“I walked through your revolving door
Got no answer on the seventh floor
Elevator gave a low moan
The pigeons sagged the wire with their weight
Listening to the singing chambermaid
She sang “They Checked Out An Hour Ago”
I kind of chuckled”
Edict #15
Matthew Bernardin… What shall I say about Matthew Bernardin… <EG>
Matt is probably one of the more fearless members of the club this past term (and possibly going back and bit before this term). When problems are identified, he is more than willing to suggest solutions that are make the biggest (and sometimes most controversial) changes. During this past term his ideas met with either generally high approval (“let’s replace the report metrics we use to measure a ship’s health to something more objective”) to… less… approval (“let’s remove the distinction of cabinet members from other members of the club’s administration” :P ). What you can always count on is that Matt will have a new suggestion, and is passionate about addressing the systemic issues STF is currently facing.
In fact, Matt’s approach probably goes back before his last promotion to Fleet Captain. When TECH started questioning how to address the reliability concerns we were having with IRC as our live chat venue, I recall it was Matt (a fairly new addition to TECH at the time) who encouraged the idea that IRC be abandoned all together and replaced with Discord (a move that was warmly embraced by the club membership).
That all being said, I do actually want to focus a bit on Matt’s contributions this past term on TECH. A lot of the planned work with TECH this term was going to have to be with Exodus. But for TECH to get Exodus moving, someone was going to have to keep our non-Exodus systems working and updated - and that someone was often Matt this term. If you wondered who was keeping things going on the tech side of things while work was taking place on Exodus, the answer was often Matt.
While in that role, Matt had to deal with a few things.
First, it became clear that we really had to address issues of communication and expectations between TECH, the rest of the STF administration, and the membership as a whole. As we moved into this term, it started to become clear that there were issues with all sides on how to address these communication and expectation issues, and prior solutions were not working and/or not addressing the issues for one reason or another. Stress levels for everyone involved were steadily climbing as the term continued, and it as obvious that a solution was going to be needed before we got into the Exodus beta testing (which would raise even more communication issues). Matt was instrumental in bringing in the TECH ticket tracker system, which overall I think everyone has found as the most effective tool in communication between TECH and the rest of the club - especially considering how quickly Matt set it up for us. Looking back to where we were before Matt brought it in, I shudder to think what would have happened if we moved to Exodus without it. It has now become a valuable tool for TECH and the club as a whole, and Matt is definitely the one to thank for that.
Second was the WeBBspace new member application page… Mid-way into this term, the application page broke and stopped accepting new member applications. I don’t know if I can fairly describe in this post what happened within the Personnel Department, TECH and the Executive when this was discovered. It wasn’t pretty. Matt entered the fray, found the problem and solved the issue. This sounds pretty minor when I read what I have written here, but that is just because I don’t know how to describe how massive this problem was or Matt’s role in solving the problem. (We then had to shut down the entire application form some time later, but that’s a different story.)
Finally, overall I have heard great things about Matt’s work in TECH this past term. Besides the work above, I understand he has been a valuable contributor in some of the discussions (with a natural inclination to try to keep running our current systems where possible - which I find amusing for my own personal reasons :P). He has also been great at dealing with server issues from his time zone in Australia while many of the other members of TECH have been fast asleep… :)
Therefore, I hereby promote Matthew Bernardin to much deserved rank of Commodore.
Congratulations, Matt!