Finishing the Journey: Dremaur for Archon, Dremaur for Stability

Eastern Alksearia Fountain Plaza The Conclave Archon Election
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Finishing the Journey: Dremaur for Archon, Dremaur for Stability

Hello all and thank you for coming to my campaign thread today to see what I want to bring to my 2nd term as head of government. As the last outgoing elected delegate TEP will see, I have the unique opportunity and perspective to see the changes HOGs has brought to our government, as well as lead us forward in new and exciting ways.

Out front, I would like to establish the main drive and focus for my campaign, we may have vanquished the threats we had, and made new friends, but there is a looming threat we all must unite, regardless of winner of Archon, this term, and that is *chronic inactivity*. It is natural for the leaders of old to slowly start to fade as the new crop of talent takes over, but this is not happening. Most of us have at least 5 years of experience in this game, some of us even reaching 10 years. Active government members with longer terms/involvement than some people put in at jobs in real life. This is all well and good, but burnout will come for us all. We need to feel comfortable stepping back, but at this time there is not enough youth among us.

I want to push for us to expand beyond Nationstates, and finally set our goals as a community that’s stands both on its own as well as powerhouse in nationstates. The way we achieve this vision is recruiting from other other games, roleplay spots, and social circles. We begin to exist independent of Nationstates, we exist independent of the changing tides and begin to rise our ships above the waves. So lets start here:

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Lets start out with a big one, our new player experience. Our forums are extremely hard to understand for a first timer, something we’ve heard from new diplomats and residents of TEP. These are projects I will not take full credit for, because there is a whole team of our TEPers working on this now, my biggest thing will be making sure government is fully covers. The landing page for theeastpacific.com could be so much more useful for including links to joining every area, as well as our laws, and other important threads. I envision we can do the same on the discord, a dedicated channel made up to date with the relevant links that are important to our lives here.

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The Ministries of Recruitment and Culture will be consolidated into the returning Ministry of Internal Affairs. IA will oversee internal events, foreign cultural exchanges in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and integrations. The welcomer role will be utilized to create leaderboards for conversion of newcomers to TEPers. This will be headed by the Internal Affairs Minister and Deputies. Deputies will choose the Druid monthly, to pick the person best suited to handle the tasks for the months. Deputies will have quotas and strong guidance to make sure we keep this ministry active and efficient in achieving the job set out for it.

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Let’s take a moment to talk about our wayward cultural centerpieces: UTEP and EPNS. It’s no secret that these departments are on life support, and that’s something we need to fix. The main issue is these have always been passion projects for strong personality individuals, but when those foundations step back, the entire institutions go dormant. I think the best way to look to fix these two is to is to change our perspective. These usually wait for people to join, but it is time to go to the people. We need to identify cool individuals with stories to tell, and encourage them to feature in our publications. Someone bring up a unique interest hobby or area of knowledge? Ask them to write about it! (I’m looking at everything from conlang to horse derbies. Let’s create institutions with articles that excite and make the mind curious.

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This is one of the areas I believe I exceeded last term. We’ve entered a long time of peace with the destruction of Cordone. Things are great with the world powers that be, without us having to bend any of our values. We walked the tightrope and I believe we are in a great position, where we can make friends without fear of friends of friends disliking us. However the fight is not over

We will continue to press down on the remnants of Cordone and strengthen our friendships. I have multiple treaties I hope to see during the term and winning or not I will push for us to pursue them. We will look forward to further our commitments to our friends in The North Pacific, The West Pacific, and Starlight, and more to come. For what I will consider the second half of my plan, let’s move to World Assembly Affairs

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AUTHORS AUTHORS AUTHORS! If you’ve ever wanted to write for the World Assembly, this will be the term for you. I will be looking myself to build my craft, and earn my first main author this term. I want to cultivate talent around us to increase the volume of TEP proposals in the GA/SC, and given our strides in Foreign Affairs this term, I look forward to cooperating with our partners to leave an impact this term for the World Assembly.

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I could not be prouder of my soldiers. With near constant deployments of nearing 30 troops, we have shown that the EPSA is here to stay and here to play. From delegate transitions to fashbashes, these TEPatriots continue to spread our values abroad, helping our friends and taking down the threats abroad.

