Sprint 8 – Adventure Time!

Sprint 8 – Adventure Time!

April 26th, 2020

Hello, it’s me again! James! 

You’re probably wondering what i’ve been working on the last two weeks. Well take my hand and we will delve into a world of imagination!

But just before we dive in – here are the articles covering the journey so far!

  1. Precursor
  2. Sprint 1 – The Foundations
  3. Sprint 2 – The ummm Foundations?
  4. Sprint 2 – Nerd Ramble
  5. Sprint 3 – Cooking with matches!
  6. Sprint 4 – Now We’re Cooking With Gas!
  7. Sprint 5 – Robot Uprising
  8. This Is Not the Sprint You’re Looking For
  9. Sprint 6 – That’s a Weird Looking Patronus
  10. Sprint 7 – Corona Stole My Title
  11. Sprint 8 – Adventure Time!
  12. Sprint 9 – Now In Technicolor
  13. Sprint 10 – Refinement
  14. Sprint 11 – Motion In The Ocean
  15. Alpha Release 1.0.3
  16. Sprint 12 – No Rest For The Wicked
  17. Alpha Release 1.0.4
  18. Sprint 13 – I Need a Break
  19. Alpha Release 1.0.5
  20. Sprint 14 – Just James Things
  21. Sprint 15 – Wearing My Heart On My Sleeve
  22. Alpha Release 1.0.6
  23. Sprint 16 – Warm Up
  24. Alpha Release 1.0.7
  25. Sprint 17 – Coffee’s back on the menu!
  26. Alpha Release 1.0.8
  27. Sprint 18 – We’re on fire!
  28. Sprint 19 – Slowly fast
  29. Sprint 20 – Let’s get Nerdy
  30. Alpha Release 1.0.9
  31. Sprint 21 – We’re back!
  32. Alpha Release 1.1.0
  33. Sprint 22 – You Look Cute Today
  34. Alpha Release 1.1.1
  35. Sprint 23 – Sausage Smuggler
  36. A SoSa Retrospective
  37. Sprint 25 – I am SoSa and don’t call me Shirley
  38. Sprint 26 – The best laid schemes of mice and men
  39. Sprint 27 – Vogue, Strike a Pose
  40. Sprint 28 – a New Hope
  41. I Couldn’t Think Of a Title
  42. Guess who’s back, Back again!
  43. Demolition Man
  44. Squid James
  45. I AM STILL ALIVE
  46. We Didn’t Choose This Life, We’re Just Living In It
  47. Let’s go!

Right! up to date? let’s go!

Login and Registration

This whole process has taken a few sprints to really get right, a lot goes in to it but I’m pleased to say it’s close to finalisation now and I can start integrating social logins.

The full registration flow
Now you can talk to bots with your own account!

Outsourcing

I figured I can’t do this all by myself especially as I’m working, so I decided to start reaching out to people for help.

Video Editor

I decided to reach out to a bunch of people, give them all the same video and see what they come up with.

Some good, some bad but mainly it’s helping me identify what information a video editor actually needs and how long it takes.

I need to make a basic intro video which i’ll do next sprint and then i’ll start posting the game night videos 🙂

Lore Writer

Some artwork a local designer has kindly made for me

One of the biggest changes for SoSa 2.0 is a backstory  I wanted to create an interesting and immersive lore that will help me expand on the experience within SoSa.

This sprint, I’ve interviewed a total of 11 writers and decided to go with Karl!

Karl’s from the UK, he’s been in the game industry for about 6 years, has a passion for writing, horror, sci-fi, gaming and currently works full time as a QA / Tester for a large game studio.

Karl will be working with me on a freelance basis from this sprint.

Developer

This sprint, I’ve reached out to another developer to help build out the bug / issue tracking system for SoSa.

I haven’t outsourced any of SoSa yet  because I’ve still been deciding how everything fits together.

This is going to become a requirement fairly soon and is relatively isolated from the rest of the platform, so figured I may as well outsource it to someone I trust to do a decent job of it. Hoping that will kick off this sprint too.

PA

Lastly, ’ve been looking at the possibility of working with a Freelance PA for a few hours a week.

Nothing is solidified yet but there are a bunch of non-developer things I need help with that take me away from actually developing SoSa, this wasn’t an issue when I was working on it full time but now every hour counts.

Eurovision

What up music fans? The covid is still roaming the streets but don’t let that stop you from indulging in the glory of Eurovision! That’s right, Eurovision 2020 is still a gogo for Sosa.

We’ll be bringing you the trashiest, glampiest, rock, classical, pop, ballad fusion fest in history!

Join us on Friday at 7PM BST / 12PM PT / 3PM ET for some witty banter, brilliantly awful music and an unofficial drinking game as we journey into the joy that is Eurovision!

Game Night


Thank you everyone that’s coming along to these, it’s a lot of fun having you and a good way to spend a Sunday evening.

Next SoSa game night we will be playing Jackbox Party 3, 4, 5 and 6!

Sunday 3rd May 1900-2100 GMT / 1200-1400 PT / 1500-1700 ET

You don’t need to buy anything this time around, it’s free to take part and you just need a mobile phone / web browser.

Games are max 6-8 players but unlimited audience players, so if there’s a lot of us we can either split ya’ll into groups or just take it in turns who plays!

You can grab a ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sosa-plays-jack-box-party-3456-tickets-103141880140

Stats!

I don’t know how many reading this are stats nerds but stats are very important for any budding entrepreneur or start up, they help you identify what you’re doing right or wrong.

It’s also really easy to get disheartened when you’re building something, especially something as big as a social network. So knowing where you actually stand is far more important than your perception.

Choosing the right metrics to monitor is also very important and I’m still personally trying to work that out.

Firstly, our beta list is now at 276

Site Visitors

Unique visitors is down generally over all, averaging about 700 a day with some peaks

I’m just sad one of those numbers isn’t 420, at-least it’d be funny

Search Engine 

Our average position is up to 23.9 vs 37.1 a month ago, clicks have over doubled from 23 to 54 and our impressions have doubled from 1.07k to 2.04k.

This is all organic, based on the content on the site and no ads, no paid SEO.

Social Media

Instafollowers are up a bit, I have no idea how to use instagram but it’s going in the right direction!

@sosacommunity @ me baby

Facebook reach is a bit misleading at the moment, last year we had a single post go viral and resulting in thousands of additional followers.

During sprint 7 was the year anniversary of that and Facebook forces the post back in peoples face so… and it happened again….

I am hoping next sprint things will start to look normal again!

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