I don't
think the Jamborees were as frequent as that, nor as organised. We had so many fewer readers in those days, that a small number looked like a crowd.
I think they were superseded by our occasional cleanup months, which only work if there are a lot of moldie oldie projects sitting around. I think BCs are getting better at not starting heaps of projects at the same time in the same genre, and of course we have lots more readers, so projects don't tend to languish quite so badly as they used to.
Also, recording conditions, as Tricia said, vary so hugely for people, that setting a weekend (or week or any other short period) instantly rules out a lot of people. Plus, I'd like to think that readers themselves are becoming more careful about what they commit to, so there's less languishing in people's personal queues. Or perhaps it's just that BCs are getting tougher about orphaning chapters.
Certainly the "please record within two months" which is in many projects now, wasn't around then.
All in all, the Jamborees were fun (though I don't think I ever took part in one?) but I'm happy that we don't seem to need them so much any more.
Just thinking aloud, though. At Distributed Proofreaders, we'd sometimes have Proofing Parties, where people would get together in Jabber (IM chat) and agree on a book to proof. Then 3-10 people would descend on that single book and work on it, often clearing it in a few hours. The chat and simultaneous nature meant that people could get help (we did a lot of plays that way, lookin' at you Beaumont and Fletcher! and they're a swine to format) and there was a real sense of progress. Perhaps something like that might work, a sort of Chapter Club, where people agree to commit to a chapter from a different book each month, and maybe there's a vote on which book to do, or rotating choice between members. That wouldn't be a lot to add on top of what people already work on, so less danger of encouraging people to overcommit, and extends people's interests into books they wouldn't otherwise have chosen. Not sure how much different that is to how we work anyway, but ... just musing in text, anyway.
