Hello! My name is Jo, or as you may know me on-site, Soramra, and I’m running for Delegate this cycle, as the title might have suggested. The past few terms have highlighted to me that the Frontier update, introduced last year, has been quietly devastating to TEP. This is not merely an issue of staffing, though that is an issue as well, but also one of training. We have many great old hands in the region, but they are just that, old hands. They cannot run the region forever, they have lives, their availability fluctuates. We are in need of new talent, and we can’t wait for it to come to us. That is why I’m firmly convinced our government should be focussed on raising up new talent, and I aim to do just that.
I’m of the opinion that it is the task of the Delegate in the coming term to be proactive and push the region forward in a time of challenges, and we do have them. As said, the Executive is highly reliant on an increasingly small pool of old hands, and it is often unclear even to me how much movement is ongoing in the Ministries that aren’t my own. I think most Ministries are doing their jobs, but I also think this is staying one step ahead of inactivity moreso than thriving, which is precarious when the coming term runs into summer. Last summer was crushing, and in light of that, I think it’s crucial that the Delegate is very proactive with pushing the Ministries and the region as a whole forward, keep them active, coordinate them on events, and engages the Residents of TEP.
Recruitment
It’s really no surprise that I’m going to start off with this one, since it really is the pillar of the campaign and in my opinion should be the focus of the next term as much as it was my personal focus in the last. Recruitment is the most important tool we have to counteract the effects of the Frontier update and pull our region out of and through any slump. Recruitment leaderboards in the EPNS, competitions for the most telegrams sent, frequent promotion of the Ministry, these are all tools that we will be using to push more people towards Recruitment. We do not want to burn out our recruiters, and by sharing the burden we can at once keep it firing at all times without tiring anyone out.
Recruitment has expanded over the past term to also take integration under its wing, and I aim to recognise this role more formally - Recruitment will also be charged with mentoring, welcoming, guiding and recruiting. Manual recruitment is easy - if you think you are the only one doing it, it can be exhausting and demoralising, but actually recruiting is not intensive - leaving the Ministry with its hands free to take on more demanding or longer-term projects, such as overhauling our welcoming dispatches like STEP (something we’ve started on, but I’d like to explore improvements there and on REWARD). We’ve also been brainstorming (and prior to my death-by-exams, working on) boosting Urth’s visibility in particular. Valsora runs well, and while I think the Executive has a duty to assist them as well, I’d like to shift some focus of Recruitment in the coming term to recruiting for Urth as well. The Executive should be here for the entire region, and I aim to step this up through dedicated Urth dispatches as well as overhauling STEP and providing Urth more priority there.
As for Discord-side integration, this is something we initially struggled with over the past term. Getting people into the region isn’t so hard, neither is getting them into the Discord. Getting them to join the Executive, however, can be trickier. We’ve made some progress over the latter half of the term - assigning the Welcome helper role to Recruitment staffers is a simple but positive step here, as would be making this role more available and giving active TEPers guidance on how to welcome new joins - but I’d like to work with the Minister in charge of Recruitment to come up with new ideas and improve old ones.
I intend to focus my personal attention on this area of government, but I’ll be encouraging the Minister in charge to come up with new ideas of their own as well, no matter if they’re experimental or not, and propose them.
Culture
I have gained more appreciation for regional culture over the past few months, and as such I have more of an idea where I want to go with Culture in the coming term. The first point is that I’d like us to focus on-site more in the coming term. I think discord-side events are good to continue running - the Hunger Games is very popular, and I’d like to see that continued. As a Ministry, however, I want Culture to add its considerable arsenal to the broader theme of integration and retention.
Flag and banner contests are always a classic, and I’d like to see those encouraged and promoted on the RMB especially. If you’ve ever glanced at our RMB, you’ll see just how much creativity the East’s members have, and I’d like to see that celebrated more. I’m more wary of WFE contests, though - overhauling or themeing the entire thing seems unwise when it is the main entry point of our region. We can, and should, however, promote poems or memorable quotes where we have space.