I will continue to work to develop the best tools and policies for EPSA, and for the first time in a HOG’s history, i will be able to lead from the front, taking an active role in updating military affairs. I look forward to both leading the region and helping to lead our Armada even further.

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We have a lot of ground to cover, that is for sure. With HOGS being fully implement for the first time, we have a new reality to familiarize ourselves with. But we not must be content with familiarity, we must look to push ourselves beyond our limits, and look to recruit from other games.

Some games I’ve been thinking lately are World of Warcraft, and Valheim, but I am not limiting myself to the games I enjoy. I feel we could benefit from creating a culture around other games such as FFXIV, Runescape, or other multiplayer games that we can make servers for.

The future is bright, and I hope I can be the torchbearer for the region I love so much once again

Ex Oriente Lux,

Dremaur

1 Like
[VOTING] July 2026 Archon Election
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I think it’s great your campaign is prioritizing integration. We need more of that.

That being said, I have the following questions:

  1. You plan to revamp the forum loading experience, which I think is great. Do you have any simultaneous plan for our dispatches (with the context of that such dispatch projects usually don’t take off, ig)?
  2. WHy combine recruitment and culture, given that culture is a high-burn out position? How do you plan to mitigate said burn-out of the IA Minister?
  3. Forum view is important, but so is what happens afterwards. How do you plan on getting people who are welcomed by your welcommers from point A (the Discord/RMB) to point B (being in RP and/or the government)?
  4. In terms of the Executive, how do you plan to get newcomers involved? What tasks would be available for them from being a part of that Ministry? What Executive positions would you expect to be routinely filled by newcomers, rather than oldies?
  5. Discord social activity is at an all-time low. Do you have any plans to address this, and if so - what are they?
  6. What are your specific plans regarding receuitment?
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To add a thought separate from my questions regarding this statement:

It’s no secret that these departments are on life support, and that’s something we need to fix. The main issue is these have always been passion projects for strong personality individuals, but when those foundations step back, the entire institutions go dormant.

Fundamentally, this is true for any ministry from EPSA or WA or culture etc. etc. FA is the only one that somewhat escapes due to the FA Council, but even then it requires an FA Minister or Councillor with strong personality, communication skills, and interregional connections or otherwise FA stagnates.

Re: UTEP and EPNS, I’ll also add that they tend to share somewhat similar goals of getting articles as their main focus - EPNS on shorter articles to be published monthly (in its current state) and UTEP longer articles or as an archive. In “reviving” these institutions, it may be a good idea to review how to differentiate their purposes a little bit more, I think.

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Inactivity is a chronic and major issue. It’s great that your campaign focuses on that, and it’s hardly expected for the HoG to micromanage, but the platform is a bit light on specifics for something so important.

  1. How will you avoid diluting government time and energy even further in the process of building the infrastructure to recruit from other games?
  2. You have a section about forum accessibility. Do you have any ideas regarding onsite dispatch infrastructure?
  3. Are you concerned that quotas for Internal Affairs may lead to burnout?
  4. As it stands, do we actually have commitments to TNP or Starlight? If that’s forward-looking, what form will those commitments likely take?
  5. Do you have any particular ideological stake in the WA?
  6. Do you have any ideas for domestic endorsement infrastructure, particularly REWARD and the Hussars?
  7. Delegate endorsements have been steadily declining. You will no longer be ingame Delegate; what do you see your role there being, if any?
  8. More broadly, what do you see your relationship with the Vizier Delegate being like?
  9. Your campaign doesn’t mention the Clerical Agency. Any plans there?
  10. Moving recruitment functions under culture strikes me as a bit odd considering that one of those is largely mechanical. They just seem like pretty different areas. Do you plan culture’s approach to recruitment to be more geared towards integration than the mechanical stuff?
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  1. I have an idea for a full rewrite of the dispatch system and restructuring it to be easy to navigate. One main dispatch with a simple table of contents to go to exactly what you would want to join
    , and a list to the law index, and a big button at the bottom that says back to index. I plan to build a new version of this dispatch https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1238603 as i find it is an inspiringly good layout. Images and graphics are cool but shouldnt take the attention away from the info we want to impart on our newcomers.

