Millenniyule

(My apologies. I wrote several drafts of this message but then forgot to post it!) As I write, it is the 27th of January. A month ago today, Millenniyule 2022 had "peaked" with Christmas Day and I was doing the Academic Agent stream. The next day would be Morgoth, and finally the outro AMA. I have put off writing a "closing note" because initially I was exhausted, and then preoccupied with other work. But a closing note is appropriate. Millenniyule 2022 was, as Dave Martel might say, an undertaking of blasphemous proportions. It comprised 60 interviews and 4 AMAs, as well as the (as yet unique) Christmas Cards stream. (Incidentally, many more cards have arrived since I did the stream. Next time, I will need to specify that people outside Britain should post their cards by the start of December!) Before the festival began, there was 10 weeks of non-stop preparation - selecting 60 guests, inviting them, settling the schedule, and a huge amount of graphics, video and audio work. As some of you will remember, I had to replace my computer with less than two weeks to go, meaning that vital time was lost and several elements could not be finished in time. Then I got ill just before the festival started and remained mildly ill throughout it. In addition, people's lives were unusually hectic this year so that there were four cancellations and even more re-schedulings along the way. Other issues, both in my own life and in the online community, also created disturbance and added to the stress. Almost nothing was ideal, going into it. Despite all of those setbacks, Millenniyule 2022 went ahead and was a success. I don't think it was the best year, but it definitely wasn't "a failure" in any way. Of the 60 guests, 29 had never appeared on Millenniyule before, so there were lots of "new faces". It all added up to a total of 117 hours of content, with the average interview lasting 1h46m. If spread over a year, it would be more than 2 hours per week, so it is, as some people have pointed out, a year's worth of content crammed into three weeks. As usual, I made notes for future years - improvements that could be made, things that could be tried. Those notes will now wait to be enacted upon, like seeds waiting to germinate when the time is right. I have begun making a list of potential guests for 2023 and it is already 70 strong; we will see what the year offers up in terms of content creation, event organising and ideas propagation. I already have the aesthetic decided upon for Millenniyule 2023; it's just a matter of working out how to do it without it being the huge workload that 2022's aesthetic was! In addition, who knows, maybe it will be broadcast on Twitter as well as Odysee. All of these decisions will have to wait for now. I have a lot to do this year - no doubt we all do. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed Millenniyule 2022, and thank you for watching it.