#007 Fest Change Log

[mi6-cafe]

007 Fest 2023 Survey Results

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, but thank you all for participating in this month-long celebration and for giving thoughtful feedback in our survey. Our incredible team of Cafe volunteers met this weekend to go through all of it and we have lots of ideas for changes based on your feedback. We are by no means done coming up with ideas, but here is our annual survey analysis.

Communication

You all loved the all Fest channel in slack so we’ll be keeping that again for next year. We also decided to freeze the Fest-related channels in slack at the end of August. (More on this coming in slack as we figure out the different options for doing this.) We also acknowledge that Fest is spread out across a lot of different platforms. Next year we will lean a little more heavily on emails for the crucial information throughout the month, and also be more clear about where to expect different types of announcements.

Team Leadership

As always, Fest could not run without amazing leaders! We changed things up this year by having both captains and cheerleaders and your feedback indicates that we should keep this! If you were a team leader this year, we’ll be reaching out later in the year to help us create a new document to further clarify expectations so that we can give a much better orientation to leaders next year.

CAT prize

This year we offered a special Cool, Awesome Teammate prize. There were many great nominations, but there wasn't one person who was a clear stand out above the rest. So rather than us trying to debate between people when we obviously aren't on every team, we are electing not to award one person this year as the stand out. We are, however, still passing on all those nominations and shout outs to the people they were about so that they know how much they are appreciated!

Changes to Points

You all voted on tumblr polls counting as one point each. You also voted to increase the bonus stacking limit to 3. We will also be working throughout the year to make changes to the word count divisions, add new higher point categories, and increase the point value of social events like watch parties

Roleplaying

We have comments about this each year in the survey, both good and bad. We’ve had to adjust our suggestions for the roleplaying aspects across the years, but for next year we are putting a stop to all roleplaying aspects, pressing a reset button of sorts. We know for many of you pretending to be in the spy world is fun, but this year the complaints which stemmed from it far outweighed the compliments. As a team of mods and volunteers, we have a few little details to work out, but we want to be clear on our expectation of no roleplaying aspects to the Fest next year. After 2024, we will reassess.

Team days

Along those lines, team days will also stay retired for another year. However, your feedback indicated that what most people missed was the collaborative spirit that often blossomed when a challenge was issued. So, we are going to work hard to incorporate that in other ways throughout Fest. (If you have ideas for small challenges which require teamwork, let us know!)

Big Format Changes

This is a little vague, but your suggestions inspired what we hope is a great idea to shake up the format of Fest. It will de-emphasize some of the competitive aspects, and also increase the focus on the other ways to contribute, like doing beta work and attending watch parties. We have lots of details to work out, but we’re excited.

Speaking of, we’re going to use the tag #007 Fest Change Log to let you all know about changes we’re working on throughout the year and occasionally use tumblr polls to ask your opinion. 

Phew, that got long. Tl;dr You all had great feedback, the team is working on changes big and small, stay tuned for exciting announcements! 

And stay tuned for LDWS coming up very soon!

~Your Cafe Mods,

Castillon and Linorien

[ksansart]

Instagram | Portofolio | Commissions

For 007 fest's fluff prompt table - goose and flare

Fic also avaible on AO3

"Would you like anything to drink, sir?" the stewardess asked, stopping her cart beside Q and James' seats.

James smiled at her, asking for a glass of whiskey. He turned to Q to see if he wanted anything, but the boffin was staring out of the window. The flare of the sun made his face look paler, illuminating the tense line of his shoulders.

"Q?" James asked gently, placing a hand on his shoulder to catch his attention.

Q flinched, whipping his face towards James. He blinked at him.

"What?"

"Do you want a drink?" James asked again.

Q shook his head, turning back toward the window.

Thanking the stewardess, James raised his glass but didn't take a sip yet. He glanced at Q.

This flight to Cyprus wasn't planned - R was supposed to come with him. A sudden change in the mission's parameters saw Q rushing to pack for the unexpected flight.

Which meant that Q didn't have time to get his usual meds from medical and had to resort to his emergency stash. 

(Q had an emergency stash, of course, he did).

Q did warn him that he would be prickly until the meds kicked in; James just didn't expect the quiet, tense man that sat beside him, barely able to speak.

James took a sip from his whiskey, eyes skipping through the words of his book. La Care was his favorite author, but Q was a distracting presence.

"Q." He raised his book a bit, feigning nonchalance. "Did I ever tell you about the goose that stole my holster?"

Q turned to him, brows knitted. "What are you talking about?"

"Remember that mission in Munich?"

Q blinked. "The one where you went radio silent for three days and only to return with a water-logged Walther?"

James smirked at him, taking another sip.

"Are you saying," Q started slowly, leaning toward James. "That a goose stole your Walter, ran away with it, and dropped it into the river?"

"Are you suggesting that I'm lying, Quartermaster?" James smiled, leaning back until his shoulder bumped Q's.

