Good evening everyone! Below is an outline transcript of the first ‘Voice Of The Club’ Event done in Discord for STF on December 31st 2021. This event is an ever evolving effort to engender interest in current topics, ships, events, or discussions going on in STF or in the near future. This transcript/outline is for the use of people could not attend for any reason to know what happened and what was considered for future events like this. This transcript/outline will also include notes, thoughts, and observations I myself made or got from others in pm after the event that I will consider for use or adjustment in future events.

So let’s get started!

Number Of Attendees: We had about 6 people actively participating or listening in on the voice channel during the run of this event. We also had 2 more people solely take part in the event by text format in the #event channel.

Thoughts On Attendance: My thoughts on the attendance are mixed. I truly had hoped for a bigger turn out, but given due to my own limitations on setting this up and concerns in my life outside the club, I was only able to give official notice of this event about a week ahead of time on the boards and on STF’s Facebook page or in Discord itself. For future events I hope to extend this to being a two week notice to everyone and try to schedule it for a better time slot then on a holiday weekend like was done this time on New Years. That said getting the 6 people we did in the voice chat was nice to see and putting aside my higher hopes for higher numbers was impressive I thought considering the club’s numbers, the New Year’s Holidays, and other things stacked against it.

Topics Covered: Note these are mostly in order given but given the fact I had to make notes on my own without help and the informal manner these were covered some things may be out of order to how they directly happened during the event.

1. Brief Outline Of The Event: This was mostly driven by myself as the lead speaker for the Event of how things would work that night and for future events. Essentially these Events will be done hopefully once or twice a month by myself and/or James. They are meant to be laid back and relaxing, and will generally carry a theme of sorts for each event. Questions and examples of what people could expect in future events would include ship, fleet, club departments, or other current of future discussion highlights. Also mentioned were us taking ideas of other things that could be done in these events were interest generated and planned for ahead of time.
2. Plans For The Term's Discussions: This was again mostly driven by myself. I highlighted plans James and I would be posting in Command for consideration of possible changes in the club. One example given was considering if merging the PDept and Academy would be beneficial in an effort to reduce the amount of people needed to cover said positions, given the reduced number of club members who are interested in working such roles and learning them. Q/A was done between myself and Joe P mainly in how highlighting these roles in future Events would be used in any Command discussions. I explained mostly they would be used to simply highlight the idea to come or in progress and given an open forum of James and my own thoughts on the matter, as well as taking any input from anyone who wished to voice thoughts or the like on the issue at hand.
3. Cabinet/Ship/Fleet Highlights: This was started by me to highlight how a future event might target a certain department/ship/fleet. For the department highlight I used the Engineering Department as the example with input given too by Russ the Engineering Director. We both also took Q/A from active voice members in the Event. One topic cited of interest was if there was going to be any future work done on revising or replacing the current ship and tech submission plans currently in use by the club. Due to lack of help on this front the basic decision for now is that we will remain using the current formats until a new plan replaces them and we get the help of volunteers we need to do so. For ship/fleet highlights, the USS Asimov/Foremost Fleet was highlighted based on submitted notes by the fleet's FComm. Their current openings were in several junior officer roles. I spoke about the ship's current mission sim, openings, and what environment a player could expect to find if they played on the ship. Overall for all highlights comments seemed light but received well overall in my view. I will be checking in with the Asimov command team in the next few days to see if any interest was generated for their openings.
4. Club Membership Levels/Participation: This was an ongoing discussion throughout the event between myself, Joe P, and others off and on. The current active club members for end of December put us around the 80 mark. But I pointed out that it was my hope given the measurements used by the resulting poll posted by Joe P that if a member was currently AWOL/LOA due to say the holiday relaxation rules that once they ended hopefully things would tick up to closer to being say 100 or something. 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. Also covered for example was attempting to generate more interest in people being active gamemasters, including how potential interest could be handled in Events like this in the future. Like for say having active GMs on hand give more relaxed Q/As on how to GM or plan sims, or things like that. Also covered were spitballing ideas on how to get new and old members back into participating at all levels of the club. This covered a wide range of examples and topics.
5. Dealing With Club Issues/Drama: This was short topic covered by all active members in the Event related to the above membership issues. This sprouted off the above issue that many times new and old members alike are driven away from the club fully or in part because there is a lot of infighting from various members that have long filled various back end administrative roles in the club. We spoke about how people need to be more respectful to others in discussions and even if you disagree or someone is wrong then do so with a more positive attitude. We also spoke about how if there is say a discussion going on in Command and say two sides have differing views then we need to stop going with the idea of it being 'my way or no way' and try instead to jointly work together to meet in the middle when things are disagreed on to work to the benefit of the club's community at large. I pointed out that this concept and shift is not something that would happen overnight, nor was it something we could enshrine in direct rules necessarily. I pointed to my own work in the Engineering Department years ago with how it had a similar stigma of being a 'hostile' place only for a chosen select few. Something which I worked for years when I took over to get rid of and which took considerable time and effort. Russ commented that it was a thing still being worked on by himself and others currently. I believe a similar approach can be fashioned for the club/Command's issues as well.

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Event Ending Notes/Take Away: So in the end the event in total lasted around an hour from 7pm US Eastern till about 8pm US Eastern. I had originally thought it might cover things till 9pm US Eastern or later, but it was obvious given the limited content at hand to cover and the small amount of voice or text communication during the event that 8pm seemed like a good cut off point to avoid any awkward silence. My takeaway is that I/James had to prepare with more content and ideas for future events, and also give more notice ahead of time for such things. It was still good to see though that everyone seemed to have fun, was respectful for those who talked or asked questions and the like. I truly felt that with some refinement these events could be a useful tool and outlet for the club going ahead. In closing I hope this outline/transcript of the first Voice Of The Club event was fun for everyone involved, and those who read this post may at least take away thoughts to consider or look out for future opportunities to contribute in some form or another for STF. If anyone has any comments, questions, or concerns for James and I please either post here if its related to the Event, email us at our contact form for STF, or pm us (Rhino for James, PrezRoach for me!) in Discord. Thank you all and I hope you have a happy and safe 2022! See you all next month. Robert Archer President