Greetings everyone,

2020 has been a different/difficult year for everyone, and I’ll admit to not being immune to that (as my posting efforts will show). Due to the nature of the work I do (accounting and bookkeeping and administration for an Indigenous Charity and a small business that coaches CEOs and Boards in having a culture by design), this year has seen increased work, not lessened work. There has been a greater call on the services of the charity and they have tripled their staff in 2020. There have been a number of factors for this including other charities closing their doors, members of the local indigenous community needing different kidns of support from the charity, increased risk of homelessness and disengagement from school etc and the increased risk our indigenous people have of dying from the pandemic (and lower life expectancy compared to rest of community before the pandemic occurred). The charity has now secured funding for these programs and they’ve needed me to account for the expenditure on the programs. Sadly, they haven’t given me any assistance in my role (despite promises to do so since about September 2019) and I haven’t been able to magic up extra hours during the week to get time for posting as I’d like. Our small business were successful in securing a $10000 grant for digital transformation in the face of the pandemic, which was put into development of a landing page and testimonial videos. Government stimulus packages also kept our business afloat for the 6 months from April to September this year, which meant basically we could afford to continue our support of and work with the indigenous charity, but it meant work for our business had to also eat into available time and I would rarely get to bed before midnight and then have to wake up prior to 6am each morning. Quite often 7 days a week … although on weekends I did try to sleep in.

Thanks especially to Sidney, Ray, AJ, Sarah and Rob for the continued grace and understanding they have shown me this year, and to all of you for keeping things going during the year when I haven’t been able to post as I’d like, or as you deserve me to post.

Our President, Sarah, has put down the following as our club policy for posting requirements over this next little while:
+ Posting limits will not be relaxed this year club-wide.
+ COs may choose to relax ship-specific posting limits between December 21, 2020 and January 4, 2021. If the ship accepts new members, the CO must notify the PDept no later than December 15, 2020 of the intent to relax posting limits such that no new members are assigned to that ship until 2021. COs who choose not to relax posting limits are asked to use discretion when enforcing the ship AWOL policy.
+ If you don’t think you will be able to stick to your typical posting schedule, please declare a Leave of Absence (LOA) so that people know not to expect your participation.
See: https://www.star-fleet.com/core/command/command/posts/112831/ for the post

From the 21st of December 2020 until the 4th of January 2021, holiday posting limits on Oed V will be relaxed. If you know that you will be away during that time and unable to post, please put yourself on LOA. But if you are unable to do so, please don’t stress, it’ll be fine, and Oed V will be here when you return.

For anyone who does not know how to put yourself on LOA, Here is the process:
LOA is accessed through your profile tab, click it, then click the Modify my profile/Declare a LOA button, Tick the Declare a LOA box, select a date that you expect to return, and click submit at the bottom of the page. This will officially let the club know that you are simply away and not hit by a block of snow/burnt to a crisp (depending on where you’re from), run over by a flying reindeer or similar. When you are back, you can return to the page and untick the LOA box, remove the date and click submit, and hey presto, you are back again.

I have let the Personnel Department know that the posting limits on Oed V will be relaxed during this period, but that once the 5th of January comes around, I expect three times the number of new members to be appointed by them to Oed … PS 3 x 0.

So the only thing left to say is let’s get through the rest of this year that is 2020 and look forward to all the promises that the new year offer sus all.

Kindest regards, seasons greetings, Christmas blessings, and best wishes for a Safe and Relaxing break and New Year,

Russell Watt
Governor - Oed V