New DJ invitation process (2020)

Good Hello Slippers!

The DJ invitation process has been fully revamped. Starting today, all invitations are done by active Slipmat DJs. The process is very simple and now truly a community effort.

In short, here’s how the new process works:

  1. A new DJ registers a listener account and follows the instructions to complete their application
  2. When the invite application is ready (email and listener profile ok, a bit of Karma from using Backstage and visiting events), any active Slipmat DJ can endorse it and become a mentor for this DJ. The invitation is sent immediately after an endorsement.

Like said, the process is quite simple and it shifts the responsibility of growing our community from the staff to the community itself. Any experienced DJ can endorse new DJs, but no one has to.

The new process is fully automated, all you as a DJ need to do for an endorsement is to check that the application details are OK and then click a button. But the more important part is what happens after the initial endorsement. As we all know, there’s a bit of a learning curve in getting up and running with Slipmat. This new process makes it easier for the new DJ as they now have a mentor.

By inviting a new DJ you become their mentor. You are responsible for helping them to spin their first test event and getting them familiar with the platform in general. Also, importantly, if the new DJ causes any trouble (say, spamming or harrassing or any other misbehavior), you are partially responsible for it. Luckily these kind of problems have been extremely rare on Slipmat but we also want to keep it that way. Therefore there needs to be a responsibility attached so you need to actually think about who you want to endorse.

Okay, so how does this work in practise?

If you want to help to invite fellow DJs to slipmat, you first need to sign and accept the endorsement rules. (You need to be a DJ to be able to do this.) The rules state that you need to make sure the applications are good and that you’ll accept the responsibility for your endorsements. After you agree to these rules, you can endorse any invitation.

The new invitation status page prints out a link that a person can share for endorsements. By visiting this link you’ll see the invitation status, and if all fields are green, you can endorse the invitation. The idea is that the inspiring DJ will share this link to you, you can then help them out to fill it out if there are any problems, and after they create their profile, you keep on holding their hand with the first steps on the site.

The hardest part of the process is probably to figure out how the new DJ finds their mentor. We’ll probably should have a topic here on Backstage where DJs could volunteer to be mentors and then also a documented way for them to communicate this during events etc. It’s early times still, any comments and ideas are very welcome :slight_smile:

Update: if you want to mentor new DJs, post your details here: Active Slipmat DJ Mentors

Update 2: we now have a private group for the mentors where everyone can discuss freely and share questions and information. You will get invited to that group after you have posted your details to the topic above.

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