My First Challenge ... Birth, Life and The End!

I would like to share my experience with initiating and hosting a challenge. I said "my first challenge," but it's not exactly right. I've had another try that has failed quickly. After the first failure, I felt that this was a mandatory step, trying another challenge and not repeating the mistakes from the beginning. I felt that a well-chosen challenge could greatly improve the results in Steemit.

You know how it is said ... there is not a successful business unless it was preceded by a failure. A failure to identify mistakes and learn to stop repeating them.

The first challenge was a music challenge. I love music, especially older music. I felt that this challenge will bring the attention of all music much forgotten or unknown by many. I noticed that the music was not listening here but I did not take this into account. That was the mistake ... no one attended. After this failure, I continued to look for a theme for an interesting challenge.

Now the question is ... why would you want to initiate a challenge?

Well, first of all to increase interaction with others. All the friends I have here I have met in various challenges. Also, these challenges provide a theme for the blog, many challenges mean that it solves for many of us the problem and the difficulty of posting daily.. But the first place is the interaction with other participants to the same challenge, this is the great advantage of initiating or participating in challenges.

Let me go back to my challenge. How did I come up with a challenge called Something About Me? SAM in short!

Reading hundreds of posts I noticed that most refer to the author's person, presenting their own happenings, memories or desires. So are my posts. This is how I thought this SAM matched many posts and I just wanted to put them in a tag and one day when these posts were made aware that they belonged to this category. Because it's so natural to talk about your person in everything you post so you don't realize you're doing this.

So I suggested Something About Me and some of my colleagues thought it was a good challenge, a good idea. Many have attended and produced many great blogs. There have been many special things, sometimes intimate, many reminded of childhood, parents and places long forgotten. I was glad and proud to be able to generate this movement. A few months was very nice, there were not many posts, about 5-6 per week but all of very good quality.

Then something happened that I did not think of. Participants reached saturation, told a lot about them and found new topics harder. Fewer participants. I understand that the end is coming and I suggested that when there is no post in a week I declare this challenge closed. That happened at 13th week in December 28. I wrote the closing post and at the same time I informed the few participants of my intention. They made me continue ...I quit posting the closing blog.

Anyway, I felt it was almost over. My opinion is that a successful challenge must have at least 10-20 participants a week with many new entries. This solves the main requirement, the interaction. Of course, this requirement is not resolved immediately, but in a few months it should. Because it was obvious to me that SAM wouldn't do that, I felt the end is near.

I was right, SAM has continued for several weeks with fewer and fewer participants but still there was no week without any participant. I didn't have the reason to stop.

Life often offers surprises and not always pleasant.

An accident. An accident that I had at home, from an inattention and an overstatement of my physical powers, sent me to bed for more than two weeks. Then the long and painful convalescence kept me away from Steemit and my challenge. I'm sorry but this was the final blow. Now I have to say Something About Me closed from my point of view. Of course I will follow the tag: #sam-saturday and I will read and vote if there are any postings but for me it's closed.

I'm sorry it's over. It's my fault because it didn't have the success I had hoped for. Thanks to all the participants!

@barbara-orenya; @melinda010100; @roxy-cat;
@luigi-the-gnome; @denissemata; @julieabbi2; @nolasco;
@dswigle; @liliana.duarte; @old-guy-photos; @tali72; @aulia1993; @nelinoeva; @thebigsweed; @c0ff33a; @bluemoon; @trudeehunter; @genesisgaby; @zirochka; @quotes-haven; @maria444; @nataliaeline

I participated in many challenges, every week in at least three. They were helpful. However, I realized that they are in some way a kind of imagination killer. Of course you need imagination to write a blog in any challenge with the theme it offers. But that makes you a little lazy. You already know that someday you will write about flowers, another about the market, another about the walk, about colors and so on. Although it is harder to attract attention, to find interesting topics to propose every day, my opinion is that if you are looking for unusual, unplanned themes, you have more chances to develop creativity.

I will try to post in fewer challenges (which is quite difficult because they are addictive), 1-2 times a week. In the rest of the time I will look for new themes that I can find myself.

Below I put the post ready a few months ago to announce the SAM closure. For those who want to initiate new challenge, I wrote in this post what I think it must be designed a successful challenge (after this experience of mine).

Something About Me Challenge - Week 14 - The Last!

*Something About Me: #sam-saturday - WEEK 14. It should have been a recapitulation of posts but it's not.

It's been 3 months and half since the challenge started. Weird, strange, unexpected, sad things have been brought before our eyes. This was the consequence of participation. Thank you very much to all the participants so far and to all those who had the curiosity to learn something about us.

Probably no. 13 was bad luck because no. 14 is no longer a recapitulation. It's a farewell!... I feel the need to close this challenge. I don't want to leave it and let it float like the outgoing satellites that are rolling around the earth (well, a totally disproportionate comparison).

I have decided, tacitly, to stop this challenge when there will be no posts. This Saturday, December 28, it happened!

I believe that in order to promote a quality challenge, some conditions must be met:

• The initiator must have a SP that is large enough to be able to reward all participants and create a motivation to participate, as do @ace108 and @c0ff33a with #beautifulsunday and #sublimesunday.

• The initiator must have great interaction, support and charisma, like @dswigle with her #MarketFriday

• The theme must be easy to accomplish, to help you post when you have no idea what to do, such as #ColorChallenge - initiated by @kalemandra.

On the other hand...

I think that this theme of the challenge: Something About Me - is perhaps too much, maybe we are exposing our personal life too much.

At the same time, most posts in Steemit would easily fit this tag: #sam-saturday because most postings refer to the author!

And finally, it may not be interesting for anyone to know about others.

I think these may be some causes that have led to lack of interest and participation.

This was week 14 of this challenge.

There was no post with tag: #sam-saturday. Even I have not posted on time, as initiator of this challenge.

In the last recapitulative post, Something About Me Challenge - Week 13 Review, where I wrote about the intention to stop this challenge, I didn't get feedback for that. Only @melinda010100, who has often participated in the challenge with great posts, made a recommendation. A recommendation I was thinking about myself.

"You have done a great job with this challenge and only you can decide to continue or not. Maybe you can end it formally, but still keep an eye on the tag and upvote and comment if anyone does a SAM post in the future?" ... said @melinda010100.

Of course, I will, it's normal to do that!

I have seen so many challenges in which the initiator no longer responds, at least with a comment and a thank you.

I don't want this to happen to SAM. That's why I say it closed!

If in the future there will be posts with this tag ... still unlikely ... but if they will exist, they will have my little vote!

I want to thank all friends who participated in SAM - Saturday! There have been stunning stories about memories, passions and little-known happenings in their lives.

Thank you!

@barbara-orenya; @melinda010100; @roxy-cat;
@luigi-the-gnome; @denissemata; @julieabbi2; @nolasco;
@dswigle; @liliana.duarte; @old-guy-photos; @tali72; @aulia1993; @nelinoeva; @thebigsweed; @c0ff33a; @bluemoon; @trudeehunter; @genesisgaby; @zirochka; @keithboone.

It was an honor and a pleasure to be together!