The Idea of Play Fest Teams

Play Fest Teams Could Help To Grow Play Fest, Keep It Local, Welcoming and Friendly and Get Things Done

As a way of the Play Fest community setting out to achieve everything that we have set out to over the past few weeks, we had an idea that we could start to develop teams that everyone is welcome to get involved in and you could put in as much or as little as you like.

We’ve identified 5 teams that we think could work well for Play Fest. But this is early days and we are very open to feedback and your personal recommendations.

The points we need to take into account:

• Needs to be clear and simple
• Need to ensure it’s well communicated that you put as much or as little in to it as you want to. The idea being the more you put in, the more you get out. This is not about creating pressure for individuals. We fully appreciate that everybody’s individual circumstances are unique to them and this should be respected within the community.
• We need to be clear on shorter term milestones so that everyone has a sense of achievement for efforts a lot sooner.
• Need to find ways that working collectively through Play Fest saves time in other ways with blogging e.g. guest posting, ideas, content, goodies, toy reviews etc.
• There needs to be a separate website for the teams to interact. A forum or Facebook page to document discussion, decisions and progress.
• Running Play Fest across Twitter and Facebook makes it accessible for a much wider audience and the current setup works fine.
• There is a need to ensure that if somebody has a great idea there is a central location to share it. The teams have been divided up so they are skills based, but at the end of the day, anybody could join in any team. The goals span across the different teams.
• The individual roles within the teams would need to be supported and will also help with individuals own personal development.

* Mutual Exposure / Marketing Team

Do you have skills in marketing? Or do you just like the idea of building exposure of Izziwizzi Kids Play Fest and/or your blog? This team might be looking at ways to expand the reach of Play Fest to get more individuals involved. Why? Because the larger the reach of Play Fest, the more parents will reap the benefits of being involved, the more opportunities it brings for you and the more umpf we have to get companies on board and generate money saving offers for the Play Fest community.

To grow Facebook Play Fest we need to be running more competitions and actively asking those at the party to invite their friends along.

For example the Marketing Team might be working on:

• Brainstorming or identifying win-win exposure opportunities for you, Play Fest and toy companies;
• Building up a network of websites to distribute Play Fest content;
• Supporting the promotion of a Play Fest meet-up or event;
• Stimulating individuals to share content e.g. status updates, tweets, photographs, videos to extend the reach of Play Fest.
• Help to extend the reach of Izziwizzi Kids Play TV.

* Social Team

Members of this team might take on the role of helping Play Fest to retain that closeness, friendliness, openness and inclusivity regardless of scale that we all love so much;

For example the Social Team might be working on:

• The organisation of an ‘IN THE FLESH’ Play Fest Meetup in 2012;
• Creating banter and warmth within Play Fest parties – plus coming up with new ideas to keep this alive;
• Help new people to Play Fest feel welcome and know where to point anyone who seems uncertain during Play Fest;
• Help ensure that everyone who comes to Play Fests conducts themselves properly and sticks to the format – suggest we develop a standard code of conduct agreed by the Play Fest community for this;
• Bring it to our attention if anyone for any reason is unhappy about anything with Play Fest.

* Content Production Team

This team may need to be divided up further as it is about working together to produce play content to mutually benefit individuals and the Play Fest community. Content might be videos, photographs or written content;

For example the Content Team might be working on:

• Make content videos and stimulate others within the Play Fest to do the same (in support of the make time to play campaign);
• Budget idea of the week to share with PlayFest
• Have a rota system where bloggers do a write up of Play Fest and distribute every Friday
• Arrange to pull the best content together that is created for Play Fest for Izziwizzi Kids Play TV & Play Fest
• Select play video of the week.

* Development Team

A team of people dedicated to the continuous improvement of the processes and Play Fest. Much like Play Fest Planning.

* An Enterprise Team

A team of people who are keen to work together in spotting, sharing and develop enterprising opportunities through the community.

Please place your feedback in the replies. How would you like this all to work?

What communication mechanisms need to be in place to support the work of teams?  What ideas do you have on the technical infrastructure to help communication?

Proposed next steps to hold  mini event (like Play Fest planning) for each team to define scope, purpose and remit. What do you think?

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.