Posted by Rear Admiral Sarah Hemenway (Presidential Candidate) in Question to the Candidates - GM Issue

Posted by Geoff Joosten in Question to the Candidates - GM Issue
Good afternoon,

Jerome, you touched on this briefly, stating, and I am paraphrasing here, that the current training regimen for GMs is to onerous. I also see you aren’t a licensed GM.

Sarah, you have made major contributions to the GMDept in the past, including writing the original OGRE, but since your return haven’t been as active in the department.

Both of you are aware that we are struggling to find people interested in the program. Linds and I, mostly Linds, have streamlined the process as much as possible while still attempting to keep the integrity of a program that ensures the best trained GMs out there. The issue has come to something of a head which pressure being put on FComms to find resources that aren’t there.

So, simple question, what is your plan to help the GMDept address this issue?

Geoff

Not enough GMs has been a consistent problem in STF whenever I’ve been around. We faced it when I was GMDir back in the day and my first step was to gather more information, mostly aimed at the GMs in the club to find out if they felt overstretched, why they weren’t GMing if they were licensed, etc. This is a good place to start again, because until we have that information, we’re just spit-balling trying to fix a problem we haven’t even defined yet. Once GMs have weighed in on their view of the situation, reaching out to the club as a whole would also provide a valuable insight: why aren’t people becoming GMs that are otherwise interested and qualified? Is the process too burdensome? What about it is? Is it just a RL time issue? Rob and I don’t have the answers to these questions right now, so it’s hard to make any sweeping changes, but some ideas that come to mind are:

• Solidify the process for becoming a GM (I know it’s already fairly solid, but it’s always worth a critical look) and then document it in as clear a method as possible. I love OGRE (duh), but a wall of text is often intimidating to someone who is just trying to explore their options in the club. Pictures are good, flow charts are good.

• Take a quick look at the role of GMMs. We don’t have a lot of very experienced, senior GMs actively GMing in the club at times and that means the same people are being asked to mentor over and over again. If we do end up with an influx of interest, that could overstretch these members. This is an area that people who can’t actively run their own sim right now could contribute. Additionally, better defining the role of the GMM would be helpful for everyone so that GMTs know the support they’re going to receive, COs and FComms know what a GMM is monitoring and when s/he is likely to step in, and GMMs know when they should step in.

• Ensure GMs are giving FComms (or whomever has appointment authority in a fleet) a sim outline to protect both the GM and the ship if life outside the club interferes with the GM’s ability to continue.

• Create a publicized list of emergency GMs who are willing to step in and wrap up a sim if a GM needs to step away for a while, hopefully based on the outline in the previous point. This would give GMs who can’t currently commit to a full sim on a ship a way to contribute and to participate in that area of the club without taking on the responsibility for a full sim. It also gives the FComm time to find a replacement.

• Create a document with general sim ideas. Particularly in stressful times, sometimes creativity is lacking. We have members who are competent GMs that just don’t have the creativity to come up with an amazing sim idea right now. We also have members whose imaginations are full of sim ideas that they don’t have the time to run. Matching these two groups up will make sure that everyone’s skillsets are best leveraged.

Sarah

While I do have some rebuttals on a couple of your points, this is neither the time nor place.

Thank you for your thoughtful response and acknowledgement that this is a problem larger than the GMDept, and in fact, the onus isn’t solely on the GMDept to fix.

Geoff