Feast Your Eyes on This Feedback
In search to entertain our loyal followers it is always important to listen. Getting feedback is essential to making things work. So with a chance to get your opinions in, please tell me what you would like to see in future challenges and rounds and tweaks to make this experience be more fulfilling to you. Thanks for your input in advance.
More scratch ‘n’ sniff videos
Buddah, You have a great thing going here! I think you can do this 4 times a year.
Steve,
One of the things that Buddah and I talked about while driving to Peppers at the Beach last year was expanding the contest videos into a full-fledged video cooking series.
Whether it be done through I Love It Spicy or my own Weekly Firecast (which has been on hiatus because my main laptop with all the video production files on it crapped out), my idea was that every so often a single chef/product maker could make a recipe cooking video focusing on spicy food. It would not be unlike what you guys do every week in the FYEOT contest. There could be a rotating group of chefs. Each chef could plug his/her product (or even company as a whole) as much as they want in the video, so that would be incentive for them to do it. In addition to a blatant plug, the video would be 1) entertaining and educational and b) it would show the general public what could really be done with their product in the kitchen instead of it being (for examples) a hot sauce someone would pour on pizza or a salsa you would dip tortilla chips into.
I told Al that I really enjoyed watching all the vids from the first contest last year and that the chilehead world was needing a spicy cooking series of some sort. You look on YouTube, and there all-BBQ series, or all-this or that. There are individual videos of people cooking spicy things, but unfortunately 90% of the fiery content on YouTube are just daredevils popping superhot chiles in their mouths. I’d love to see something with real substance that’s regular and ongoing.
Scott I agree!
To do a culinary challenge with different foods, not just “how hot can I make this” would be great for the chilehead community and get others involved as well.
I got one better. Everyone is trying to promote their product. We are all in this together. Let’s say that the 8 contestants each send the other a jar of their product that they have to use in a recipe one week.
The other thing is if you did 4 challenges per year, take the winners of the 4 and have them challenge each other in 3 rounds.
With the right promotion, this could be picked up by a food channel program!
I love your enthusiasm Steve, but doing this 4 times a year would basically put an end to any social activity I have right now, which is minimal at best. Aside from how much commitment it takes to carry this out, I still need show sponsors. I am basically done with Weekend of Fire, so they are out. Not every show wants to donate a free booth, and not every show is on everyone’s to do list. I am quite grateful to all the companies and people that stepped up to sponsor the challenge, but it isn’t easy asking for money from companies trying to make a dent in this tough industry. I would do it 2 times a year, but it there are so many shows during the year, it would be tough finding the 7-8 weeks to do this. I choose after the Fiery Food Show because this is a nice gap before Gunther’s Gourmet Gala and Peppers at the Beach start up in May. I do appreciate your ideas though.
Scott had a nice idea, and I offered it up in the Chileheads group around June, and not one company took me up on my offer. It is like an infomercial for a fiery product company to showcase themselves for 20-40 minutes, make some great spicy recipes, and in the end have a video they can also put up on their website. The door is still open for that, all I need for them is to send me the video and I will host it and post it.
I don’t think show sponsorship is such an issue. I know I am not doing it for the weekly prize, although it is nice and it can pay for our ingredients. I do it for the fun and publicity of what we can do outside making our concoctions.
In regards to your social activity…. that I can’t help you with..LOL
But really I think that you can work with a few different bloggers as not to take all on your shoulders and still create a great program!
Most people need the motivation to win, and not just do it for the fun of it because this is time consuming and a lot of work. If I had a huge request to do this, then I could conceivably do it again later this year, but the draw isn’t there just yet. I shoot for 8. I had 10, and 3 people dropped out the week before we began. How do I keep people from quitting on it? Do I suggest a $200 deposit, refunded if you complete your contest obligation? That would definitely scare people away. It is not as easy to get people to do this, to get the sponsors to donate to this. For me because the videos are received on Saturday after midnight and put up on Sunday, and I have to produce a video for posting on Wednesday, I can’t stray too far. That is all I was talking about because socially I put a lot of time in on certain days. I have to make sure for a month and a 1/2 I have no travel plans. March-April seemed like the best time for me and it worked well within the dates for the shows.
Must have missed the offer Buddah about cooking video series. I think what you and Scott discussed is right on for this community and not just plugging our own stuff, which any opportunity to do that should be reward enough for any company, but showcasing the chiles also when available for some varieties. Anything is better than someone just shoving them in their mouth as the whole point is missed in my opinion and it gives the absolutely wrong impression of what this community and industry is about. Actually kinda pisses me off to be honest.
Keep doing what your doing as far as the contest goes. Why change what works and what people like. been thinking about some challenges…
But, you have to admit, the scratch ‘n’ sniff idea is pretty cool.
smell-a-vision