What is the general feeling out there for the timing of advance notice/promotion for an upcoming new bioblitz? I have something coming near the end of May and would like to know if 2 months is too much notice. …and would 2 weeks be not enough. What are your preferences?
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No matter what you do, not everyone will get the notice at the right time for them to remember it’s coming up, but I give people a month’s notice (by mentioning them in a journal post for the event project). I also found it productive to remind people a few days before the event, as well.
ETA: This remind me it’s almost time to alert people for the City Nature Challenge. Yikes, where did the time go??
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If you can do a ‘fresh’ journal post each time - I would send a few gentle reminders. People lead busy lives and it is sad for the bioblitz and the iNatters who think - damn I missed that!
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it just depends on how formal you want it to be, how you’re going to publicize it, how many people you want to participate, etc.
if it’s you and your closest friends, organized through group text/chat, i think 2 days to 2 weeks. if it’s for an organization and intended to attract 30+ people (including some specialists), and that organization needs to publicize it in a newsletter, etc., then i would start recruitment 4-5 months in advance.
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In this case it is a bioblitz that is organized by one (me) but is a world wide recognized day aimed at drawing awareness to certain organisms and their conservation (without getting specific because i believe thems the rules). This cause does not have a bioblitz but could and should. (and who doesn’t like a good project?)
Without an organization spearheading this, the target people is well over 30+ and I’m at about 2 months out. But am planning to repeat at least next year.
This seems like a good idea.
Luckily, I’m not overlapping with this.
yes, another good thought and as suggested @mentions within.
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Do you think 500 different user @mentions in a single journal post would be too many for an introduction?
Are these users who have previously expressed interest? Or just “cold mentions”? If the first, it might be ok (though 500 still seems like a lot to me), but if it’s the second, I would definitely discourage it. I’ve gotten mentioned on posts like that before and immediately unsubscribed and muted the user who mentioned me out of the blue to prevent it happening in the future.
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I see your point and agree. I did not go through with it. One thought though is that instead of being cold mentions I would say it was luke warm mentions. I’m doing a new bioblitz but I did a mock up of the same parameters for 2023 and roughly the same days (one week). There were 35766 observations posted by the top 500 observers in 2023 - a range of 470 to 29 observations per person, so they at least had interest in the topic.
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If you had a journal post on the 2023 project - a new post will catch those subscribers - without needing an @mention.
Maybe … 10 @mentions in each blog post - with a hook - bring your insect obs - or whatever. Remember last year our first obs of a living …
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I like how your thinking but the 2023 project was a mock up to see if the parameters were viable - made after the fact. The only member/subscriber is me.
Journal posts are the only reason I can see to subscribe to a project. But if the project interests me, I will subscribe, hoping for journal posts.
For example - this new taxonomy is going to haunt me
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/asteraceae-of-southern-africa/journal/91649-revision-of-slangbos-seriphium-plumosum-complex-8-species-with-4-new-species
Tony leaves comments on (some) relevant obs - please join the Asteraceae project … you could try that, once you have made the project to link to.
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I agree that comments with invitations and links on relevant observations are a good way to get people to join projects. I think a lot of folks would at least check out the project link and read about it. Some people also like having the project badge on their observations, so that can be a motivation to join. It would be a lot of work to get a lot of people in a project on a short time frame, but I do think it’s a good approach.
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Speaking from the view of an “endpoint”: I love bioblitzes and would like to participate in more but often don’t get the information until too late–which would generally be anywhere from 2 weeks to 1 day before the event. I regularly travel between two places and participate in bird surveys in one of those places and inevitably, the folks organizing it only give me a few days notice (almost always less than a week). So often, I’ve either just left or am planning on leaving because of some appointment or other.
That’s a lot to say:
One month’s warning would be optimal, along with sporadic “reminders” or notifications like at the two week and one week intervals. That way, it’s easier for me to plan and make arrangements.
(Of course, this is coming from someone who likes to use a pill box that has containers for a month at a time and who fills the containers on the first of every month so I can see when I’m going to run out of something… So I may be a little over-the-top on planning. But again, because I’m not always at home base, having a month’s view of anything can really help so I’m not out of town at the important juncture…)
I’m babbling.
Hope this helps a little though.
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