Posted by Cale Reilly in Questions for the candidates - All candidates
Hello candidates,

Over the last few elections and in this one too the discussion of member experience and retention has been brought up, quite often in regards to new members. With this in mind and considering not only my real life work issues and experience this term but also the recent post in command by a returning member I have the following questions:

1) What to you is the “stf member experience.”

I think for Sidney and I, the STF member experience is about being a part of a community with similar goals and visions. This is a club geared for writing in the star trek universe. That’s the initial draw in. But the member experience goes beyond that. Its about being a part of community. Even though I’ve never physically ‘met’ anyone here in STF, I consider quite a few people here very good and close friends! And I really think that’s what the whole experience is about. If it was only about writing star trek with other people, I could go jumping from club to club or people to people, making no real relationships in the process and still be able to do all the writing I wanted. STF membership is all about building relationships with people, and the writing of star trek is definitely an important part of that!

2) When does a member cease being a new member after a year, a month what?

I’m not sure we can put an exact time stamp on how long it takes to transition from new member to straight member. The only time I ever called myself a new member was when I was still trying to figure out who was who on my ship and how everything worked. The transition point, in my opinion, occurs when the new member develops a sense of belonging in the club. And I think whether they are new or not, we ought to remember that they are still ‘members’. We help that out by being available as long standing members. I mean, lets be honest, we can all learn something new about the club or other people, so its not necessarily about what you know. Its about being with the community.

3) What specific actions do you have planned which you think will increase member retention and is this in general or geared towards existing or prospective members, if geared why that particular group?

Sidney and I both feel that waiting on the current MAC initiatives to see if they bear any fruit is a wise course of action. While that plays out, we are looking towards some different pipelines for recruitment purposes. These include (but are not limited to):

a. A drive to get members to promote the site on their own Social Media.
b. Sid wants to personally promote the site through FB ads or something similar. (This is more of just an idea at this time.)
c. Continue to try and work with other ST or ST related sites to get the word out by a share program.

4) How would you support a member hit with real life issues that impacts posting etc as a) a cadet, b) a Main ship JO, c) a DH, d) an XO or CO (with a member retention hat on)

As I mentioned before, we are a community. Sometimes life takes us on a wild ride and leaves unable to do other things temporarily. I think its important to remember that we have real life issues that pop and being understanding of these issues, is of utmost importance. Do we want to alienate our friends here by insisting they always stay on top of the numbers? Don’t get me wrong, we have posting limits to ensure we don’t jump off the deep end. But if something comes up, then its important for us to be understanding.

But, we also need to remember, each of us as individuals, that we due have posting limits and we need to keep in mind if our absence is not helping a shipping be healthy. If our absence is hurting the ship, we need to consider maybe coming back to the ship another time. And as people in charge of these ships, we need to remember that if we have this issue on our ship…an issue where someone is consistently absent and requires a poke a lot just to get posting…that speaking to this person in kindness and consideration is of major importance.

I may ask follow up questions based on your responses.

Thank you in advance

Cale

Thank you for the question Cale! I hope I, at the very least, answered most of what you were asking. I’m open to answering any subsequent questions as well. And I’m sure Sidney will drop in with anything he would like to add as well. :)

-Tony
Armadillo/Tiger Ticket