Posted by Mika Jackson in Questions for the Candidates
Both candidates mentioned the decline in the club’s membership. It seems the club doesn’t have much of a marketing department and this is important because it’s one of the key components to drawing new members to the club. Just as the CO and XO are encouraged to recruit and fill vacant positions on their ships, I think the President of the club should make efforts to bring new members into the club to make recruiting more feasible.
I am interested to know if either candidate has considered how they will handle this issue or has plans to ramp up the club’s marketing to draw in new members and ensure the longevity of the site. Will you share your thoughts/plans regarding this?

Mika

Hi Mika,

The club has a position known as the Community Marketing Manager, which is supposed to help deal with things like this. You can read the Bill that established it in 2018 here: https://www.star-fleet.com/prez/edicts/adamw/#b1

We haven’t had a Community Marketing Manager appointed since May 15, 2021. Sarah M was the CMM and she stepped down on that date. I do not know why Daniel Lerner, who was the President that time, did not appoint a replacement. I think he had trouble finding someone; I know he was not doing everything he was supposed to do as President because he was very busy with his real life, and he let a lot of things slip around here as a result. More importantly, I do not know why Robert Archer, who is the current President, and has been President since December 2021 has not appointed a replacement either. Why has Rob not replaced Sarah as CMM? I cannot tell you because I do not know. There has been no public explanation for why this important post remains vacant. This is the last edict I could find mentioning it, and all it says is:

Community Marketing Manager: The Search Continues!

Then there was another post, which was a summary of a discussion at the first Voice of the Club event, in which Rob said this:

I also commented on that James and I were still seeking a Community Marketing Coordinator, and also spoke about toying with the idea of adjusting the way the CMM was handled from being one person to being a group as well as working as a group long term with ideas to promote the club in our roleplaying community over several terms, rather then just from term to term. Joe mentioned that nothing was stopping a CMM from doing this now, which was taken under advisement for when/if James and I post this for talks in Command.

That was 6 months ago. What has happened since then? I don’t know. Why hasn’t Rob appointed someone? Apparently he couldn’t find anybody in the first month of term. What happened for the rest of the term? I don’t know, can’t tell you. Did anyone apply since then? Don’t know. Has he asked anyone? Don’t know. What happened to this idea of splitting the position up? Don’t know. What happened to the Command discussion that Rob said Rob and James were going to post? Don’t know. What is anyone doing? Don’t know. Does Rob care? He hasn’t said anything about it at all since January, anywhere where anyone can find it written down, so… I don’t know!

This is why I say our leadership has been weak and absent for the past two terms. There is no valid reason why this position has been left unfilled for 14 months. There is no good reason at all why all of this important work has been left undone for over a year.

What should have happened, is that once it was clear it was hard to find someone for this role, we should have had a public discussion about that. The President, whichever one it was, should have laid the problem on the table for everyone to see with a clear statement that it’s hard to find someone to be CMM, and then have a discussion about what we’re going to do about it. A discussion where we could all look at the problem, think about it, let everyone bring their own suggestions to the table on how to solve the problem, and then take action based on that. Because then all of us would learn something about why nobody wants to be CMM, and maybe that would lead us to do something differently. And while we’re working on finding someone to be CMM, the President should be taking responsibility for the execution of the CMM’s scope of work, not sitting around saying “well, I couldn’t find anybody.”

So that’s roughly the approach I’m going to take. First, when my term starts, I’m going to see if there is someone out there who wants to be CMM, that somehow got missed over the past 14 months. I don’t see a lot of effort being made to try to find someone, so I think it’s very possible that I could find someone that Rob missed. But I could be wrong; I literally do not know what the cause of the problem is. I can’t promise you a silver bullet solution where I snap my fingers and then it’ll be fixed, because we have to know what the cause of the problem is before we know how to fix it.

What I can promise you, is that fixing this is a priority. Because you’re absolutely right, we need to make it easier to get people in this club and get them to stay here. We need to be doing that regardless of whether we have a Community Marketing Manager, or a Marketing and Advertising Coordinator, or a 6 foot guy in a rubber lizard suit doing it. And regardless of who is doing it, the President needs to take the responsibility for seeing that the work gets done. The buck has to stop there. Do I know anything special about marketing or making the club attractive to people outside our community? Actually, no, which is why I’m going to try to delegate the work to someone who is more knowledgeable than I am on those topics. But I’m still going to be responsible for it.

I hope that answers your question. I’m happy to discuss further. I would love to also see what Rob will say.

Joe