  2. The idea is to try to create a council that acts as a planning committee with the MoIA acting as a speaker and general conductor of the council. directly asking everyone to work as a team should mitigate the burnout. I will be directing more closely as internal affairs will be my primary focus for the foreseeable extent of the term.

  3. we need to be actively asking them questions to get to know the individuals, and see if we can pique their interest in an area. this ties back to the dispatches, which would be helpful one stop explanations of every area and how exactly to join. Short and sweet, clear and easy, less flair more information on the dispatches.

  4. I believe as we get more tech internally built, we can start to alleviate the more “busy work” parts of our government, and put more focus on the (imo) fun parts of the community. Voice chats and discord game nights need to make a comeback. We need to get that social aspect back and if we can cut down on the dull work i think we get less burnout. Things like updating rosters, stuff like that.

  5. I will be personally starting and pinging for a lot more discord calls. I’ve been pretty successful in the last month of getting 5+ people together, and its a start. We should also utilize more Discord games in our culture because the barrier of entry is already crossed once anyone hits the discord.

  6. Tools are in the pipeline that will help us identify active players by more than just their WA. This will be a boon because we can hit them while they are active. issues, logins, even more.

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  1. Game expansion will be a plan for later in the term, We need to fix what we have now before we take on new additions.

  2. the general idea is to also suggest theeastpacific.com homepage also have a table of contents leading to everything, mirroring the structure of the main dispatch. who what where when why dispatch links to read that onboard you without needing to navigate as many dispatches as we have now.

  3. the idea is to create a council with a leader that acts as a director than a single consolidated responsibility. ill be assigning project directly since i feel this will need the most attention this next term. It goes hand in hand with strengthening all aspects of the region, from all the roleplay communities, to every branch of government, as well as the casual day to day activities, so IA will be a focal point of my term personally.

  4. We are in talks about getting closer, and both are being actively pursued. I don’t want to reveal too much due to these are gov on gov talks but it is an ongoing focus.

  5. I will say I am not familiar with the GA, it seemed like too much with too much backlog to understand, but with the reset i think its a perfect time to invest myself into it. Even as Archon I will continue to push for us to support Regional sovereignty, and fair balanced decisions on the validity of candidates of the SC, and support them accordingly.

  6. Hussar should be heavily advertised alongside all welcomer engagement posts. a special role color could help promote it on discord. We need our WA numbers to stop mitigating, Our tools we will have for engagement will allow us to directly engage, and ill expect that WA works to send out telegrams to active players, asking them to join the WA, and endorse the Praesidium. That alongside the Praesidiums internal endotarting should help curb the bleed. (This ties in with 7. as well)

  7. As Delegate I’ve always had a strong working relationship with the Viziers, having been one as well as a former Grand Vizier myself. I will continue to do so as I respect the Viziers greatly and will seek guidance from them as applicable to the situation.

  8. I did miss that, whoops. My plan is to continue it in the factor it currently exists as The Ministry of Research and Records. Part of the focus will switch to what the bot can automate, and hopefully have the ministry do more of the research portion.

  9. well the idea of recruitment is engaging people when they hit the discord as well which is why i feel its a good tie - in for Culture since I believe that will play a major role in retaining newcomers. i feel our gamenights are a great way to show people the TEP way and actively seeking out people besides an announcement ping to join them feeds the whole ecosystem. So yes, integration rather than mechanics.

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This campaign has good depth, and I tend to agree with some of the ideas presented. Few things I’m curious about, however.

  1. Another election cycle passes, and another pledge is made to diversify TEP from a NationStates-focused community to a broader gaming community. I am still yet to see, after years of talk, a genuine effort to make this happen. I am still yet to see any way that we intend to turn a World of Warcraft player into an executive staffer. I fundamentally don’t understand why we are still pursuing this. Could you take this opportunity to justify to an undecided voter why diversifying is a good idea, and how you intend to one: Outcompete other gaming communities which are solely dedicated to those games and their community and two: Bring those new community members from that game over to NationStates. For a bonus third point, when we have so little manpower, and cultural events to play games offsite have had fairly minimal participation, all things considered, why should we spend so much time and effort pursuing this idea when there’s no evidence that it will bear fruit?