The next topic is polls, and here I’d like to promote a fairly common idea I’d like to see pursued - story polls. Basically, the Ministry would write up a story, give it at least three or four options, and Residents would vote on it, after which the Ministry would write the next episode on the basis of the chosen option. I think this would be worthwhile to pursue for two reasons - A) we have a ton of talented writers, as our hyper-active writing ministries constantly prove, B) these sorts of polls are an excellent way to stay in touch with our on-site residents, to retain and integrate them, and also to draw in new folks looking at our region page. Here, too, I’d like to draw in the participation of our on-sites and RMBers, not merely by letting them vote but also by opening up a point where they can submit ideas. A dedicated nation will be created and maintained for this purpose.
In between the above, running miscellaneous polls should also be done. The next big topic for Culture will get its separate space.
Propaganda
Now, to start, I don’t intend to make this its own Ministry, at least not immediately. I’d like to sort of “pilot” this, if you will, under the Ministry of Culture as a department, helmed by a Deputy or, in the absence of a dedicated one, by the Minister themselves. Propaganda has always been a part of our culture. If you look at the RMB, again, you will see just how talented some of our members are at it, and I’d like to channel that energy for the region as a whole. Propaganda will be charged with spreading the glory of the East, through posters, dispatches, speeches, etc. These will be submitted to News, to feature monthly in the EPNS, and as said before Culture will be charged with hosting competitions for it.
The most important reason for this is that it’s fun, this is a game, and we should be having fun with it as a region. It is also an engaging way to get people involved in the Executive. If they enjoy writing propaganda dispatches, they might be willing to help promote the Executive in Recruitment, or if it’s posters they make, they might want to help out Culture to organise contests. The Executive needs to be fun (and it is, in my experience, but it also needs to appear fun, which it sometimes doesn’t), and I firmly think a Propaganda department, or eventual Ministry, is a good step towards making it appear moreso.
Outreach
As a Ministry, Outreach is an odd duck, since it’s charged with keeping up with our on-site members, essentially functioning as a bridge between the government and our on-site community. This task sounds obvious on the surface but doesn’t really give much in the way of specific directions when you’re actually supposed to run it. However, Outreach does serve an important function in my view, which is to advice the Delegate and Cabinet on how the RMB community feels, what its concerns are and coordinate with the other Ministries for on-site events. As such, I have no real plans for Outreach in particular. Not every branch needs a long-term goal or plan, sometimes it can simply serve a passive but important role to the Executive.
I do have a general plan to engage with Outreach’s core task, which is to move all Delegate announcements to the RMB. They will still be announced on Discord, but Discord cannot be and isn’t the sole heart of the community and the Delegate has a broader responsibility. I aim to be active and seen, but also to keep the community there in the loop on what the Executive is up to. Whatever gets announced in our announcement or Executive-updates channels by the Executive will be announced on the RMB all the same, barring discord-only announcements.
Endorsement Affairs
Over the past two terms, I’ve had some time to mull over how Endorsement Affairs works as a Ministry, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t think this should be its own ministry. Its core goal - encouraging endorsements on the Delegate - is already overlapping with both Outreach and Recruitment. Welcoming new players to discord is likely to get them to WA up, a lot of our welcome infrastructure is already set up to take over its job and will be increasingly so as we move forward to reform STEP. Encouraging endotarting, as of right now, doesn’t really seem to be what the Ministry is focussed on and can easily be re-allocated to Recruitment. As for gathering endorsements, running NNE dispatches I can do myself. As such, I think Endorsement Affairs should be shelved.
World Assembly Affairs
I don’t have any radical plans for WAA. This is a Ministry that mostly does its job, and well. It’s also a Ministry that doesn’t really function like any other Ministry - it is more or less convention that the Delegate follows the results of the polls. I think this is good, and I have no intention of actually changing that. What I do want to encourage, however, is our FA Ministry to be more involved in advising voters and with pushing out IFVs, and also to make these more regular. The stance of the East should be loud and clear, and beholden to the citizenry. If there are FA considerations to a vote, then it is FA’s task to inform the citizens of this so that it can be taken into account by votes.
