Thanks for the feedback Nixe, it’s really good.
Couple of points on the things you’ve mentioned;
I’ve always thought that if Michael ran it people would be clamoring over each other to show him what they’ve made
I would agree, I think the thought of knowing one of the team, indeed the instructor of the course, looking over it all, would be really appealing to students, new and existing. I’m sure @Michael_Bridges would love to be able to do this, but I suspect the reason that this doesn’t perhaps already happen is just the pure volume of students and thus work/posts to effectively review. I can see how this could take a huge amount of time which, obviously, would then detract to a degree from the creation of new course(s)/material.
The idea of a contest never really appealed to me, I’m more a participant than a winner.
I was actually around at the inception of the collab thing, when @McFuzz (Sam) over-saw it. From the outset it wasn’t really about having a winner, that has transposed a little over time. The intention was that rather than having just one person pick a theme each week/month, each person who was participating would get a chance to determine a theme. That led into the how do we determine who chooses next discussion. Sam I believe did used to use a random selector thing to determine who would pick the theme next. Later I think this migrated to using the vote on the work you really like out of all of the entries concept, this may have been after Sam moved on, I can’t remember (it had been going for quite a while by then).
So, whilst there may have been a piece of work with the most votes, it wasn’t really intended as a “you are the winner” thing as such, just a method on determining who would choose the next theme, but I guess it may have turned into that. I always stood by the belief that it shouldn’t really be a “contest” as such because everyone will have different levels of experience and skill and as such it would be incredibly unbalanced, I also felt that if it were seen as a “competition” some students, new to the community, may not get involved because they may feel that they weren’t good enough. I think I did actually state in a reply (a long time ago), that from my perspective everyone who takes part is a winner, gaining the confidence to show off what you’re working on is a big thing.
Proper support would be someone who can run it rain or shine whether it has participants or not, it also wouldn’t hurt if they bumped it to remind people as the deadline drew nearer.
That wouldn’t be impossible, but would invariably be community driven, and as such, that could lead to people dropping off from time to time.
I always wondered if participation was low because others weren’t sure if they were allowed to participate.
I often thought the same. When perhaps you see a group already established, even though the members of that little group changed periodically, it might look like its a closed-event etc.
An invitation and directions of how it operated included with the creation of each new thread would have been helpful for new participants.
That is something that I’m sure the team may be able to add as a mention / link etc via the course(s), and perhaps periodically via announcements - would need to check, but possible.
It should feel like a safe place where those participating can do so without the fear of being attacked or criticized by others. Common courtesy is important too.
Fully agree - I like to think that this forum/community provides that. I am not able to review every single post by everyone, but there is a reporting mechanism within the forum software for reporting any abuse. We have had bearly any issues here (that I am aware of) since it started - from what I can tell people are really supportive, helpful and friendly towards each other. I would suggest sometimes people dont always respond on certain topics because perhaps they dont feel that they are in a position to be of help, or should be passing any critique at an early stage in their own course progress, but of course everyone is welcome to and everyone’s thoughts/opinions can be really beneficial.
I always felt that the weekly format was excessive. It left no time to work on other projects unless the submission was small or stylized. Yet I’ve seen monthly formats fail as well, this was not the first. Quarterly might be a good alternative, but it would need reminder bumps so it wouldn’t be forgotten.
This could be one of the challenging areas. Initially, I think it started off weekly, then it rang a monthly along side, then over time this transformed into the longer period. It’s a bit of a balancing act, not everyone is going to be able to commit if the deadline (for want of a better word) is too short, yet at the same time you want a deadline that does push people a little bit, often for their own good, so that procrastination perhaps doesn’t become an enemy. Of course people having different experience/skill levels may require more/less time also. On top of all of that, there’s RealLifeTM which gets in everyone’s way… 
Where a short period of time may work is with something like, everyone starts with a cube, you have one week - do something. The next week, take what you already have, build on it - and so on. Until it gets to a point where that one week just isn’t enough time and it gets bumped to a longer duration event or, you call it a day on that little project. That may work well for people new to Blender as they learn/experiment. It could also potentially work without a theme as well as with one. I make a plant, you make a car etc, doesn’t matter, we have both made something from that initial cube in one week and show it.
As the durations get longer I think it becomes easier to be less commital with these events, not initially by desire, but again because of real life and “stuff”, as that creeps in, time runs out, people may be like “there just isn’t enough time now” - where-as of course there was at the beginning. That is really down to the individual, as, even with reminders, notifications, bumping topics and as much encouragement as could be thrown at people, sometimes it just won’t be enough.
Quarterly is an interesting one, I wonder whether, rather than just a “see you in three months” approach, it could have people checking in more frequently with just a quick post on their progress to date. That may work better than just a nudge/reminder, as there is still that loose expectation of us all getting to see something that has been worked on.
I found the voting system counter-productive. The same people would win often
Yeah, and of course if its based purely on “how good” something looks, it doesn’t necessarily take into account all of the challenges and hurdles the individual may have overcome to get to where they got to. I made a snowman recently, I’m fairly confident it’s awful, but for me it was the first thing I made with Blender. I had to learn how to use the few tools that I used in order to create what I created. For me, that was a significant success, but posted next to someone else’s work who made a collesseum for example, mine little entry is going to perhaps look a bit poor! 
(I like my snowman!)
A thought that did occur to me was to use something like “Word of the Day” and then extrapolate a theme from that word at the relevant time for the next event, or, perhaps rather than having any form of “random” or “voting” or “picking of themes”, if the event was over-seen (over-sawn?) by someone, they could just post up a list of themes for the next 12 months, in one main topic. Job done.
Even if there are some themes on the list that people are less comfortable with, or like less, it could be a creativity challenge for them, and a few months later they may get a theme they really like a lot. It would be impossible to please everyone, all of the time.
I can schedule the publication of topics on the forum, so potentially, these could be setup in the background and would then just “appear” which could help with a bit of the management of it all.
Anyhoo, just some thoughts based on your excellent feedback - as you mentioned, if anyone else has anything to contribute it would be great to hear.
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