  2. IA is confusing - to solve the inactivity of two ministries, we merge them into one larger ministry, and add deputies? That doesn’t do anything to solve the manpower problem. Adding quotas is confusing, what are you going to do if they don’t hit quotas, fire them? Who’s going to replace them?

  3. EPNS and UTEP changes are positive - best to chase stories than hope they come to us. Curious to know who’s going to do that though. That’s expanding the responsibilities for one role which is largely inactive, and one which to my knowledge has been totally unmanned for months. Feels like another “I’ll handle it until we find a permanent minister” situation coming on.

  4. Cordone was indeed destroyed during the last term, largely due to a frankly unstoppable coalition and their own sheer incompetence. Could you speak to what role you played in building the coalition, and how you were involved in operational planning?

  5. Were you involved in the planning team for the failed op on April 12? If so, what went wrong, in your opinion? This operational failure was deeply embarrassing for TEP, and subsequently has compounded our existing reputation for being a bit incompetent when it comes to military gameplay. What will you do as Archon to work towards rebuilding trust with our allies and partners in this area?

  6. You seek to pursue multiple new treaties if elected. Which regions do you wish to pursue new treaties with, and will you re-affirm TEP’s commitment to nonalignment in R/D if elected?

  7. WA seems to be a big focus for you if elected. Having an Archon author a proposal would be a very positive sign. TEP has never placed much interest in its position in the WA, at least compared to other major regions. Will that change under your leadership, or will we continue to orbit FA policy around community and friendships?

  8. Your campaign neglected to touch on our languishing RMB RP community even once, which is incredibly disappointing. At the pace we are going, Valsora looks set to die off. Why did you decide to not prioritise the revitalisation of the RMB RP community as a centrepiece of your campaign? What efforts will you promise to make today to solve the crisis the RMB community is facing? Valsora is this region’s greatest recruitment tool, and it is the single largest reason people move to / stay in TEP. It’s the reason I, and so many of my colleagues and friends are here. Without it, we face a much steeper uphill battle in solving our activity crisis.

Thank you for your time and good luck.

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  1. Ultimately, I believe the reason that the game expansion has not happened has been for a few reasons. Mechanically with the delegate elections, things were in a constant state of flux each term to get the old delegate out and new delegate in, and by the time that was done most delegates are 1/4 through their term. Then they need to solidify on their NS campaign because thats always been the central focus. How what when where why Nationstates because in theory there was not enough time to get to anything else.

Now even with this said, i still believe that game expansion will have to be a late term goal. consider it a stretch goal for my campaign as I am putting priority on our internal development, but allow me to explain as a WOW player what that avenue might look like. There is dedicated servers in WOW that focus on character roleplay, and from these groups I believe we could bring over members to our roleplay communities. My thought process is the game expansion needs to be done in games that promote fantastical escape from realism, and therefore promote roleplay. There will be a gap between character based roleplay and creating a nation and roleplaying in one of our communities, but there is a throughline to focus on on the love of roleplay. As for bringing people to nationstates, if we can get them in on the roleplay of Valsora or Urth, the natural step would be to discuss them coming to NS. We could offer drawings / events to promote people creating nations, and endorsing our leadership. Hussar drawings maybe?

  1. The idea is to operate IA like a FA council. We get input, and expect input from trusted individuals on creating the events. The minister will still be in charge of posting announcements, and coordinating with allies/friends as needed, but the work is split between the members of the ministry in a way that will hopefully take the burden of all off the shoulders of the ministry. It is my hope that this will help our dead culture problem. Also, i want crosstraining for our recurring events. The fact that hunger games has gotten delayed due to lack of host is something we need to avoid, since that was the main draw of culture for a while now. Everyone knowing the software/process in Culture allows us to have more backup hosts. The idea with merging the ministries is exactly manpower. We need less overhead structure (Ministers to staffers) and consolidate more people into the same group. Integration minded people may have great ideas for culture/recruitment, but have never had the inclination to join them, but find they are interested now that they are in the same group.

