“Late breaking story on the CBC
A nation whispers, “We always knew that he’d go free”
They add, “You can’t be fond of living in the past
‘Cause if you are then there’s no way that you’re going to last” “
Edict #18
Officially, this edict is a commendation, although intentionally separate from my other commendations edict. That’s because there’s not much else I can really do the recognize this person’s contributions this term. Joe P. was promoted to Admiral last term for the work he had done to that point on Exodus and in anticipation of the upcoming launch of Exodus. So as the President in office of the actual launch of Exodus (and aware of everything that went on this term both in the lead up to that launch and the the things taking place right at the time of that launch), there’s not much I can officially do other than issue this commendation. To be clear, if Joe P. did not hold the rank of Admiral already, he would have earned that promotion this term with the launch of Exodus.
Although this is a commendation edict, I’ll break the rules a bit and ignore “approximately 250 words” requirement :P I can do that because Joe is no longer in EGO and can’t do anything about me breaking the rules as President :P
Exodus has been a huge success project. I’m not going to spend too much time describing how great it is or how much potential it has because we all use it and see what it can do every time we log in now to STF. I just want to make a few additional comments about Joe, and his work in leading this project.
Normally, this kind of work is what paid software designers would do for an organization. Keep in mind that unlike WeBBspace (which was based on a pre-existing package), Exodus was custom-built from the start for STF. That is no minor undertaking, and I can only imagine how overwhelming and daunting such a project can feel at times. And this was done entirely by volunteers who would (a) normally get paid for this kind of work and (b) have to do this work on top of their RL lives and jobs.
All of this was done with a ticking clock of doom over all of our heads. To be clear, there were Big Problems for the club if we did not leave WeBBspace (or make radical changes to it) this year. That’s a lot of pressure for this kind of project under these circumstances, and Joe did a massive amount of work - and led the rest of TECH through that pressure - to get to the point where we are now.
This term has not been easy on Joe. We all have RL issues. Joe this term had his own particular RL issues, both difficult issues that had to be dealt with personally and positive but busy developments with work. And all under that ticking clock I just referred to.
We had difficult decisions to make on the timing of the launch, and Joe was able to get it done under that additional pressure. For a variety of reasons, Exodus had to be launched before our just-completed election season (it would take me too long to go through all the reasoning that got us to that point). That led to some very tight timetables this term, with Joe needing to do most of that heavy lifting during that term.
When unexpected “hiccups” came up during the launch, Joe was able to calmly and quickly come with and implement solutions to those problems to keep the launch as smooth as possible.
Joe has been extremely responsive to suggestions about improvements or new features in Exodus - something he has actively been encouraging - and putting out new versions of Exodus whenever he can.
To make sure we could have a smooth election in Exodus, we needed Joe (the lead developer of Exodus) to be the Election Coordinator as well (the same logic I used 10 years ago :P ). So literally within a couple weeks of the launch of Exodus and dealing with any bugs or issues that were still coming up, Joe was also now the EC (which is not an easy job even at the best of times).
I could keep going on, but at some point I need to wrap this up.
Therefore, Joe P. is commended for the completion and launch of Exodus.
Daniel Lerner
President