2013 OPEN HOUSE: Suggestions for Next Time?

[ginga123]

Hello!

Thank you for all your insight and feedback during the Open House 2013 event. I genuinely appreciate your time and effort. I hope to use your voices as a positive influence and a source of inspiration.

For those of you whom asked questions, left general feedback, and/or left an anime suggested list, I will return your emails promptly throughout this week. Your ideas and comments are always welcome. Just drop a line any time via PM or RS feedback.

Thank you again and Regards,


P.S.- This event really was helpful. A couple of suggestions for visual display improvement were made such as adding screen caps and carrying over descriptions into the CG sections. Overall, this an enjoyable experience compared to my last open house eons ago.

[Rekka Alexiel]

Hey, everybody! Again thanks for all your awesome feedback! I've already worked quite hard at fixing up some of the things you mentioned. I really appreciate all your comments!!

That said, here's my feedback for the event itself:


-- Quick, single sentence replies to curators.
Clear and concise answers are appreciated but it feels quite rushed with only a 4 word sentence as a reply.

-- Carefully read each question and stay on task with replies.
Clearly understand what the curator is asking you to do before giving a response. When someone asks you what's your favorite fruit, you don't answer, "I can play the piano." It's the same sort of thing.

I was a little disappointed that only 2 people actually answered my 3rd question the way it was intended, with the majority of people replying that they had already answered this in the previous two, especially when they had given suggestions to add more background information on series/characters. The purpose of my third question wasn't focusing on further suggestions for improvement; it was to generate discussion with the participant and gauge exactly what piqued your interest. If the question itself was unclear, let me know. Perhaps it needed the reason stated in the question to be more clear?

-- Curators with no specific questions to answer
At first I was confused what to do for curators who did not make their own questions for participants. Maybe, in this case, there could be a standard list of questions to answer? As for some of the questions that were asked, I felt that some of them were pretty lengthy (ie. multiple nested questions within a single question). I'm not against nested questions, just maybe there ought to be a limit of, say, two questions within one question?

-- Event time limit
I think to better fit within a busy life/work schedule, it might be better if we were given a little more time to properly complete feedback for each participant. I know at the beginning, I felt very rushed and tried to get through at least two galleries a day and the quality of the feedback may not have been on par. Perhaps if we extend the event to two weeks, that would help alleviate this problem and yet keep the overall running time down.


So anyway, as my first time participating in this event, I want to thank everybody again for your support and feedback! It's been a great experience and I look forward to the next time!

[sensei]

I'm glad that my feedback didn't make ginga cry -- I actually did look up some authentic quotes by H. L. Mencken, the incorrigible curmudgeon of Baltimore, but actually he tended to be more supportive of the person receiving criticism (as he certainly did 24/7 throughout his career) than he was gratuitously critical of others. (He was that, too, but mostly of politicians who thrived on promoting ignorance and hate, neither of which are especially widespread among animation art collectors.)

It was, I thought, a good chance to refocus attention on the gallery side of having an online gallery. We all tend to get focused on the contents of our collections, and if we don't stay vigilant, they turn into what I like to call "Smaug Wallows," rooms stuffed with stuff, like those of compulsive hoarders that show up on TV reality shows. Like having company over, it's a chance to run the mop over the floor (Don't forget: you promised your wife you'd do this last weekend) and try to see our collections as others see them.

I was happy that people felt that visiting my gallery was, overall, a positive experience, and I paid attention to things that they specifically said they liked. But I'm concerned that the visible collection has gotten so broad and diverse that it is difficult to navigate. I've actually considered hiding up to a third of the items, just to make the home page more inviting. (Or else generating my own site, like Graymouser's, that has a simple, peaceful home page, then a series of doorways leading to a less intimidating list of gallery titles.)

That's why I asked where people went after they landed on my page. I was interested to see that about half mentioned the new "Quirky Tour" that called out 24 nice items from a variety of galleries. And I also liked similar sections in other galleries that I visited, in which curators had featured special items in a gallery. I especially liked animeobsessed's idea of linking this to the section in which the item's main page resided, so that if you liked the art, you could explore it more widely. So I'm thinking about making it a permanent section, perhaps adding a "CCS Gems" and "Tennimon Treasures" that would do the same thing for these big sections.

