Posted by Vice Admiral Lindsay Bayes (Gamemaster Director / EGO / MAC) in Discussion on the MAC w/ Suggested Changes

Posted by Admiral Joe P (Librarian / TECH Chairman) in Discussion on the MAC w/ Suggested Changes

Posted by Vice Admiral Thomas (Vice President) in Discussion on the MAC w/ Suggested Changes
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
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4) “Coordinate all community events for STF, including the STF Awards”. In the discussion last term, one thing I thought important to avoid was ‘regulating’ ourselves too much. To that end, I included some language that this should not be seen or interpreted as restricting members from organizing their own informal events (although they could contact the CMM for resources and support). Shouldn’t we still include something like that?

I would be interested in hearing what others think, because I actually think the CMM should be involved in all events. I don’t think this as written is prohibitive, I think it sets the expectation that people let the CMM know of events that are going on to help promote them. I think we can consider changing it to “all major” if this is something people are concerned about. I don’t know what you mean by “informal” - maybe an example could help. I personally think the CMM should be aware of all events going on in the club.

Daniel

-Thomas

I disagree that the CMM should be involved in all events, and I think the assumption that requiring people to notify the CMM means they will automatically get positive support for their event is extremely optimistic. If we have anything at all to learn from club history, it’s that any time we have a structure where it appears a single, disinterested person can shoot an idea down for purely arbitrary reasons, that itself is discouraging.

People often complain that all our ships are the same; part of the reason for that is because we had a string of Presidents who would say no automatically to any Alt RPG no matter how good the idea was or how many people want to do it. A long running complaint about any given President is that many of them have been too strict with what will be discussed in Command e.g. if there is no time to discuss Topic XYZ because the President wants to talk about Topic ABC instead, it just sucks to be you, too bad, go win your own election. Except CMM is going to be not elected, but an Executive Assistant, so you can’t say that. And we see the same dynamic with Executive Assistants; I’m pretty sure more than a handful of people have been angry with me because there was a document or two that I said should not be in the Library and they thought it ought to be. I hope I don’t have to explain how badly this dynamic worked for The Coder.

By effectively creating a monopoly on who manages events, that’s the exact sort of setup we’re heading towards.

Note that, this does not require malice on the part of the CMM. There is only so much one person can do by themselves. If we have lots of stuff going on, some of it is going to get neglected by the CMM just because there’s a lot of stuff going on. There’s stuff people in the club neglect all of the time because there’s too much stuff to do. By requiring the CMM be involved in every event, we’re adding a single, centralized point of failure to what is currently a completely decentralized process.

Finally, a historical note about the Awards: the Awards have never been an official thing. According to the oral tradition I received from a certain person familiar with how they came about, they started because one member in particular thought the club was going through an especially tedious and boring period, and this person wanted to do something fun on their own to get people’s spirits up. So they just did it, and didn’t ask permission from anyone. They weren’t in the government at the time, if I remember correctly. I think being able to do things like that completely independently of the club government is very important and not something we should be infringing upon, even unintentionally.

Joe

I personally am completely fine with someone planning an event without me and I encourage them to do so. In fact, I’ve had people become volunteers because they said “someone should do something like X” and I not so subtly suggested “why don’t you do that then?” There is no way one person can can be involved in every event and nor do I think it helpful to always have to approve everything.

I agree completely so far…

That being said, as the one responsible for things right now, I do want a head’s up. “Hey Linds, just so you know so and so and I are planning to to run this event in a couple weeks. Would you be able to help advertise it?” My answer is always going to be “yes, absolutely!” I am always looking for more stuff to post to social media and the news.

…This part sounds good to me too…

Now, if there is already something big going on at the same time I might discuss whether changing the date on it would be better so we’re not splitting people’s attention, but that’s the most I’d want to interfere. I honestly don’t have time to be the gatekeeper and I highly doubt any future person in my role will either. We have enough to do and you only need to glance at the Ten-Forward MOTD to see that.

As a similar but also side note: I have had people coming to me to volunteer, but it’s been very open-ended offers and that isn’t helpful. It’s actually more stressful for myself and my small team because it take time and energy to drag out what peoples’s skill sets and interests are and then find them something to do.. But if someone comes to me saying, “Hey, I’m good at this one thing and I think we could do something really fun,” then that’s where I put my Coordinator hat on and help get them going on their project. I see myself as a supporter, not the Mastermind.

~Linds

And the rest of what you wrote is where I have a problem. The assumption here is that the CMM will be you, or someone like you, forever, so we don’t need any structural protection for someone making themselves a gatekeeper. The club history is full of people deciding to be gatekeepers and Masterminds, in all sorts of positions, whether or not it makes practical sense or matches with unwritten cultural expectations.

I could rattle off a list of names to illustrate the problems with that assumption, but I think that would be inappropriate considering most of the examples that come to mind aren’t here to respond to the charge. So, I’ll just say broadly, that the assumption nobody will try to be a gatekeeper in the future is unrealistic, unless we explicitly assert the CMM role is not supposed to do that.

Joe