I have the most experience with eFiction skins on Team 3A, then I wanted to reach out to see what you all needed from us in order to get started on the site design.

The good news is that it's very easy to "retrofit" a stylesheet/HTML design into an eFiction skin. This is how I have always designed skins for eFiction-based sites (and I've done quite a few skins by now). eFiction skins are primarily HTML/CSS-based with the addition of variables to control where particular information from the database displays. I'll include below the cut an example of the section of the skin that displays the story listings on the SWG site. (See here.) I can also send the TPL/skin files for any of my sites to anyone who wants to dig a little deeper as far as getting comfortable with how eFiction skins work.

( Story Listing DisplayCollapse )

So, 3B, what kind of information do you need from us on 3B to get started? How can we assist?