Hi! First timer here also.
I played through IFComp once or twice as a youth, but I’ve only gotten back into the community in the last couple years. (And by a slightly odd route – I was writing a handwriting recognizer, and I needed an interesting project to use it in; an interpreter seemed like a nice fit; testing that got me playing through a bunch of the classics again; figuring out Z-machine esoterica got me back on the forums; started picking up bits and pieces of Inform 7 from there… and down the rabbit hole we go.) This is also the first fiction I’ve written since I was single-digit years old — and I was not any good at it then either — so, lots to learn!
I’m not sure about fun facts, but I can recommend books: The Raven Tower and The Design Book were probably the two that influenced the game most directly.