: Message posted on Stardate 06070.5 at 1625 hours
: Posted by Fleet Admiral Jen Herr (President) in response to earlier message.
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: How have you and Jack acted upon this ideal in the past two years as cabinet members? I'd like to hear what you've done to place the focus back to role playing, specific examples from your tenure as GMDir, and his as ACmdt, and what you intend to do in the future.
Well, I'll let Jack answer for himself, since, well, he's him. <G>
I've had the honor of being GMDir (or involved in GMD) for nearly two years (one year and 11 months, to be exact! <G>) so I've had a number of opportunities to ensure that role-playing is the first priority.
More recently, I performed a quick survey of all of STF's active Gamemasters to get a bearing on their workload. A burnt out GM isn't having very much fun role-playing himself nor providing the best mission possible for the crew to role-play in. I used some of the information gained from this survey to create an emergency GM list so that crews wouldn't see a huge gap in the mission (or the death of the mission) in the event a GM needs a long LOA or leaves STF. This should help maintain the focus of our ships so that they don't suffer from an absence!
In the past, I wrote the first department frequently asked questions for the GMD so that people could have easy, straight-forward answers to questions about everything from acronyms to destroying ships.
In general, I've seen at least seven GMTs pass through the program successfully (personally mentoring three myself), which is one of the highest rates in the recent history of STF. This creates "new blood" in the GMD and allows players to experience different GM styles. As one brand-new JGM just expressed to me, it also allows members to see if GMing is possibly their niche in STF.
I feel that these accomplishments have all created a better role-playing focus for GMs and players alike.
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: Also, you say that you want to make sure not just the government heavy-weights have a say, but everyone. How do you plan to involve more people in discussions, when attempts by presidents in the past have failed? Do you have any spiffy new ideas that haven't been tried?
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: Thanks!
: Jen
While things have certainly been on the right track this term to getting discussions well-announced and the minutes released, I feel that there are opportunities for improvement. Over the past few months, I've heard from numerous people that they would love to get involved in government, offer their opinion and volunteer their skills, but they have no idea where to begin. This isn't just people who joined lately, this is even folks who have been around for a number of years. If these experienced members can't make heads or tails of what's going on, there's work to be done.
I feel that there are a number of ways that participation can be encouraged. Even more notification of discussions (through more effective usage of the main MOTD, reports, and possibly an e-mail list or newsletter) would help people learn about them and how to participate. I'd like to see graduating cadets get more details about the government and how it works so they can decide if they want to participate in it and ways in which they can volunteer. Finally, I have to wonder how many people actually have read this "Site Navigation" page we have detailing what each department does. <G> So, I'd like to see more information about the government and what roles the departments and the fleets play added to the Library, as well as make the Library a more prominent feature of STF.
Thanks for your questions, Jen!
Sarah
Hemenway/Dipper: It's YOUR club!