State of the Community- June 2012

[Jenson]

Hello everyone,

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate all of our new Senators on their election to the Senate! This is the first term ever where a majority of the ruling body is made up by freshly elected members, so I look forward to seeing your ideas as we go through this next term. Secondly, I'd like to thank those members from last term who are leaving the Senate: Grizz, Central Plexus, and Nancy Turton. Thank you all for your service to the community!

We are just a few weeks away from our 2 year anniversary, and TLO continues to grow. I'm always amazed when we reach anniversary milestones at how far we've come since when we first opened. Back then, only supported RPG-X, and had about 20-30 members. Now we're nearing 200 members, and have moved into many other games, and are looking towards entering more.

Our RPG-X division is doing exceptionally well at the moment. We have 3 ongoing SRPs, with AB on Haitus for a bit due to Grizz's LoA, but certainly not inactivity as we've logged 16-18 people on the server during some AB episodes recently! We also have 3 ongoing mini-series' that are running this summer that have been going well. I've also noticed a fair bit of "spontaneous" roleplays during weekdays which are quite enjoyable. Our RPG-X servers also recently hit 90th rank among all Quake 3 servers—something I've never seen before in -any- of the RPG-X groups I've ever been a part of in my long history. It's safe to say that the RPG-X division is thriving activity wise, and may be at its highest levels since this group was founded.

Our Minecraft division is also doing exceptionally well. Hellfire has done an exceptional job leading the division, and has been working to make our server more appealing to new members—and we've had a lot of them for Minecraft recently. He and others in the media department are currently working on a recruitment campaign for our server to bring in more members. Minecraft is certainly our fastest growing division, and I have been quite pleased with its progress. I look forward to working with the Minecraft staff to continue the growth and improvement of this solid division.

The Bridge Commander sub-division is, unfortunately, not doing so well. I have tried for a month now without success to find a BC sub-division coordinator, but no one has applied. I must reluctantly advise the Senate to disband the BC sub-division. Though I do think the right person could easily get the BC sub-division back on its feet—this simply can not be done without someone willing to lead it. If the BC sub-division is indeed shut down, I would encourage the new Senate to consider replacing it with another game that the members have a desire for us to play.

The Armada II and STO sub-divisions are preforming adequately at the moment. The Armada II sub-division has many challenges to deal with as A2 doesn't have as big of a player-base to draw on—especially for recruitment, yet Andzzy has done an excellent job keeping the number of members who play it engaged through events. The STO sub-division is making some good headway, I believe, in addressing problems with a lack of events and recruitment issues. I look forward to continuing to work with SFC3 on these issues in STO, and with the launch of fleet starbases and other updates, I hope we can start to make this sub-division more active.

Overall, we are doing very well gaming wise. My only concerns lie with the sub-divisions and, even there, I do believe that we are on track to improve things. I believe that we need to continue our focus on recruitment, and I look forward to seeing the media department develop further so that it can meet certain technical and marketing needs for our divisions and sub-divisions to make recruitment easier.

Finally, turning towards TLO as a whole, I believe the new leadership system has worked out pretty well, and has allowed us to address problems that existed in the old system, while allowing for more representation from the members. Going forward this term, however, I would like to work with the Senate to iron out a few issues with the new system to polish up the rough ends.

Additionally, I would like to work with the Senate on updating the community to better reflect the fact that we now support multiple games. Many of our current structures/information sources reflect TLO as solely a RPG-X or RPG-X and STO group, and this is no longer the case. I believe that we need to update our awards system, our website, our recruitment outreach, etc. in order to better reflect these facts, and I look forward to working with the Senate on these points. This will, I think, better aid the recruitment efforts by the media department.

As we approach our second year anniversary, I am confident that TLO is continuing to grow in a positive direction. I look forward to working with the new Senate, the Game Commanders, and all of the members this next term in order to ensure that we maintain this positive direction and continue to grow as we pass this important milestone. As always, my door is always open for any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions you may have.

Signed,



President of the Last Outpost