[bosskamiura]

Because online straw polls are fun, let's throw one up for the latest open position, Director Of Communications!

Interviews have been posted - what does the public have to say?

Who would you vote for? Who deserves your vote??

[Naetor]

Naetor's rankings:

37:56 Ben Liebich
53:10 Scott Baughman
1:03:33 Richard Sausagemaker

[monty42]

Naetor's rankings:

37:56 Ben Liebich
53:10 Scott Baughman
1:03:33 Richard Sausagemaker

Maybe it's a bit of that german efficiency, just to sprinkle in some stereotypes...

[LORE]

Out of curiosity, do any of the applicants have other nerd jobs and if so are they planning to quit those before taking this on? Call me gun shy, but I would rather have someone focused on one nerd job and do it well than have someone half ass their way through multiple volunteer roles. Our Director of Communications is probably the most important role we have at the Board level, it needs someone's full attention.

[monty42]

Out of curiosity, do any of the applicants have other nerd jobs and if so are they planning to quit those before taking this on? Call me gun shy, but I would rather have someone focused on one nerd job and do it well than have someone half ass their way through multiple volunteer roles. Our Director of Communications is probably the most important role we have at the Board level, it needs someone's full attention.

I can only speak for myself when I say, yes I do have another nerd job and right now no, I do not plan on quitting it.
But I can honestly say that I wouldn't have even thought about applying, if I wasn't confident that I have the neccessary time available to invest.
The trem "half-assing" does not exist in my vocabulary. Those of you who know me a little better will know that when I'm committed to something, I'm relentless.

That being said, the first thing on my agenda (should I get the job) is for me to put a contingency plan in place, that'll kick in should one of the two jobs require a significant amount of additional time beyond what I've calculated for it. At this moment I do not forsee that being a likely possibility, however I will be prepared for it nonetheless.

Right now I don't see us having enough volunteers available to avoid it being neccessary that some of us have to do double duties. Should that some day be the case, then that'd be even better for all of us but until then I think we need to work with what we have.

[Faithful Reader]

...I would rather have someone focused on one nerd job and do it well than have someone half ass their way through multiple volunteer roles.

There's a huge leap from "One Person Working One Job at Peak Amazingness" to "One Person Half Assing Multiple Volunteer Roles." If they have the time to do the job, which they probably have since they applied recently, they are able to put themselves and their time towards the position. I'm a Theatre Related Nerd Job, admittingly seasonal, going back over a decade and have balanced that with my commitments to the Committee.

[bosskamiura]

Hello!
Every time there is a vacancy within the CC, I like to ask a few questions to each of the members competing for the position. In this case, its @Neelix and @Monty42. These questions are meant to inform The Dojo's membership, to help them make a better, informed decision.

[Its important to note, that of writing this, Richard New was not a member of The Dojo. The invitation to him that I extended some time ago is still valid, and he is still welcome to join us.]

@Neelix, thank you for being a member of The Dojo. Some time ago, you communicated your interest in the 2e Brand Manager position and went so far as to complete an interview. Here, again, you are communicating interest in this position. Some might say you are simply trying to obtain whatever role you can within the CC and that your desire to fulfill this role has nothing to do with this role in particular.

Is this the case, or are you trying to help out where you can? Speak about that for a moment if you would please.

Moving forward, how do you view this position as part of the greater CC framework? How do you think the position was handled by the previous DoC, and what do you think you can improve on? What do you think the previous DoC did well?

@Monty42, thank you for being a member of The Dojo. Throughout your history on the forums, you've been very critical of the CC and at times, certain mod actions. What will be your approach to striking a balance between your personal thoughts and the duties of the DoC given it is such a public facing role and you will essentially, be the face of the CC? Is this even possible?

Moving forward, how do you view this position as part of the greater CC framework? How do you think the position was handled by the previous DoC, and what do you think you can improve on? What do you think the previous DoC did well?

[AllenGould]

These questions are meant to inform The Dojo's membership, to help them make a better, informed decision.

Informed decision about what?

[bosskamiura]

These questions are meant to inform The Dojo's membership, to help them make a better, informed decision.

Informed decision about what?

As to who they personally support.

