Posted by J Ridgley in Questions for Candidates
Firstly, congratulations on accepting the nominations!

I hope you don’t mind if I ask some specific questions regarding your mandates.

Not at all, and thanks for bearing with us!

As a member of the GMT, I acknowledge the current GM shortage and would like to understand your perspective on the reasons behind this shortage, beyond just membership levels. Could you outline your strategy to address this issue? Furthermore, if elected, how do you plan to attract and retain talented individuals for GM positions, and what support systems would you put in place for them?

Membership levels when taken in context of club size is one of the key issues here. Go back 20 years or so, we had a ship-to-member ratio of 1:4; for every ship, we had four members. Today, that ratio is around 1:3. If I were to simplify the problem to a crude equation, the number of GMs we have is based on the total number of members and the percentage of those who want to be a GM. If we have 60 members, and 33% want to be a GM, we would have 20 GMs.

Whilst oversimplified, it does highlight that we only really have three levers that can be ‘pulled’:

1. Increase the number of members.
2. Increase the interest in GMing.
3. Reduce the number of GM positions.

I wish I had a magic wand for the first level - although it’s encouraging to see that between Apr and Jun we stayed at a membership size of 54 (based on members holding a rostered character that wasn’t AWOL). That actually when up from 47 in January, but that could just a post Christmas holiday bounce (we would probably dip in December based on the metic above).

The second option is more complex, and ranges from increasing awareness to making it easier for members to become a GM (which has the negative consequence of reducing the standard of GMs). I am curious about how the likes of ChatGPT can support GMs, and how we provide advice and guidance to GMs on using it in a way that enhances rather than compromises the quality of sims.

The third option is linked to the number of ships we have. Again, a fairly ‘sledge hammer’ approach, which I feel should only be taken if there are multiple issues across the club stemming from overreach.

So unfortunately there is no straight forward answer from us that will fix the issue, although we do recognise the problem and will be capturing it as one of those challenges we spoke about in our Task Force post.

Shifting to the X-Fleet, how do you intend to encourage players to utilise it without further impacting our already dwindling membership levels?

So firstly I would like to understand how X-Fleet has faired over the years, and which ships were established as part of X-Fleet that have been moved into the main fleets. I would also like to understand why the two proposals that have been put forward in X-Fleet haven’t progressed, especially as one was fairly mature with sufficient interest.

I sense (but not 100% certain) that X-Fleet proposals are driven forward by a key member, rather than whether we as a club think they are a good idea that will improve the RPG offer . We probably need to take a look at the process for how an X-Fleet is established so that it becomes more club driven.

As someone who values the role of COs, I’m keen to hear your plans to empower them further. As a CO myself and having completed the COs course, what additional tools and resources do you propose to enhance the CO experience? How do you envision empowering COs to have more autonomy in their duties?

This is one of the Task Forces we want to set up, to look at how we empower COs. For example, at the moment COs do not contribute to any of our social media posts; this means that the task falls on to a couple of individuals who are already fairly busy to identify content and create posts. It would be great if we could have a mechanism for COs to put together a social media post for their ship, which then gets approved by the CMMB… not only does that decentralise work and empower COs, it adds a sense of competitiveness across the ships. Plus COs are then directly recruiting for their ship, assuming they permit new members.

And set around CO and Membership empowerment, Do you see the Engineering Department as a viable avenue for empowering Commanding Officers (COs) and members to propose and implement new, unique ideas for ships, kit, and equipment? How do you plan (if any) to enhance this avenue to ensure that innovative ideas are swiftly reviewed and considered to benefit our club’s offerings and experiences making it truly unique and original.

Potentially… I guess my question would be, does every piece of kit or equipment used in a sim need to go through the Engineering Department? Or are we creating a bottleneck by centralising review. We could end up having an ‘unendorsed’ kit list that members have contributed to, that other members/ships could refer to. Sorry, that’s a bit of a woolly answer, but one worth us exploring.

Regarding our club’s current size, what strategies do you have in mind to optimise our numbers and break down silos within ship memberships? How will you ensure efficiency and effectiveness despite our active player count?

Our Task Force post probably addresses most of that; although happy to take further questions.

Lastly, concerning administrative duties and briefly touching back to CO empowerment, could you elaborate on your plans for fleet reporting, if any? How do you intend to conduct it, and do you see it providing value beyond mere administration?

So, noting that the fleet reports have just changed, we would look to give those a bedding in period. But the key thing for me is making sure we identify common issues and trends across the reports. To that end, we will provide a Command Report based on our reflections of the issues reported in the Fleet and Department reports, capturing common issues and informing the membership what we will or are doing about them. This will be on a monthly basis, and is effectively the Executive’s response to those reports that people spend time completing.

Thank you for considering these questions. I look forward to hearing your insights and strategies.

Thanks for the questions!

Jack & Steve

Together, Shaping STF’s Future.