Posted by Nathan Miller in Proposal: Ship Spotlight of the Month

Posted by Vice Admiral Daniel Lerner (Vice President / Procedures Guru / Personnel Director) in Proposal: Ship Spotlight of the Month

Posted by J Ridgley in Proposal: Ship Spotlight of the Month
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻
I’ve been playing around with this idea for the last few years - maybe even during my last term as prez, but I think we’re are a good point to see if we can put some legs on it.

I have an idea that I’ve been calling Ship Spotlight of the Month.

I’ll start with what it might look like, and then why I think its a good idea, and then some discussion questions.

Each month, we would spotlight a specific ship in the club (not including the Academy ship(s), as that might be too disruptive/inconsistent with the training program, nor would it be useful for the goals of this proposal). There would be a set schedule that COs and FComms/QDirs/EAs would know. While that schedule can change, ships should have at least 2-3 months notice before they are the spotlighted ship so they can get ready. If a ship is too unhealthy for that month, we can skip/delay the spotlight while we work on those issues.

When the ship is spotlighted, the following will happen:
-The front page will have blub about the ship and an invitation to check it out
-Our social media (FB, Twitter) will make multiple references to that ship and/or events on that ship during the month.
-Characters from the ship might be spotlighted and/or referenced in-character on other ships.
-Something special in the newsletter
-Optional: the CO could allow people to RP guest characters on the ship for the month
—If this is done, maybe a side-sim where the ship is docked to allow for those guest characters during the month.
-If needed, the PDept will help with recruitment drives for that ship during the month
-Anything else that makes sense

This will accomplish a few things:
-Give members a chance to see what is happening on other ships in the club
-Maybe drive up interest in that ship if needed
-Allow different in-character interactions that may generate more fun/interest in the ship
-By focusing on some of our specific ships, potentially generate outside interest in the club
-Have fun!

Some some discussion points:
1) Is there general support for this idea or, conversely, a strong reason not to do it?
2) If we went ahead, who would be responsible for organizing it (keeping the schedule, making sure ships are ready, announcements, coordinating with CMM and other departments, etc.)? A new position? The PDept? CMM?
3)If we went ahead, are there other aspects of the ship spotlight that should be considered?
4) Have I missed anything with this proposal?

Daniel

Love the idea in general. Maybe have 2 or 3 options for a month’s spotlight, just shifting them around as needed, so if one isn’t healthy enough for it, you still have a spotlight? Just throwing out an idea

Katy

Absolutely love this idea and honestly it should already be a thing, I think Katy hit the nail on the head with having a backup or by just saying its USS X this month, but if its unhealthy or the CO for whatever reason can’t do it then the ship from the next month be bumped up. I think as well if a CO is busy that the XO can step up and do it, they should know the ship just as much.

I think the person responsible should be the CMM however know they already do a lot, so maybe having a Asst. CCM? No OOC rank increase but someone who is willing to help out particularly with this spotlight.

I love the idea of perhaps doing it as a sort of IC thing , kind of similar to how Kat does her questions corner.

Overall and simply, Yes and if you need ships to trial on I have the names of two!

• Jake

I also love this idea! Any opportunity to showcase the writing and creative talent we have in this club will always get a huge thumbs up from me. Just a few thoughts to follow…

Who should be responsible? It does kind of feel like something that would fall in the arena of the CMM. Particularly where social media spotlights and newsletter articles are concerned. I’m fully aware of how much work the Community and Marketing team do already, however, so have no desire to overburden them. But perhaps if we shift the majority of the workload to the command staff of the ship under spotlight, since they’re the ones who will directly benefit from the event? So have all posts and articles be created by the ship’s CO/XO and/or contributing players so that all the CMM has to do is review them and then submit? Just a suggestion and it would be good to hear what the Community and Marketing team think on this.

If this idea does go ahead then I love the suggestions around having the ship feature on the front page / newsletter / social media. Personally I also like the suggestions around tie-ins with other ships or having guest players BUT just being honest, I can see this part having less of a buy in from the club in general, just going off my own prior experience of cross-ship or multi-ship sims and how little enthusiasm there’s been for them. But it’s something that I, as a CO, would be more than willing to try if there was interest.

I’m also wondering if there is anything department-specific we could do, like maybe have the DH’s and/or JO’s of the spotlighted ship write kind of mock research papers on what their characters are working on. That might offer a good opportunity to not only share how each ship keeps their departments busy, but also, for anyone who really enjoys the more ‘hard science’ aspect of the sci-fi writing here (and we have some truly phenomenal writers of this type across the club) then it will give them the chance to flex that particular creative muscle and also help to expand the general STF ‘lore’ in the process.

Just one more thing though and, apologies if this isn’t the right place to mention it but, I feel like I wouldn’t be doing my job as the SoX if I didn’t. This term we’ve seen interest in X-Fleet pretty much flatline. Now I don’t know if that’s purely down to failure as the SoX on my part, or if it’s indicative of a wider club apathy regarding X-Fleet in general. But my only concern with this idea is that it would become yet another way to make X-Fleet ships feel ‘inferior’ to the rest of the club (since naturally they would not be included in this scheme or have any opportunity to themselves be ‘spotlighted’). Now I’m not offering this as a reason NOT to go ahead with the idea for the main fleets. Nor am I suggesting that X-Fleet ships should be included. But perhaps there is something else we could offer X-Fleet ships instead, like a smaller spotlight opportunity, run by the SoX. Just so they don’t feel wholly left out?

• Sharon

I agree in regards to X-Fleet, I think we need to be encouraging it and grow the interest in new ships and simming environments instesd of in my eyes making it less appealing but as you mentioned this may not be the topic to discuss.

• Jake

I wanted to just quickly share my vision for what this might look like on the front page. I don’t think this is just a news item that disappears if there are four more recent news items (or whatever number the front page keeps).

I’m thinking something on its own for the ship spotlight. Each month it would be updated to reflect which ship is being spotlighted. If technically possible, maybe a thumbnail of its banner, the ship, the month, and a quick link to the ship page (the ship would then have more info for their spotlight). Remember, it’s once every two years approximately per ship, so for one month out of every two years, the ship could have a special area in its MOTD for it’s spotlight celebrations.

Daniel

I agree that this is a good idea, and that it is also quite the undertaking. The CMM, as many have pointed out, is already burdened with a lot, and it was brought up in Discord (I think?) that adding yet another EA position seems excessive.

What if it were the job of the FComms, jointly, to manage it, to organize and maintain the list (which could be as simple as alphabetical order by old fleet number: a ship from F1, then F3, etc)? The FComm for whichever fleet the spotlighted ship is from would be “in charge” for that month. If the next ship on the list isn’t ready for whatever reason, it gets shifted X number of spots in the list or whatever.

I love the idea of posts on the social media accounts. I think spotlighting high quality posts from the ship would be a great idea (a blurb from the post with a link to it?), maybe crewmember or player profiles throughout the month all selected, written, or prepared by the CO & FComm, and presented to the CMM team to simply post, minimizing the actual work that needs to be done outside of the CO/FComm.

Just some thoughts.

Nathan

I highly doubt all 4 FComms could coordinate that on top of trying to guide and manage their fleets. A rather simple solution is to create a position within the CMM team specifically for the spotlight. It’s not really an EA position, it’s simply a position in the CMM team/department like they already have.

Another thing: the guest characters thing seems rather…messy. Yes it could be like those episodes of the actual series where they have a visiting character for a short time, but it could get really complicated for a GM if they suddenly have a character they were unprepared for because the ship was mid-sim when the spotlight hit.

Katy