  2. I’m going to be blunt here, not with you but the situation. I have had an EPNS minister who is dedicated to doing the job right. The major problem is no one could follow deadlines to provide articles, and therefore things fell to the wayside. My goal is to require that all my ministries provide some form of work to an article(s) as part of their obligations. Government should have at least an article or two to discuss in the course of a month otherwise what the hell are we doing. My focus this last term was on more than internal, which is why this wasn’t addressed, but now that we are in a good spot FA wise, its time for me to focus on fixing this alongside our other internal infrastructure.

As for searching for articles, yes this is something I will be leading the charge on in the start, and i am hoping that my lead will show others how to pursue stories. We see something interesting on the NS forums? Maybe we ask for an interview from those individuals. I’m great at asking questions, and I want to put that to use.

  1. Lets explain my role in Cordone. Cordone was a longterm project of mine as well as previous delegates. There was discussions of it during Dead’s administration, me and AMOM worked on it during his Term, and I made the final pull during mine. We had lose committments from the partners but never had a consolidate plan of attack. So I took the initiative to throw everyone into a group chat, and hammer out the details. This led to us finally using the op server to make the plan. I am very proud of the planning steps of this operation, and continue to be. however, the elephant in the room is really how things went.

  2. Like the story of Icarus, we flew too close to the sun. The operation was planned with essentially just two individuals from EPSA taking the lead. This, for a massive coalition of over 100 people was way to nearsighted, and was never going to work. On top of that, the lower command consisted of every single org leader and other representatives that they brought with them. Everyone has opinions and changes to make last minute to the plan, and we did not have time to process the requests, leading to tension. We also brought individuals who while they are trusted internal pieces of our community, did not have the nuance and understanding of how military gameplay is conducted.

The cold hard truth is that EPSA was not in a position to be able to lead and op like that, and I will put it on my hubris that we attempted. I considered it our fight and something we should handle. It would have gone smoother if we made a team from the commanders that would ease how the planning went.

As for regaining trust of our allies, I believe we have already crossed that road. We have gone from <10 individuals to now close to 30. Our command has gone up as well, and I feel if another Cordone happened, we have had the experience to make the attempt much better now. We learn from the mistakes of the past, and continue to build the military up more. We are not infallible, and the truth is EPSA was not a focus of previous administrations, but it continues to be something I consider highly valuable and in need of attention.

  1. The North Pacific, and the West Pacific have become great friends of the east, through our cooperation in the WA as well as EPSA, respectively. Starlight has also been a growing friend, through cooperation in liberations. These are all regions on my docket for sooner than later this term to solidify a treaty.

  2. WA is going to be one of my focus, because I feel now is the best time to get into it and learn the intricacies. With the GA reset, to catch up with the proposals is now a much much less daunting task, and everyone is learning the new system so we wont feel behind.

  3. I apologize for the lack of a dedicated RMB section, but it is something focal to my changes to IA. We need to funnel people to joining the communities, and we also need to bolster leadership. The balancing act is that we need to help the communities without overstepping. I believe a solution we can pursue is working directly with the Valsora Council as a part of government, That way there is a direct connection to me and the administration on how to help Valsora. I think this should be done by consolidating the RMB Council and Valsora Council into one council. Think a potential structure of three elected, three councilors making decisions, that way both halves of the coin work together. I will also be assisting directly as a member of the VSI team, and I am excited to learn that role even if I am not elected I will continue to support the revitalization of our roleplay community.

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I appreciate the very direct responses, you’ve cleared up a few of my concerns.

I’m not convinced that merging the RMB Council and Cartography Council is a good idea. I think they are much better kept apart, with the RMB Council able to hold the cartographers accountable, to some extent. I don’t know why we’d merge them. However, your pledge to work on the VSI is very uplifting and exactly what I’d hoped to see.