Most others went to the list of series and scanned it for recent updates, favorite sections, or unfamiliar titles. That, visitors tended to agree, was in danger of being too long and difficult to browse. Some observed that nice items or sections seen on a previous visit were not easy to relocate from the list. (The Quick Tour might help here, but that adds two extra clicks to the process.) I got some useful suggestions on simplifying this, which I'll keep in mind.

Also, some people found the amount of information at the top of section pages ran so long that they had to scroll down to find the images. That's a valid issue, and I've already been using the first item as a place to house general information about the series, its history, animators, personal significance, etc. etc. In the next remake I'll look for more places to do this, maybe in a "Series Tour" gallery like the ones I have for Hyper Police and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, or in some other way that doesn't clutter the section page.

So I'm very happy with the feedback, and, on the other side, visiting so many galleries more fully than before and so intensively has (once again) impressed on me just how darn much anime art there is out there! So many titles that were totally unknown to me, and so many others that I knew "about" but had never finished. One curator asked which of the series s/he collected I'd watched to the end: and I had to admit, none of them! (I'd seen a lot of Inuyasha ... but at ... what? ... 200 episodes and six or seven movies, that still wasn't nearly "all of it.") That reinforced for me the need to give basic info on the series I collect, knowing that most visitors won't know it from "Captain Planet," and also kicked me into spending more time watching the anime I've got. (And reminded me that I never did finish "xxxHolic"!)

Could the Open House work better? Yeah, but I'll let some others chime in before I talk about the process itself. I'd say for now getting the tradition started again, even minimally, was in itself worth it.

Don't worry, dear, I'll mop the floor. I just gotta watch this next episode of xxxHolic first...

[cutiebunny]

For me, Open House came around during a bad time. July is the peak of con season, and for someone who collects autographs and sketches, this month is already packed with West Coast conventions. There's Anime Expo during the first week of July, two weeks after which is SDCC, and since KintokiCon landed Koge Donbo this year, there was that for me. Then, my husband decided to surprise me with a last minute trip to Seattle this past weekend. So..As it happened, the start of OH landed on the weekend I was driving up and back to Sacramento just for her. After a 4 hour round trip drive, I would stay up just to do 2 gallery reviews a night simply because I knew I couldn't finish it the following weekend, and with my job, I had no idea what would happen inbetween. And I was not going to do a gallery review on a smartphone. That would not have been fair to the participant nor my eyes. Squint squint.

I don't know how you'll get more participation for this event. The majority of those that participated are those that are frequently active on the boards. AB, though having 1000+ members, only really has about 30 who are active posters. There are some that pop in from time to time and lurkers, but events like this are only going to draw those that are active and want others to know that they are active. Not only that, but they're going to draw people who not only care about the presentation of their galleries and how others view it, but those that have the time to participate in a 10+ gallery review.

I suppose you could give a little medal graphic to those that participate. It seems to be enough of incentive to get 50+ members to submit artwork for the Anime Beta Awards. Though, then you might draw a crowd that is more interested in getting the graphic than they are actually doing a decent review. 30+ "Your gallery was pretty. Yays!" reviews are not helpful.

[theultimatebrucelee]

First like to thank sensei for the 587th time for digging up this tradition and solely oversee the process of the event. There are literally so few fun activities that could involve paper and plastic sitting behind me, this for sure is one of them

Also, I want to thank all participants that sent me feedbacks.I really liked the answers gotten for my basic collecting principles question, especially from the many more experienced veterans and big time collectors: to always stick to set budget, always scrutinize and again on auction photos, not be affected by peer pressure, get quality over quantity, willingness to walk away from auction, three item per character rule...pure A-B wisdom that I'd like to somehow incorporate into my own bidding/collecting practice.

Suggestion for next time, perhaps there could be a system set up for everyone in the order of galleries to visit to balance out visits in each gallery in a timely manner(not necessarily sitting date, just the order)? I know I had 4 replies in first 2-3 days, a 3,4 day gap of no reply at all, and then all the rest.

[animeobsessed]

.... basic collecting principles question, :to always stick to set budget, always scrutinize and again on auction photos, not be affected by peer pressure, get quality over quantity, willingness to walk away from auction, three item per character rule....

Obviously, this was not my suggestion, but maybe I should have received this advice years ago and I would have a much heavier wallet right now!