[Faithful Reader]

[Its important to note, that of writing this, Richard New was not a member of The Dojo. The invitation to him that I extended some time ago is still valid, and he is still welcome to join us.]

I would hope that you don't consider membership in The Dojo to be a requirement for a position in The Continuing Committee. Do you not have questions for Richard?

Also, if Richard doesn't join, dibs on his welcome basket.

[bosskamiura]

I would hope that you don't consider membership in The Dojo to be a requirement for a position in The Continuing Committee. Do you not have questions for Richard?

Also, if Richard doesn't join, dibs on his welcome basket.

I don't think being a member of The Dojo is a requirement to become DoC, no, but I do consider it quite the item on the resume - even more so for this role. It means to me you are open to all outlets and ways of communicating to the player base, and more importantly, beyond the player base that supports the CC.

In this, I'm asking questions to members of The Dojo, for members of The Dojo. So no, at this time, I have no question for Richard.

Thank you for the question.

[monty42]

@Monty42, thank you for being a member of The Dojo. Throughout your history on the forums, you've been critical of the CC and at times, certain mod actions. What will be your approach to striking a balance between your personal thoughts and the duties of the DoC given it is such a public facing role and you will essentially, be the face of the CC?

Thanks TK, this is an excellent question! One that I'm surprised nobody on the search committee has asked me so far.
Yes, I've been known to be quite critical of the CC's performance in the past and to a certain extent that is still the case. However since the beginning of this year, I have decided to take a different approach with that criticism.
Some of you might know that at the end of last year, I was ready to walk away from this community. In fact, I had stored away my cards, cut all my ties, written my farewells and I was content that the Star Trek CCG was a thing of the past for me. I will not bore you with details about how it came to that point, some of you might know.
But the point is, had it not been for two stand out members of our community who are more importantly two of the most fantastic human beings I'm lucky to call my friends, I'd be gone now.
Those two convinced me that it was not worth throwing all of this away but that I had to find a different approach.
So I spent most of the winter trying to figure out how to do this and the conclusion that I came to was rather than continue raging against the machine the way I did, I would instead try a positive approach and help improve the machine from the inside.

So you see there is no need for me to find "balance between my personal thoughts and the duties of the DoC". I will try to the best of my abilities to incorporate my thoughts in the role to help and achieve the best possible communication, not only between the CC and the general public but most importantly between the CC and it's members.

And for what it's worth being a person who's been in "open rebellion" for such a long time, it might possibly set a sign for a reunification of the community.

Moving forward, how do you view this position as part of the greater CC framework? How do you think the position was handled by the previous DoC, and what do you think you can improve on? What do you think the previous DoC did well?

I think I touched on most of this in my interview. I'd rather not comment on the job the previous DoC did, mainly because I didn't pay enough attention to form an informed opinion.

As far as moving forward, I see the DoC in person, shoulder the main responsibility of seeing to it that the communication within the CC and amongst the membership flows seamlessly and with a lot less of the unfortunate hickups that we're currently having.

As far as the department of communication, I first and foremost see us taking a much more concentrated approach to strenghten our social media presence. We're living in the golden age of social media right now and if we want to generate traffic to our website and spark people's interest in what we're doing, we need to be on our game on all the social media plattforms. After all none of us wants to get forcefully corrected via a neurological readjustment because we've reached 10 million downvotes

[bosskamiura]

@Monty42, thank you for taking the time and thank you for your desire to serve the community.

[jadziadax8]

@Monty42, thank you for being a member of The Dojo. Throughout your history on the forums, you've been critical of the CC and at times, certain mod actions. What will be your approach to striking a balance between your personal thoughts and the duties of the DoC given it is such a public facing role and you will essentially, be the face of the CC?

Thanks TK, this is an excellent question! One that I'm surprised nobody on the search committee has asked me so far.

I actually tried to write a question like this, and never quite found the right way to phrase it in my mind, so I punted. I guess I should have consulted with TK, because this is much more diplomatically phrased question than I could come up with.

Thank you, TK, for asking this and also to Ben for answering it here.

[bosskamiura]

Thank you, TK, for asking this and also to Ben for answering it here.

No problem. You're welcome.