The boffin smiled, a crooked thing that was a far cry from his usual smiles.

James still took it as a win.

An hour later, James asked the stewardess for a blanket. Q was leaning on his shoulder, sleeping peacefully.

After a few anecdotes from James, Q grew silent again. Glancing at the boffin, James worried that Q got stuck in his head again...  

He huffed a quiet laugh. Q's eyes were closed, head tilting to the side until it hit James' shoulder.

James stopped breathing for a moment, afraid to wake the boffin. But Q continued to sleep, the meds finally doing their job.

He covered Q with the blanket as carefully as possible. 

His hair tickled James as he moved, the soft locks of hair a bigger mess than usual. Probably from the number of times Q ran his hands through it, nervously waiting for their flight.

James returned to his book, making it his unofficial mission to stay still the entire flight. Q needed all the sleep he could get, and James would not be the one to disturb him.

[mi6-cafe]

In the past several days, we've had a lot of discussions, and listened to (and read!) a lot of excellent feedback and suggestions from many people in our community. We are far from done, so thank you for your continuing patience as we give all of your feedback the time it deserves! We have always adjusted Fest based on the survey input we get, but this year it seems like we need to be a little more transparent about Fest points in order to clear up some misconceptions before we talk about all the other changes we will be making. The total points per team can often vary widely. Though we try to make the teams similar sizes, some attrition always happens on one or more teams each year and can have a huge impact on the total score. Because of this we have preferred, in the past, to keep the focus on a team winning rather than the numerical rankings. However, here are this year's total scores.

Fest 2023 Total Scores Q Branch  11,330 Villains   9,005 00s    1,655

This is the widest gap between team points which we have had, despite our new limitations on the number of bonus points which can be stacked. Yet, some of you may be surprised by the range of points here. To break this down further, we're including a table of the top scorers for this year and how many points they have for each category below BEFORE any stacking bonuses and such. (Their total scores do include all bonuses and the rest of the categories.)

We feel this really shows how many ways there are to earn a winning number of points! We are truly proud of Fest and this fandom, and the enthusiasm and community spirit it shows as we all come together to create more fanworks, memes, crazy scav hunt fills, rec lists, what-have-you for everyone to enjoy. There's still more feedback to go through with our team of volunteers who have already come up with some great ideas for changes to Fest based on your survey responses. We will keep you updated (Look for notes tagged #007 Fest change log) and we hope you will come to us with any feedback or suggestions that might benefit everybody here.

Your MI6 Cafe mods, Lin and Cas

[mi6-cafe]

007 Fest 2022 Survey Results

There was a lot of good feedback in the 007 Fest survey and things which will take more thought, but here are the highlights of our analysis.

Team Days: We've heard across multiple years, no matter where team days fall on the calendar, that the team challenges can be more stressful than fun for some people. Therefore, we are experimenting with retiring Team Agent/Q Branch/Villain theme days next year. The mods have never had any control over what happens for team theme days (that’s all up to the teams and their captains to self-organize), and we similarly don’t limit team-driven activities, so teams are still free to plan any challenges they really want to do. 

Bonus points stacking was the number one source of questions this year, and we will be streamlining these processes to make them easier to follow!

Team Civilian is a team that does not compete for points; it is specifically set up so that people who do not feel competitive don’t need to stress about how much or how often they create. However, in case anyone is curious about their points, a points calculation template will be available next Fest for anyone who wants to track their points personally. 

Team Captains have been highly appreciated in our feedback. We could not run fest without them! They have also expressed a desire for more guidelines as to their specific duties, so we’ll be working on a more specific ‘Guide to Captaining during 007 Fest!’ document in order to support our Fest leaders. Additionally, we ran an experiment this year to see the impact of blog admin privileges on team captains and found that these are an important part of the job.

Team MVPs: After the two years that we’ve implemented the ‘Above and Beyond Fancreation’ award, we’ve found that team members often want to nominate individuals not just for a particular fancreation they completed, but for amazing commenting, scavenger hunt items, and supportive activities as well. Therefore, as you saw this year, we’re changing the award to a Team MVP award that all team members will vote on in the future.

Future activities: We got a lot of great suggestions for fest and beyond! Multiple people mentioned being interested in a one- or two-day mini-challenge, and we’re excited to tell you that in addition to the usual sp00qy season, something new will be brewing in Occult October this year! We will continue to experiment with new ideas and suggestions from you all to help the Cafe keep being a place where people in Bond fandom can have fun together.  

Positive feedback: Most of all, you all said that you had fun this July! You talked about enjoying the creativity on your dashboard, finding new fandom friends and community support, being energized by the competition, and feeling motivated to create things. We’re so pleased that so many of you found 007 Fest rewarding <3 

Delegation: Organizing Cafe events takes time and energy, and we’re hoping to recruit some help with specific events in the future. More on this in September.

Thank you to everyone who filled out the survey! You all help make the Cafe community better and we’re dedicated to using your feedback to improve!