[sensei]

Overall, I think participants' experiences were positive, and that's a big plus. This might be the best argument for asking people to commit to the Open House, rather than making it a blanket invitation to the entire forum. In general, people who participate are serious about keeping their galleries in good order, and attracting as many visitors as possible. The cel/sketch contests are about what people have, which is a slightly different issue from how people choose to display what they have. It makes sense to give trophies for owning primo cels, but IMHO the main award for Open House participation is having an improved gallery.

The time scheme might be a little intense. We really were about at the usual limit for the galleries we had, which is an average of one a day. But Open Houses have been extended at the request of participants before, and even so I don't think there's any harm done if someone asks for special time considerations (as ReitheJelly did because of her move). I'd be reluctant to say that once the final day is past that no one can continue asking for and giving feedback: in fact, that's one activity that the Open House is supposed to encourage, during the event and afterwards. Maybe these points could be made clearer in the "procedures."

As for the questions and the sequence in which people leave feedback, I'm not sure I'd want to make the procedures any more specific. It's a very personal event, both for curators and visitors, and so it's better to work with people's preferences (specific questions, general questions, no questions) and time limitations (do them all at once, do them in 3-4 batches, do one a day). But I could give the "most liked/least liked/major suggestion" triad as a "default" if curators don't give more specific questions.

True, some people asked more than 3 questions, strictly speaking, but the way I took it, the questions under one bullet were variations of the same question, and if you answered one, that was enough. (E.g., "Do you think I have too many cels? Should I get rid of some? Or this part of my gallery OK?" could be answered "You would have a much nicer gallery if you eliminated about a third of your low-end images .")

Perhaps, too, if we set up a regular time for the Open House (say, every July), then people could plan ahead a couple of months and not have to worry about doing a quick clean-up for visitors.

Speaking of which: is it time yet to ask if anyone is going to take charge of the annual Sketch Contest?

[JWR]

Thanks all for the feedback on my gallery. Now I have a list of a few things to work on to help improve things.
I have worried a bit once I passed 1000 images scanned and displayed that it might become a bit to much. One suggestion I put in place right away was to increase the images per page for most of the series that have a lot so it will cut down on the page count per series.

I am slowly working on writing a better synopsis for each section and once done will do some experimenting to see if I can separate the anime and comic art which was also recommended.

I enjoyed visiting everyones galleries and again looking at artwork that everyone collects. It is fun to see what series everyone enjoys and I found out quite a few I have never seen and added a few to my list to find out more info on.

As far as someone doing the sketch contest this year, I am not sure how easy it would be to setup since we no longer have access to the program Zerospace wrote. A gallery could be made on RS easily to display but the voting I could see as a problem if done via email. We would need to set up an email account (gmail or hotmail) that several people could have access to and then those counters would need to keep track of the votes and agree on the final votes.

[benten]

Speaking of which: is it time yet to ask if anyone is going to take charge of the annual Sketch Contest?

At this point, I will state that I would be willing to do it. However, I believe that, before people should consider my offer, some details need to be spelled out to see if it would really be acceptable to enough folks to merit going forward. Specifically, as JWR has mentioned, if I did it, it would have to be manual via a Rubberslug gallery and email voting. I have given this some thought and would like to spell things out in much more detail so that no one gets surprised if I do handle it. But, I won't have the time to post my full thoughts on the matter until this evening. So, until this evening ...

[sensei]

I'd be game to help, as I did so in the 2010 Cel Contest, which was done in the old RS Gallery/special e-mail format. But how about starting a special thread on this in the "Sketch Contest" folder?

[graymouser]

I have to chime in that I really enjoyed this open house. I got a lot of helpful information. Hopefully once my work schedule gets a little lighter (mid-October) I can get cracking on some of the changes. I have already made a list of the order in which I want to tackle things.

[ReiTheJelly]

I'm super late to this party due to my move to Alaska, but I promise my feedback is coming!!!

[sensei]

I'm super late to this party due to my move to Alaska, but I promise my feedback is coming!!!

Don't worry about it. We put you in charge of the 2013 Anime-Beta Sketch Contest instead.

[Rekka Alexiel]

Oh wow, Rei!! Alaska!? Hope they move went smoothly!

[JWR]

After the feedback from the last open house stage 1 of the revamp is complete. Now all the Anime series are in one section and the comic artwork is listed below that instead of mixed.
All series have now a writeup or synopsis to help anyone who has never seen the series or artist's work before.

Still more work on rescanning some pieces and correcting a few descriptions I found laking.