UTEP
UTEP isn’t really a Ministry, and to be honest, I don’t really want it to be. It’s just nice that it’s there, where East Pacificans are free to simply write what it is that they wish to express and share in a semi-academic format, it’s running nicely, and it is pretty visible to all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Foreign Affairs
This is relatively near the bottom, because I don’t think it should be our priority in the coming term. This is not to say we can’t make strides, however, and we can and will. The first thing I want to address here is direction, and I think that direction is clearer now than ever. A few weeks back, a draft was brought to the forums to repeal the commend of Wallenburg. Residents of the East have united to express our opposition, but there was an undercurrent of defeatism that I sensed amongst us, that this would be passed regardless. To me, this is unacceptable. Of the top 15 Delegates in the game, we are allied to 7 of them, and we ourselves make 8. By all rights, our Ministry of FA should be capable of lobbying the death of this proposal, and yet even senior members of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed this defeatism.
In that regard, I think it’s important to embark upon a tour of our treaties. Most of them were signed years ago, and I’m not sure we’ve been keeping in touch and actively communicating with our friends abroad to the extent that we should be. This should be the first object of Foreign Affairs in the coming term, and while it sounds like a relatively unintensive goal I think it is vital that we solidify this before we move on to any more ambitious projects.
News
This runs great, and I appreciate our excellent writers putting out solid content every month.
EPSA
EPSA is like Foreign Affairs in the sense that I don’t intend to make it my focus. EPSA is, after all, a tool of foreign policy and while I think it can be an activity driver at the moment other areas take priority. However, unlike Foreign Affairs, I do intend on giving this more personal attention. I’ve been a raider for six years, so I have some experience when it comes to rebuilding militaries. What precisely needs working on I can’t seriously say yet - I have kept my distance from EPSA, as it was not my place to interfere with, so as Delegate I’ll need to fully evaluate first what needs doing and what its strengths and weaknesses are.
There is one main thing I already want to touch on, however. That would be reports - the EPSA should vastly extend its reporting. We do a small raid, we should report it. We participate in a liberation with more than three members, we should report it. These reports should be internal, posted in dispatches and promoted to the RMB and the #executive-updates channel. This is a type of understated recruitment, reminding residents and those interested that we are here and active, but they should also be fun to write.
On top of that, I’d like to streamline our training procedures. EPSA’s focus should be on two things in the coming term: recruiting as many interested folks as possible through advertising and regular visibility, both in its piler forces and its updating crew, and training any new recruits as quickly as possible to promote them to whatever the equivalent rank of regular soldier is. That means a very simple and slow-paced five puppet tag run should suffice to teach any new EPSA recruit the basics, and get them integrated. This is not a high bar, and that’s by design - any further knowledge can be taught once they feel at home and part of the team, and much as I loathe tagging personally it teaches anyone the basic mechanics that form the core of the military game.
As a region we should be backing EPSA as well. Celebrate its successes through reports, advertise it to new joins, promote a program for on-site only members to participate as reinforcements. If there’s a promotion to the rank of officer, that should be shared in #executive-updates and celebrated on our RMB. If elected, I aim to invest my time and energy spent on EPSA in this area more than any other. I trust our officers are capable and dedicated, so I won’t interfere much with EPSA’s day-to-day operations unless it’s necessary or they want me to, but when it comes to the wider support of EPSA, I think there’s a big role for the Delegate to play.
Conclusion
In general, I believe the coming few months to be crucial, and I think the Delegate has a duty to be proactive and push things forward. Whether I’m elected Delegate or not, and though I certainly hope I am, I’ll be working to push the Executive forward in any way I can.
Thank you all for reading the campaign - I recognise it’s long, but I felt it best to be comprehensive and touch on most of the things I want to do and see. I’m happy to answer any questions anyone may have, obviously, and I look forward to seeing them!