Posted by Vice Admiral Jack Dipper (Presidential Candidate) in Campaign HQ - Candidates Jack and Amdirgol
Hello everyone,

Thank you to Steve and Tom for nominating me. I am really pleased to say that Amdirgol has kindly agreed to run with me as the vice president. Steve’s been a great VP during this term, but unfortunately has said he’s wanting to take a step back.

I think, by now, most people will know (or know of) me. However, as a quick recap, I first joined the club in 2003, and have enjoyed both RPing across the club, and also contributing back to STF by volunteering to help in government. I’ve been lucky enough to be President over the past term where we’ve set up the first Task Force, and had constructive discussions in Command around the fleets; in particular, ship health and how we support COs to ensure the ships in the club are the best RPing environemnts that we can make them. As part of that, we’ve also established the Academy XO spot as a mentoring spot. We have also produced a few Command Reports to give the wider club an understanding of what government is doing to improve their experience.

There are still areas where we can improve (that will never change), and some of the discussions I hope to have last term haven’t happened because these things take time, and RL always gets a vote. Both Amdirgol and I want to press forward with empowering the club, initially through task forces; the focus will be on reinvigorating the COs Handbook, and also looking at a task force for the decorations work that Amdirgol has been working on over the last couple of terms.

We also want to maintain clear and open communication with the club, for example through the Command Reports. Whilst I aspirationally wanted to do one every month, it feels more realistic to write one every 2-3 months. We are also committed to ensuring the fleet reports continue to be relevant and not waste time.

At the last election we talked about making sure we recognised the size of the club has reduced over the past 20 years, and that government needed to catch up. Whilst not the priority for the last term, we do need to look at the approach we are taking and whether it meets the needs over the club.

Finally, across all of this, we need to improve our member retention and outreach. Part of that is making sure STF feels an inclusive environment to everyone, and that the right support is available when needed.

We know we won’t be able to achieve all of this within a term, but with your support, we can continue to improve the club and move it toward being the most fun, exciting, and vibrant Star Trek based role playing environment.

Yours,

Jack

Jack & Amdirgol
Improving STF Together

Hi all!

I took long enough to post this we’ve already won, but in the interest of transparency:

I’m active enough I think a lot of people will have at least heard my name, but for those who haven’t (or need a reminder): I’m Amdirgol - I joined in 2021. While this of course makes me less experienced than Jack, I’m also able to bring the viewpoint of a newer member who just recently reached command rank and joined less than 4 years ago. In that time, I’ve been Assistant Personnel Director, then PDir for 3 terms now.

One of the points Jack brought up is empowering the club - we want all members to be able to have influence and feel like their opinions matter, rather than seeing government as an insurmountable wall. We also want people to be having fun with this, and make it something they want to be a part of and contribute too. Jack mentioned the decorations system I started on last term - that’s one thing we’d like to flesh out and incorporate into our structure.

Another big thing is member outreach and retention. I know that I personally hate when we lose someone entirely, and would much prefer to keep them in the community, even if they step back from RP for a while. To do this, we have to have a community people want to be a part of, and we have to have structures in place to help people when they need it.

Like Jack said, these are goals that will take longer than one term, but we can at least get going on them so that the baseline is set for future governments to continue to improve our club and create a fun and lively environment for Star Trek roleplaying.

Amdirgol

Jack & Amdirgol
Improving STF Together