Pod_together 2013 Wrap-Up Post

[klb]

Congratulations on an incredibly successful round of pod_together! We had a total of 69 projects this year, and the creativity and experimentation was higher than ever before!

As we wrap up this year's challenge, we want to thank everybody for their hard work and dedication. We hope you are as proud and excited about what you've created as we are.

For those who are feeling inspired to make more, check out this post where somnolentblue is gauging interest for a series of lightning rounds pod_together challenges throughout the year.

Finally, we're opening up the comments of this post to share your stories, thoughts, questions, or reflections about the challenge this year or about this type of collaborative project. You're also welcome to send feedback and suggestions to us privately via email.

Awesome job again, and we look forward to seeing you all next year!

Comments

[jelazakazone]

I had an awesome experience this year! Thank you so much mods, for all your hard work.

[pameluke]

Okay, I'm going to sound sappy, but I don't care.

I loved doing pod_together. It was a lot of firsts for me, first time doing podfic, first time collaborating on fic (with 5 people total at that!), first time doing something with my native language, first time actually finishing a fan project in time.

I had such a blast, seriously. I was so excited during the writing and recording process I kept bothering my mother about it (who my character is named after), even though she had no clue what on earth I was talking about. I let some of my friends sneakpeak listen to tidbits (without the translations) just because I couldn't contain my excitement. I counted down the days to our posting day because I really, really, really wanted to share it.

I'm just so incredibly proud of it and love it so much. It's a story about 5 women meeting in a bar and becoming friends, and I like to think that it worked so well because we were 5 women meeting in a chatroom/googledocument, becoming friends.

At this point I don't know if I loved this so much because of the endresult, of because of the collaborating, but I honestly don't care.

I do know that I'll definitely be back next year for more.

It was awesome.

Thank you to the mods for organizing, thank you for everyone for creating awesome works to listen to, but most of all thank you to my collaborators, SailorSol, duckwhatduck, Aoife and Hagar. I had an amazing time, and I love you all.

[podcath]

I just wanted to say THANK YOU!!!!

You did an amazing job organizing this, and everyone else did an amazing job writing podfics and recording fanfics :D

I'm slowly working my way through, and there are so many lovely surprises.

Thank you!!!!

[busaikko]

Thank you to all the mods! This is such a wonderful fest every year. Thank you for your hard work in making it happen!

I was really glad to be able to work with Knight_tracer on a party favor that was a new fandom for me. Her enthusiasm inspired me *g* and I love her reading.

[dunderklumpen]

I just wanted to say thank you for organizing the pod_together this year. Although I was less experimental than I had planned I had tons of fun. It was a great experience:)

[akamine_chan]

Thanks, mods, for such an awesome experience, again. I love this challenge a lot.

[silkylustre]

Thank you, mods, for you hard work and determination and relentless prodding! :D It was needed.

I had a blast and made a lovely friend in my writer partner. What's not to love?

[hagar_972]

I had so much fun this year.

This is my second year doing pod_together. Last year, I arrived as an author, and spent most of the signup period hoping there's be a match to any of my fandoms - I'm not into Bandom or any of the current big-name-popular fandoms, which made matching problematic. (I promoted the challenge on my fandoms' comms, but it didn't help much.) While I like the end result, it... wasn't what I felt that pod_together could be. It was my first experience with podfic, and my podficcer was relatively inexperienced as well. The combination of two inexperienced persons probably didn't help. It came out well, and I have a positive experience, but I also walked away dissatisfied.

This year, I signed up as part of a team of five. I was concerned with the fandom matching situation, and I wanted to do something that would use the medium's abilities beyond the performance of an otherwise-ordinary-on-the-writer's-end fic. These required signing up as part of a team - arriving with my collaborators. (I really like working with new people, so deciding to only sign up as part of a team was... something I wish didn't seem necessary, regardless of how things had turned out.)

The result was a team of five persons, with six languages between us, and a project designed to showcase that. This was something I really wanted to do - audio format is great for exposing and promoting non-English language and multi-language fandom, much better than text alone. I think everyone in my group felt the same way.

The composition process was, in one word, amazing. The nature of the work and the team dictated some serious logistical challenges, and it was probably a good thing we began working as soon as we signed up. (We ended up needing all the time.) Having such a large reduced logistical challenges as much as it created them, though - we could split editing duties around, for example, which significantly reduced the stress component.

I continue to love pod_together, and I'm likely to be back next year and to try and bring more people over. I also really, really like how the format of this challenge facilitates experimentation and creativity with format and mixed-media works.

I like the introduction of ice-breaker week; it echoes some of the concerns I had from my first year. This year it wasn't so relevant to me, having arrived with a team , but I think that it's a really good idea for new partnership.

And now I'm going over to sign up for the lightning rounds...

Thank you so much for running this challenge!

[glitteryv]

This was the first year I'd signed up as both a writer and a podficcer. I feel I really lucked out as far as whom I was partnered with. Everyone was communicative and enthusiastic about the different collaborations. In the end, I even got to do a Party Favour with someone I'd never met!

I'd like to h/t the idea of mandatory check-ins through the creating process. Sometimes, it can be really easy to lose track of time and/or each other (due to RL/offline life, other fannish commitments, etc.)

Overall, I feel this was a very successful year for pod_together (talking about both my experience/participation as well as in general.) Thank you mods for your hard work. I look forward to next year's round. :)

[klb]

Thank you so much for this! Because of where my head was for parts of this summer, it was pretty emotionally difficult for me at times to hold people to check-ins and deadlines, so it really feels good to me to hear that it was helpful for you <3

[rubytuesday5681]

I agree completely with Luce! The check-ins were super helpful to keep me on track!

[glitteryv]

*high-fives you* ♥

[glitteryv]

Aww, you're welcome! The mandatory check-ins were what improved my experience in this year's challenge by, like, 500%. ^_^

[melusina]

Thank you mods for all your hard work!

[house_of_lantis]

Thank you, Mods! And thanks to all the writers and podficcers and artists for putting together such an awesome round! YAY!

[yue_ix]

I wanted to particpate last year but it didn't happen, so this was my first time doing pod-together, and I ended up doing it as a podficcer, fanficcer AND fanartist. That was awesome. ALL THE COLLABS. \o/

I've particularly been extremely happy to be able to do things in my home language, and talk about my fannish experiences. Being paired with enthusiastic people through Twitter allowed us to keep in constant communication and share wild ideas. I think the open-minded, "try new things!", and friendly format of this challenge helped us dare new things, and allowed us all to work hard in a supportive environment. (In comparison, the only place else I've ever felt "safe" enough to post poems was anonymously on kink memes; never mind doing meta in them or attempting French.)

You mods are incredibly patient and understanding. Thank you for being so kind and helpful despite my ridiculous fails at meeting any kind of deadline. ♥

Clapping also goes to both my partners for their courage and FIERCE determination in seing our works through. You made it! You are awesome, guys! WE DID THESE THINGS.

A+, would do again. With some things changed to my own time management, and new challenges, but worth it for the satisfaction of seeing projects through in such a welcoming frame.