How to Host an All Bingo Event

[silvercat17]

I've done four events for AllBingo so far and I encourage folks to join in hosting. It can be intimidating doing your first event, but it's actually pretty easy. You can get prompt ideas and lists from previous challenges or use one or more of the lists on the Bingo Generator. Many of the recurring fests use the Bingo Generator lists to great success. While it's nice to do a wrap-up and some reward banners, I have yet to and no one has complained. I try to post the event a week to a few days before it starts.

Recommendations: Write up your event as soon as you think of it, even if you don't do all the formatting. This gives you time to come up with more prompts and makes you less likely to forget what you meant to do.  Use your word processor's alphabetize function to check for duplicate prompts.

Things to include:

• general description of what the event is, preferably with when it'll run
• Any challenges (different bingo shapes, themes, etc)
• Relevant links (for examples, see the 2023 Public Domain Fest, Land of Oz Fest, or Leaky Pipeline Bingo Fest)
• Link to the Bingo card generator and maybe the AO3 collection
• Public cards. I tend to do two or three of different sizes, but even just one is enough!
• Prompt lists in a textarea box ( <textarea> ). Separate each prompt with commas and if you need a comma in a prompt replace it with the HTML code &#44;

How to post it:

• Same as any Dreamwidth post!
• Put your description outside the cut and everything else in the cut
• For the prompt lists and bingo cards, the easiest way (in my opinion), is to switch to the HTML tag and post the code there. Then switch to rich text to double check (it tends to add a whole bunch of unneccesary line breaks, unless you disable the auto-formatting, which means you have to code in the line breaks you want)
• Add your tags: event, !public cards, month: whatever, theme: whatever, public card

And here's a general template you can use, with the HTML included (remove the <table> and the prompt list between the textarea tags):

Description with link to <a href="https://an.owomoyela.net/fun/bingo_generator">Bingo card generator</a> and maybe the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Allbingo">AO3 collection</a>.

<cut>
<b>Example Board:</b>
<table style="width:auto; display:inline;">

<tr>
<td style="border:1px solid #000000; height:10em; width:10em; text-align:center; background-color:#FFFFFF; color:#000000;">anticipation</td>
<td style="border:1px solid #000000; height:10em; width:10em; text-align:center; background-color:#FFFFFF; color:#000000;">family</td>
<td style="border:1px solid #000000; height:10em; width:10em; text-align:center; background-color:#FFFFFF; color:#000000;">regret</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td style="border:1px solid #000000; height:10em; width:10em; text-align:center; background-color:#FFFFFF; color:#000000;">aging</td>
<td style="border:1px solid #000000; height:10em; width:10em; text-align:center; background-color:#FFFFFF; color:#000000;">FREE SPACE</td>
<td style="border:1px solid #000000; height:10em; width:10em; text-align:center; background-color:#FFFFFF; color:#000000;">surprise</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td style="border:1px solid #000000; height:10em; width:10em; text-align:center; background-color:#FFFFFF; color:#000000;">alone</td>
<td style="border:1px solid #000000; height:10em; width:10em; text-align:center; background-color:#FFFFFF; color:#000000;">friendship</td>
<td style="border:1px solid #000000; height:10em; width:10em; text-align:center; background-color:#FFFFFF; color:#000000;">birth</td>
</tr>

</table>

<b>Prompts</b>
<textarea>
candles, cake, present(s), balloons, streamers, wish(es), rain, sunny, anticipation, sharing disappointment, singing, music, party, youth, dinner, movie, aging, birth, milestone, maturity, wisdom, regret, opportunity, argument, friendship, secret, surprise, novelty, childish, thoughtful, sincere, melancholy, playful, family, alone, friend(s), grief/grieving, childhood, tradition, adoption
</textarea>

</cut>