Prep Instructions: Leadership Team

The Prep Leadership Team consists of Executive Leaders, Writing Coaches, and Tech Support/Administration.

The Prep Leadership Team is responsible for answering questions and assisting Preppers through struggles. Sometimes assistance requires reading through the Prepper's work and helping them brainstorm, which can be time consuming. Do your best to help the individual, and remember that we are a TEAM. If you need help assisting a struggling Prepper, tag the other writing coaches for further suggestions and we'll keep the conversation going. Also, if an individual seems to need more encouragement than writing coaching, we can delegate the job to the Cheerleaders.

Executive Leaders

Positions:
Prep Leader
Head Cheerleader
Judging Coordinator
Coaching Coordinator

Qualifications:
Reliability is an absolute must, as these leaders are responsible for ensuring completion of tasks assigned to others within their respective teams.

Responsibilities:
Ensure timely completion of all volunteer tasks
Re-delegate or personally complete incomplete tasks
Support and coach all other volunteers


Writing Coaches

Qualifications:
Thorough knowledge and understanding of all the Prep assignments and how to apply them to a novel-length fiction project is required.

Responsibilities:

1. Answer questions prompted by participants.
This could be explaining or clarifying today's assignment, or it could be a more in-depth discussion that involves a prepper's personal writing project. Someone needs to be watching the forum to answer questions when they crop up.

2. Prompting discussion about today's assignment.
This involves linking an article, podcast, or video relevant to the assignment, or posing a thought-provoking question for open discussion, or sharing your own thoughts about today's assignment, and keeping the conversation going if it gets off the ground.

SCHEDULE:
Writing Coaches will be assigned shifts during which they are expected to check the forum and perform the responsibilities above. You don't necessarily have to be available during the whole shift. Just find any time during that shift to sift through questions and conversations in the forum since your predecessor responded. The Coaching Coordinator, like all Executive Leaders, may use their discretion to assign shifts and tasks to their teams.

NOTE: Some days the forum conversations move quickly and you have to scroll back several pages to find the last Leader's replies. The "SEARCH" feature is a great tool for finding your predecessor's last reply.

Any questions you can't answer with confidence, tag Brandiwyn🎶 so I can answer during my daily morning shift.


Tech Support/Administration

Qualifications:
Working knowledge of Google Sheets and basic understanding of spreadsheet functions is required.

Responsibilities:
Add new Preppers to the Group (procedure below)
Address technical issues and make manual Log corrections
Answer questions about the Prep logistics
Log interesting threads on the Prep Log's "Close-out" tab
Send daily close-out emails including current standings and forum highlights (procedure below)

Note: the daily close-out email is generally assigned to one or two people whose time zone/sleep schedule allows publishing between 10pm-5am WDC

Procedure: Adding a New Prepper to the Group:
1. Open "October Novel Prep Challenge Group"  [E]
2. Click Group Tools -> Manage Members.
3. Scroll down to the bottom and copy contents of Exportable Group Username List
4. Open October Prep spreadsheet -> Group tab, and paste under "GROUP MEMBERS"
5. Look for "#N/A" under "IN GROUP?"
6. Back on the WDC group page, scroll down to the Page 1 of 20 box, use the dropdown to change 1 to 20, and click "Go".
7. Add new participant usernames to any open fields in the "Group Member" column.
8. Change the "Level" to 9.
9. Scroll down and click "Update Members".
10. Copy Exportable Group Username List and paste under GROUP MEMBERS (on the Prep Log spreadsheet) again to double check that all new users have been added. *
11. Please report any bugs to Brandiwyn🎶 ASAP!

NOTE: Preppers are not required to use their WDC username to participate in OctoPrep. Therefore, some users may permanently show "NOT IN GROUP". However, these users may miss out on daily group close-out emails and will not be able to participate in Contest Rounds.

Procedure: Sending Daily Close-out Emails
1. Open the "Close-out" tab in the "October Prep" spreadsheet
2. Enter the date of the desired close-out (the previous day)
3. Copy/paste the Subject Template contents into the subject of the email
4. Copy/paste the Email Template contents into the body of the email
5. Add any relevant announcements to the body under the Announcements heading
5. Copy/paste the lists below "Winner!" / "Runner-Up!" / "In Running" / "Eliminated" into the email under the applicable headings
6. Add your salutation and send the email

Note: The template is provided for convenience only. You are welcome to make any changes or draft the email from scratch if you prefer. If you find you need more Motivation or Forum Picks fields, let Brandiwyn🎶 know, as this can be easily expanded.

As always, THANK YOU for volunteering. Your time is valuable. As enormous as this event has become, we could not pull it off without you, and I don't take your contributions for granted.