Warm weather was approaching, people were getting vaccinated, and it had been over a year since we’d been able to have a huge debaucherous party…so over the summer of 2021 we celebrated the return to somewhat-normalcy by partying like it was 776BC again – with a series of olympic games!
Wrestling, discus, and chariot racing might have been appropriate for the ancient greeks, but we obviously needed to add our own flair to the games by coming up with some events of our own! Here’s how we did it:
Submitting our Ideas
Over the course of summer ’21, we hosted a submission form on this website where people could send in their best ideas for events. We wanted to have many different styles of events (solo and team events, mental or logic competitions, feats of strength, drinking games, sheer dumb luck, etc.), so we encouraged everyone to think outside the box.
Every week, we each submission to make sure they were feasable, then added them to the list of Potential Events. We ended up with a ton of really great event ideas – more than we could possibly play over the course of the summer!
Voting for our Favorites
A few days before each game day, we opened up voting on the list of Potential Events. We encouraged everyone to vote for as many events as they would like, but to only vote for events that they planned on participating in. We wanted to make sure that people would actually play the games we decided on!
As people voted on events, the list automatically sorted the most popular to the top so that everyone would be able to see the voting process in real time and see how their submissions or favorites were ranking. We also added filters to the list so that users could find events by category or type.
Voting is now closed permanently, but you can still checkout the list of Unplayed Events to see what the page looked like!
Game On!
Game Days happened regularly throughout the summer on Saturdays and Sundays, depending on everyone’s schedules.
Friday night before each Game Day, we closed the voting and selected the top events to play that week. We chose up to 10 events every week, though we often selected fewer depending on their complexity and likely timeframe. We also occasionally had to limit the number of events in certain categories – no one wanted to watch 3 several-hour endurance events or play 7 different drinking games in one day.
We then reached out to the submitters of the top events to let them know that their games were chosen, and made sure they could attend (and bring any necessary supplies). We wanted submitters to be involved in their own games, so if anyone couldn’t make it that week, we moved down the list until we had our confirmed winners.
Once we confirmed the events, we posted the list on the website so that everyone could see what was on the lineup for that weekend – then we all got together and competed! We started each Game Day with the most popular event and moved down through the list to play as many events as time allowed. In the case of multiple events with the same number of votes, whoever was present at the Game Day got to vote which we would play first.
Rinse and Repeat
After each game day, any selected events that we didn’t have time for got moved back to the list of potential events. We also added any new submissions to the list, and then cleared all past votes (to be fair to new submissions).
The events we played were removed from the Potential Events page and added to the Past events list. Each one also got their own page with recaps, photos, lists of participants, and – of course – the winners! We also maintained a season-long Leaderboard to keep track of which events people medaled in or won, and who did the best over the course of the summer.
We loved the inaugural season of the Canoeligan Olympics enough that we’re planning on continuing the idea into the future, with a few tweaks on structure to make it easier to run and even more fun for everyone involved!