EDITING FIRST POST TO REFLECT SOME CHANGES BASED ON COMMUNITY DISCUSSION
Hey Berserkers! It’s time to start the discussion about BerserkerDay, this one being the EIGHTH! I’m going to open up discussion with this post, and try to update all pertinent information submitted in the thread into this first post, so it’s not necessary to read each question and answer within the thread, and to hopefully prevent multiple questions being asked. When live, BerserkerDay will be on its own forum, as always.
As always, it’s held on Jan 27th, and luckily this year, that’s a Friday, and since most people don’t get squat done at work on Friday anyway…no excuses!
Last year (and the year before, actually) over $200k was spent (each year) based on the polling I did of the participants, and that’s truly amazing. It’s become so big that it is hard to handle, and the ‘free-for-all’ setup has to be amended slightly, as well as limiting the number of participants. My notes - taken when they were still fresh, immediately after last BerserkerDay - are below (most of them, anyway) and open for discussion. Many of you have participated in each BerserkerDay since the very first, so I value your opinions. I also value opinions from those who have only participated in the most recent ones, the madhouse, action-packed overwhelming big BerserkerDays, as you don’t know what it was like when it was ‘easy’, with 20-25 offers, max.
Some notes, and likely plans for BerserkerDay VIII:
One of the principal issues now that it is so big is that offers fall by the wayside, quickly buried under dozens of other offers, and without folks actively posting about the new offers, they can get buried so fast they get almost no traction at all, and never do. I have ideas on how to fix this, and make BerserkerDay more efficient for ALL.
Newbies: This year, Newbies will have a little special treatment, to encourage participation and hopefully discover NEW ‘board darlings’, as so many have started as relatively unknowns on prior BerserkerDays and have become such board darlings. To encourage participation with the new wineries (not retailers, only wineries) we will have a feature on each of them - written by them - about a week before BerserkerDay, to introduce themselves, their making styles, personal stuff - allowing the community to get to know them a bit prior to the offering when it’s difficult to sort through. Each listing for Newbies will have the topic icon signifying that they are a Newbie (as I’ve abandoned the categorical topic icons based on responses in this thread, my original idea)
No Thread/Offer Bumping: Massive change to what was previously here as a concept, I’ve figured out how to keep offers in the order of launch - any discussion, any replies will not bump them on the top, so each offer gets equal amount of time in the first spot, then moving down one at a time while new offers are made. I want to be sure the popular ones don’t bury some of our other valuable offers, based solely on number of posts. Also, in the past, a few folks who were making the offers would ‘bump’ their own threads/offers, which is unfair for those who don’t have the time to play on WB all day (shame on them for not playing here all day and making wine instead!!!). This way, it’s all equal in terms of exposure.
Limited Number of Offers: This one is not for certain, as I feel it’s an attempt to fix some of the same issues the above WILL fix, but it might wean out a few of the offers that aren’t legitimate enough to get traction, so we’ll see. The idea is to make sure every offer is excellent in its own way, to keep the madness of BerserkerDay intact. The better the offers, the more activity and discussion, and the faster ordering occurs.
Yes, we’ll still have the auction, yes, there will still be Subscribers ‘Early Purchase’ Day, and yes, Subscribers will have some sort of preview options, but it will be more carefully submitted thanks to the organizational changes mentioned above.
I definitely want to have this shared with as many folks as possible, to get word out to the wine world beyond our 25,000 registered members and 8000 or so visitors daily, so if any of you has a blog, knows a blogger, or has connections with any sort of press, please contact me so we can put something together.