Welcome back! Well, nearly.
Here's what I'm thinking for Jukebox's 2018 schedule, roughly in EST:
Nominations: Tuesday 20 March through Friday 30 March
Sign-ups: Sunday 1 April through Wednesday 11 April
Assignments out: 12-13 April
Assignments due: Sunday 27 May
Works go live: Saturday 2 June
Creator reveal: Friday 8 June
To anyone wishing to do both Jukebox and
Fandom5k, good luck :P - their new schedule is very similar to ours, but assignments for Fandom5k should go out before sign-ups for Jukebox close, so you can hopefully see how easy or difficult your Fandom5k assignment will be before fully committing to Jukebox.
This schedule gives just over 6 weeks for writing/drawing/recording. If enough people prefer 7 weeks, I'll adjust the schedule accordingly. The due & live dates won't be changed - I'm fitting them around existing commitments, holidays, and other exchanges (for example:
Night on Fic Mountain,
Once Upon a Fic).
Other change: this year I would like to make requests visible all through sign-ups. I know that some participants like to be able to edit and tweak requests invisibly during sign-ups, and so this won't suit everyone. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. But I think it is necessary to allow people to match confidently on the media they've offered, rather than blindly guessing which requests may be for fic, art, or podfic.