Outside of that, could you elaborate on what it is you want to do when you speak of “working directly with the Valsora council as part of government”? What will the government actually do to help? I’m looking for specifics, not vague gestures. I don’t expect you to know everything, especially in a developing situation, but hopefully you have some idea of things the executive can/will do to help.

Thanks

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What can i say ive always been a very direct person, I run on honesty and laying out the facts of my agenda.

Its an idea im considering because i want to put the two closer into working together for the betterment of Valosra, as for Valsora working directly with us I would like to see them have a seat in the cabinet, and be able to directly comingle with my ministers on the things they need. They can also bring up highlights from Valsora to publish in UTEP / EPNS. Maybe that way is a better way to have them have a direct spot in cabinet and valsora council than merge them. I am fully willing to hear any and all ideas on how I can help Valsora further.

lets do RP awards, showcases, and other things we can post directly in our discord to get people over to RP.

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I’d like to note for clarity that my understanding as a member of the RMBC is that the Cartography Council of Valsora is entirely legally distinct from the government of the East Pacific, hence the creation of the RMBC in the first place, and as such I’m unsure of what legal basis there would be for merging it into the RMBC. The two councils have fundamentally different roles, and between this and the historical support for Valsoran independence, I think it would be deeply inappropriate to combine the two.

Theoretically, the Cartography Council is already supposed to have a member advising the RMBC, but due to activity and workload issues, this hasn’t happened since the last cartographer resigned. I’m unsure that they currently have the time to serve additional functions within the government.

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I know I tend to focus on Culture a lot, but that’s because what I’ve been leading for almost 4 years now. So I wanted to ask how you plan on picking someone dedicated for your Internal Affairs ministry. Are you going to search in TEP or try to find someone qualified outside of TEP? And how are you going to ensure the person will be active enough to take on such a big task? I would hate to see Culture continue to suffer, but I understand that it is hard to find dedicated staffers.

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Domais states in his campaign "I feel like, as it stands, EPNS is very forced, in the sense that we have to come up with things to say just to meet some arbitrary quota. That’s why, as Minister of News, I have only released a single edition regarding Cordone, because that’s something people will actually read about. " Yet you say that EPNS is on life support. My concern here, then, is was the expectation that EPNS continue to be monthly ever communicatd to Domais? If not, why wasn’t this communicated? And if it was communicated, then why wasn’t this reinforced? It seems you two have different opinions on the standards of quality for EPNS, which is concerning for Archon candidates since it represents a lack of communication between two high-level Executive positions.

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Yes, ive clearly sent the wrong message here by mistake. My intent with the RMB discussion is I’ve noticed there is a distance between Valsora Council, and RMB Council, and I wish to provide a structure that is more conducive to a working relationship on problems. Perhaps this is better discussed as a joint cafeteria channel, or one on gov whatever works better. I know a big issue with Valsora is a lot falls on little quantity of shoulders and thats something that needs to be address.

Obviously I am not the most clear and concise on this issue, as myself having just joined Valsora and not done much (yet), i am still really learning the ropes and after I feel I will be better articulated on this issue.

This is very much a “workshop” area for me.

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The quota was not changed, and Domais was made aware of it. The problem was when we got close to article submission deadlines, multiple parties (including myself) were not able to provide articles. It became a situation of “Should I chase everyone down and demand articles, and threaten to remove people for delerection of duties or, should I put the focus on what is working and workshop overhauls to the structure when time allowed”. I chose the later course, and am hoping to solve the issue with my structural changes.

I definitely dropped the ball in this area, and should have worked harder to keep EPNS consistent. But I could only prioritize so much during my term and made huge strides in other areas at the cost of this one. With those other areas in smoother state, it will be my focus to right my wrongs here.

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Not sure if this has already been answered, but how would you intend to get support for TEP authors to pen their resolutions in the World Assembly, especially in the post reset era? It’s a known fact that it often takes the backing of influential people to get things passed.

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It’s outlined a bit in my WA section, but I can reiterate here again. I’m proud of the FA work that I’ve accomplished this term, and I feel it puts us in a great spot where our proposals and authors will be treated fairly by the blocs that be. MGC and S7 are on the best terms with TEP that has been in a long time, and now is the best time to try for new WA authors for TEP.