Unofficial Events

Our ML team does its best but we can’t be everywhere. We’re blessed with a big region and we try to run our events in places accessible by as many people as possible. However, it’s inevitable that some people can’t make it, for whatever reason, and no-one wants to feel left out or on their own.

So we totally understand that sometimes people want to get together with others somewhere closer to home. And we support those people as much as possible!

Which is where what we call ‘unofficial events’ comes in. These are events that have been organised by non-MLs, which won’t be run by an ML, and at which the usual, official stuff probably won’t happen (stickers, prizes, etc).

We identify these clearly because it’s important for people to understand what’s happening and what they can expect.

We’re happy to give advice to those wanting to run an event outside of our official ones and support it in any way we’re able, including providing official stickers and such if we can! We’re also happy to spread the word to the rest of the region. We include unofficial events in our calendar every year and talk to both venues and writers to help set things up and get the ball rolling.

With the new NaNoWriMo website, organisers of unofficial events can now add their own activities to the region’s calendar.

Before you get started, here are some guidelines we’ve put together to make the process smoother and help to make your events more successful:

1. Talk to us (the MLs). This is the most important thing, really! Let us know what’s happening and we’ll see how we can help out. We might be able to provide goodies!
2. Avoid clashing with existing events, particularly central/official ones. More people will be available for your meet-up if you pick an empty slot in the calendar!
3. Put [Unofficial] at the start of your event’s title on the event list. This marks is clearly and again, is so people know what to expect. (The MLs currently can’t edit these events, so we can’t fix it for you if you forget! We won’t approve the event to the main list without it, so please make sure it’s there.)
4. Be at the event. This seems like a silly thing to have to point out, but we’ve had events where this hasn’t happened! If you can’t make it, either make sure someone is there to coordinate things or cancel it, and let people know. People need to know who to look for when they get there!

So what do you do? To contact the MLs, you can buddy us on the NaNo site (we’re listed on the BrisNaNo region hub). Or, hop into our BrisNaNo Discord server and chat to us there.

When you’ve got all the details sorted, you can add it to the region event list. Remember: you can’t edit, so if you make a mistake, delete and create again!