Under my leadership, The Ministry of Culture’s main goal for the month of June was generally to organize ideas and adapt to the modernized Executive. This was planned in the form of organized dispatches and forum topics listing staff, making monthly targets, and naming/describing various potential future projects. In due time, the list of monthly goals was released.
Goal #1: Festival of The Tranquil Suns
Status:COMPLETE
The Festival of Tranquil Suns opened with only slight delays that were based entirely on the administration change and not any bad setbacks. Organization was easy and quick and the Festival seems to be a success.
My original goal was to “get this running efficiently with little to no setbacks” which I believe has been achieved already with great results. The Festival’s games and stuff have been proceeding as normal and while I haven’t been as hands on as I was in earlier stages of the event, it has still gone well.
Another goal regarding this was to hit 100 verified server members. I considered this to be a reasonable goal based on prior experience in Paradoxical, where there were A LOT of participants. However, since invites didn’t go out to as much regions and the event was comparably smaller, both of which I didn’t account for due to it being my first event as MoC, we fell short of that goal. This has been a learning experience for me, however, so a similar mistake is not likely to happen again.
Goal #2: Choose Your Own Adventure Project
Status:DELAYED
The Choose Your Own Adventure Project is the first of its kind in a long time, and as such it was expected to go slowly. However, due to various circumstances beyond the control of all parties involved with the CYOA Project, the event itself has been delayed.
On the flip side, though, we have already decided, via a Resident Poll, which Adventure is going to be embarked upon out of all the ideas, and the other ideas remain in the reserve for future editions of the CYOA, so we have the set up that we need, we just need writing. If delays continue, it is possible that another Staffer takes up the job of Project Manager.
Goal #3: Design Bring A Puppet Day
Status:COMPLETE
Bring A Puppet Day, which has been renamed to Bring Your Own Puppet Day (BYOP), has been fully design in detail and approved by Vizier Marrabuk, who originally came up with the event, and, although a schedule has yet to be set, I am confident that it can be organized and perhaps even completed by the end of July. This is the current description:
“With counsel from the creator of the event, Ex-Delegate Marrabuk, Bring a Puppet Day will be executed by an experienced member of the Ministry of Culture to ensure it goes smoothly. In this event, participants will create alternate NationStates accounts, nicknamed puppets, and register with the event manager, before using these accounts to post clues on the RMB as to who their main nation is. After a certain amount of clues are given, the RMBers will have to guess who the puppet’s main is by privately messaging the event manager. The person with the most correct answers wins. Inappropriate nation names, or any nations that otherwise violate any rules, will be disqualified. Any nation with access to the RMB of TEP may lodge guesses or create a puppet. You can only submit two puppets max. Lying will get you disqualified.”
Goal #4: Figure Out Game Nights
Status:COMPLETE
The goal for Game Nights was to “look into all potential games, consider accessibility and ease of playing, and narrow it down to the games we absolutely want”. I believe we’ve done that. I’ve gone through all the games that I had and even some new ones that I have added along the way, judging them according to their accessibility to most people and ease to play, but also how fun they are, and I narrowed the games down to Werewolf, Skribbl.io, Secret Hitler, and Spyfall. All that’s left now is choosing the sites, which shouldn’t even take a day, and then we can start planning when we will do the game nights.
Goal #5: Sponsor/Open 10 Polls
Status:INCOMPLETE
I wanted the Ministry of Culture to do 10 Polls throughout the month to engage the community and promote discussion amongst residents, but even though there were nine ideas for polls and an easily accessible thread with more, time constraints did not permit any more than six polls. My goals will be adjusted according to this new information for July.
Goal #6: Trivia Bot
Status:COMPLETE
This was probably my most simple goal. To encourage activity and general fun, I wanted to contact a Discord Moderator to request that a trivia bot and channel be made. I contacted a Discord Moderator and the Moderator agreed to look into it.
Goal #7: Grow the Card Initiative
Status:COMPLETE
The Card Initiative technically grew in number of players and in popularity, but this is in large part due to the Card Ministry debate on Zukchiva’s delegacy campaign thread and the subsequent formation of TEAPOT, an endeavour mostly done by new TEAPOT members like Sakana and Zukchiva, but with assistance from me and the new Steward, Evrigenis.
Another goal was to make this into an official department under MoC and pick a leader, but the independence of the organization has proved to be much more valuable. Technically this goal is complete, but TEAPOT is independent now, and its success has nothing to do with MoC’s former partnership with it, so I made the color on the status grey to indicate the complexity of the situation.
Goal #8: Solidify Ideas Dispatch
Status:COMPLETE
This was a very loose goal, but essentially the idea was to record every event idea the Ministry has, toss out the ones we can’t use, and go into as much detail as possible. This has more or less been accomplished. The current dispatch is here:
https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1367591
Goal #9: Recruit to 20 Staffers
Status:INCOMPLETE
Through targetted recruitment, promotion of the Ministry, general exposure of citizens to MoC through games and focus groups and such, and through reaching out to former MoC applicants who never got involved or, in some cases, accepted into the Ministry of Culture due to the full plates of past Ministers, we managed to recruit 5 more Staffers for the Ministry of Culture, but no more. With the loss of Former RMB Affairs Minister Great Algerstonia, that brings us just shy of halfway reaching our goal of 20 staffers. However, I am still satisfied with the new recruits.
Goal #10: Staffer List and Contact Information
Status:COMPLETE
One of our goals even before the Delegate’s official request, a list of all current Staffers has been assembled on our forums and on a dispatch, with basic contact information and even a rundown of the duties of each role within MoC. I also used this to keep a record of what project(s) each person is involved with.
Forum Version:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/the_east_pacific/moc-staffers-list-t17260.html
Dispatch Version:
https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1382702
Other
An interregional event that has apparently been considered for some time is now being coordinated by Evrigenis, who has recently been elected Steward of TEAPOT as well. As MoC, I have been invited to help organize it. Most of the cards stuff will be handled by TEAPOT, but I will use my past experience in event managing to take care of the technical stuff, like the rules and roles.
The opening of foreign relations with the region Grace of Gaia had led to talks of a potential future Festival between TEP and GoG, but it was only recently that we began actually planning the event. It is called the Festival of the Birds and Bees to reference our many past Bird delegates and GoG’s bee meme, which had been around in their discord server when I joined to take care of my duties as Senior Diplomat.
There’s already been some progress, since we’ve gotten approval from our Heads of Government we have created the discord server, all of the categories, and most of the channels we will be using. We have also created all the roles and are in the process of assigning permissions. Most of this is boring technical stuff, but it’s important and it’s being done.
End of Report
Dispatch Version Available Here: