The Deledead Has Risen Once Again

Hello everyone, the current Delegate, Dead, here, and I am running for re-election! Many of you probably know who I am by now, but if you do not I will explain myself a little bit. I have been in TEP for about 5 years now, joining in 2020 during the Drewvasion of NationStates. After I joined, I left for a year, before returning and joining Urth. Around this same time I became the Minister of Culture for about 5 terms I believe? During this time I helped to revitalize the Culture Ministry. After this, I focused on Urth for two years or so, and then eventually came back to the government and ran for Delegate, and now I’m here. Now onto my campaign itself.

Achievements

First I will go over my achievements over this last term as TEP’s Delegate.

  1. I nominated 3 viziers and 2 arbiters who were voted into the role.
  2. Along with the Praesidium, Magisterium, and moderation teams, I helped to maintain regional security.

Cabinet

First I will discuss broadly about my cabinet. I intend to keep most of my ministers the same, although I do tend to open up applications for some cabinet positions (Endorsement Affairs, Culture, Recruitment, Foreign Affairs, Outreach, and News). The positions I listed here may be subject to change as I go through my campaign. I will most likely use the same format as I did last time for my applications, but I broadcast it more widely to try and get more engagement from the RMB Cafe and Urth Discord Servers.

After the application period, me and my Vice Delegate will get together to choose who gets the roles. I will do this so that I am not biased in my decisions and I have another voice of reason in who gets the position.

I will also take this opportunity to applaud all of my ministers for their service during this term as Delegate. They all did an amazing job. As for the people who left before the term was over, I understand why you left. You all did an amazing job during your time in office. I wish all of you luck in your future endeavors.

Vice Delegate

I plan on keeping the Vice Delegate position if I am reelected. I believe that they are a good voice of reason and help distribute some of the workload that comes with the Delegacy. Although I will be more willing to offload work onto them, during this last term I gave my Vice Delegate no work to do while they were in office. I will most likely split the workload half and half to make things fair, with the Delegate handling the most important positions while the Vice Delegate would handle more of the regional affairs/less important stuff. I don’t want this to just be a decorative position, I would like this to have some work for it.

As last time, I will not put this position up for election because I would rather have the choice of who I get as my Vice Delegate.

Culture

For Culture, I would like to see more events. This last term there was an uptick in events taking place through the ministry, but I believe that we can do more. I understand that intraregional festivals may be on the decline, but I would like to have more festivals. They were always my favorite part of being Minister of Culture and I want the citizens of TEP to once again be able to experience these events. These events helped me network with people from other regions and have a good time without worrying about politics or anything like that. I will of course keep up the Hunger Games as that is a very fun event that we do every month, although I would want to host a Hunger Games event at least once (Altys please)

I will be opening applications for this cabinet position because although Serge was elected to it, he was not able to keep up with it. I wish him the best, but we do need someone in charge of Culture.

Recruitment

Recruitment has been doing a wonderful job this term. I have attached an image of the statistics from Recruitment for the last term. I do believe that we could do some work to recruit more people for the regional Discord server and the Executive, but there is not much you can do when you are already recruiting so many people. I would like to also recruit more people from the RMB Cafe and Urth servers, as it seems like they are not as involved in the government, but more on that later.

I will be opening applications for this ministry, but Jo will still be highly considered for the position.

Endorsement Affairs

I believe that Endorsement Affairs needs a boost of activity. There has not been much from the ministry for a while now, no fault on Ambis’ part, he has been very busy. However, I believe that this will not be as useful if I am reelected, but it would still be a useful tool to have around for any future endeavors. I did not merge this ministry with another because I believed that Ambis was competent enough to not need help with this, but I am reconsidering and may merge it with Recruitment.

I will be opening applications for this ministry. Although I love Ambis, his activity has been lacking, which I do not blame on him.

News

News has had quite an eventful term, with Rosa departing as the minister and Aivintis taking up the post. Aivintis has done quite a good job with the ministry, and I would like to applaud his work. He does everything just right, he constantly reminds people of articles and makes lists of everything that needs to be done (which Rosa did before him). He also takes the time to bring Valsora and Urth-related visuals into EPNS to further promote them. There is not much that I want to change about this ministry, though I would like a few more articles relating to Valsora and Urth.

I am still debating whether I should open applications for this position or not, Aivintis is doing great, but he already has a lot on his plate. Right now I will say that I do plan on opening applications for this ministry, but this may change in the future.

World Assembly Affairs

Similar to News, World Assembly Affairs has done a great job over the last term. Aurora has done great keeping up with all of the proposals and making sure that all of them go to vote so that the people of TEP may choose what I vote for. I do not have any suggestions on what to change for this, although I may help to set up the NS account to telegram people about the World Assembly votes like we used to do. This will only be put into place if Aurora has enough time, I would not want to overwork her.

I am not opening applications for this position because Aurora has done a great job and continues to do so.

Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs has done a great job in this past term. They have remained pretty independent in their decisions, with me okaying or denying the final verdicts. This is because when I became the Delegate I was not too familiar with NS Foreign Affairs. If I get reelected I plan to be more invested and help decisions be made in Foreign Affairs. They will remain a little independent, but I would like to be more involved in this next term.

At this point, I am planning on opening applications for this ministry, but I will still be strongly considering Altys for this position as they are well-versed in the ministry and all of TEP’s foreign affairs.

Outreach

Outreach is a new ministry that I founded this term. They have not done anything yet, but I would like to get it up and working this next term. I do not blame Romanoddle or Myehn for the lack of activity in this ministry, because I understand how busy they have been. I would like to bring more attention to this ministry. Their main job will be to reach out to the RMB, RMB Cafe, and Urth to attempt to get more involvement from these parts of the TEP sphere.

I will be opening applications for this, I will still be considering Myehn for this position as they have not had a chance to prove themselves and I would like to see the work that they can do.

UTEP

UTEP has once again done a great job. They constantly push out new articles that are well-written and are a delight to read. I will not be changing anything about this ministry, they work well independently and produce amazing articles.

I will not be opening applications for this position, as Aivintis has been doing a great job and it is not important to replace him.

EPSA

EPSA has gone through plenty of leadership changes throughout this past term. However, I believe that with the current leadership, EPSA has a real chance at being revived and they have been doing plenty of operations already. I applaud all of the current leadership for working strongly together to make sure this organization runs smoothly.

I do not plan on opening applications for this organization as I would like to give the current administration more time and may open applications sometime during my term.

Valsora and Urth

Now I would like to talk about the TEP RPs. Valsora and Urth have been widely independent of the main TEP government for a while now. I would like to offer the servers to be more integrated with the main server so that we may recruit people and bring more attention to these RPs. I would also like to put more of the work from these RPs into the dispatches that we send out. Urth at least has experienced a lull and I would like to bring some quality RPers to the server. With Valsora I would also like to do the same, though it will be easier as they use the RMB.

Conclusion

I would like to thank all of you for reading through this campaign and taking the time to comment and ask me questions (if you did of course). I know whoever you pick to be the next Delegate, you will choose the correct option. I believe in TEP to always make the right decision.

Lots of Love,
American-Cascadia “I’m Dead”
The East Pacific Delegate

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Heya Dead! Congrats on your first term!

For us other candidates, what knowledge can you bestow on us about your time as Delegate, such as what it’s like, some tips, info, etc.?

I would say that you should not stress too much about answering each question the way that people would want it to be answered. Answer with what you truly believe and be truthful. Also being a Delegate is not as hard as it seems, you are constantly surrounded by support. I would also say to be yourself, if you are, you will be a great delegate. There’s not much more to say.

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Heya Dead, one question to understand you better.

What’s your most challenging situation faced so far as the delegate, and how would you improve your response to that situation?

That is hard, I believe that it was either the Cordone situation or three of my cabinet members leaving. For Cordone, I wish I had helped out more on that front instead of just sitting back and letting it happen. For the cabinet members, I wish I had done a better job at scouting and getting cabinet members after one had left because now we have been without specific Culture and News Ministers. I wish I had broadcast my application to more places to get more responses, as for some roles I only had one person apply, which led to a small pool of choices. I also wish I had gotten to know the people more before I hired them to the positions.

I have a few questions or statements to make:

Culture:

  • I can definitely have you host one Hunger Games yes c:
  • Festivals are indeed in decline and I’d like to oppose your argument with this one: What prevents smaller events from fulfilling the benefits you mention? Those are how we got close enough to NBB to eventually sign a treaty with them afterall. What is in your eyes the difference that would make festivals different?

Recruitment & Outreach:

  • A problem you seem to gloss over is the main server’s activity. Its overall activity has considerably declined compared to early 2024 and this has yet to change. What do you have in mind to remedy this?
  • You mention wanting more people from the RMB Cafe to take part in Government - that you want to reach out to our roleplayers more. What do you have in mind to achieve that?
  • Do you believe you could assist with manual recruitment duties this term?

Endorsement Affairs:

  • Is it really necessary to have a separate ministry anymore for Endorsement Affairs? It had made sense in times where Recruitment was “Hospitality”, a ministry more focused on community integration than general recruitment and integration into the region - but now that is the case, and now that the Recruitment Ministry de facto does the work of the MInistry of Endorsement Affairs, is the latter needed anymore? Would it instead not be better to seek more staffers, if not deputies, for the MoR to train new talent?

Foreign Affairs:

  • How do you plan on being more involved this coming term? You are already part of the Council after all - and as Delegate your opinion is naturally valued more for final decisions - so where in practice would you seek more involvement for yourself? If you’re unsure, reverse it and use past situations where if they reappear, you would choose to be more involved this time.

Culture:

  • Great! I would love to host the Hunger Games.
  • I like how many different regions are included with festivals, whereas during events like the Hunger Games, only one other region is involved. I like the big events where there are many different people and many different events to compete in, I feel like it is good for outreach and just to have a good time with people from other regions.

Recruitment & Outreach:

  • I did mention recruiting people for the regional Discord. I believe that we could get more people involved in the Discord server by mentioning it more within recruitment telegrams and dispatches. We could also host more Discord-exclusive events and promote them on the RMB to see if people would join the Discord for them.
  • I was thinking about using their announcement channel to say something like “We are currently recruiting for the Executive” and list the different Ministries they could work for and what these different ministries do. I feel like this may get more engagement from the RMB in the government.
  • Yes, I can assist this term, if not for a long time I can try to do it for a little bit each day.

Endorsement Affairs:

  • That is kind of what I was getting at with my talk about Endorsement Affairs, I believe that it should just be a new department within the Recruitment Ministry, I just believe that we should still get a leader for this department so that we do not overload the Recruitment Minister. This is because I do not believe that Endorsement Affairs should not be a separate ministry anymore.

Foreign Affairs:

  • I would like to get more involved in the conversations themselves, as it seems like throughout this past term I was only really involved during the decision-making and not really in the lead-up to the decisions. So, I would like to try and be more involved in the discussion period.

Only for Culture now since the other answers give enough information:

Isn’t it possible to invite several regions to our own events then? We’ve done this before for game nights afterall. Talking from a cost perspective too: how would we go about organising such big festivals if we aren’t able to organise smaller cultural events throughout the months outside of the big hit ones like Hunger Games? Do we also even have the spare manpower for such endeavours anymore?

I won’t disagree with you on the benefits of festivals, after all they are in parts how I have built the many connections I have now that are parts of my FA baggage; and one of them bolsters a roleplay that’s been going on for soon 3 years that I consider my most accomplished one. Yet I find this view narrow, especially as TEP’s main cultural export to those type of festivals (HP&FoF, PJ&CoC, SBB, WBB, LNF, to a lesser extent NDays apply too, and others).

I believe those festivals generally do not do much service to our own internal development and culture (especially in terms of cross-community unity) to justify the external benefits, which can be acquired differently. In fact I would go as far as to say past focus on such grandiose external events diverted crucial resources which should’ve been spent internally instead.

Also note that due to the cultural sanctions those festivals will by default feature much less % share of the active NS population than before. We TEP ourselves are sanctionned by association by our allies over in Europeia due to their sanctions applying to the Alstroemerian Commonwealths’ members, which many prominent TEPers are cross members in. This is for example why we did not attend EuroPride 2024 (Europeia’s annual festival celebrating pride month).

Even if it is still just a few small festivals, I believe it would be nice and I do believe we would have enough manpower because we usually get help from the executives from the other regions as well. I mostly like festivals because it’s not just one event, but many different ones where people can choose what they want to participate in.

I do kind of disagree with you, as festivals can also help to boost the activity in our server, and it’s not like I’m saying that we just don’t do any more internal events, I’m just saying that we do a festival every other month or every three months. Most of our resources would be spent on internal events.

I did not know that we were sanctioned by Europeia (which is why I said that I want to be more involved in FA because I did not know this and would like to keep up to date with this kind of stuff). If that is a problem that we have, it may not be good to host any big festivals or anything like that. Of course, this is just an idea, I will leave it up to the FA and Culture Ministers to decide if we hold a festival or not.

I appreciate this long campaign brief from an incumbent Delegate. It’s healthy to question current leadership and not simply accept that every Delegate must serve two terms simply because they want to.

I’ve got a couple of questions after reading your campaign.

As last time, I will not put this position up for election because I would rather have the choice of who I get as my Vice Delegate.

Does this mean to insinuate that you’ll evaluate other individuals for the role, as well as the current Vice-Delegate?

I understand that intraregional festivals may be on the decline, but I would like to have more festivals.

Given you can acknowledge interregional festivals are no longer as successful as they once were, would focusing on them, despite our manpower shortage in the ministry, not be a waste of time?

[On MoEA] I did not merge this ministry with another because I believed that Ambis was competent enough to not need help with this, but I am reconsidering and may merge it with Recruitment.

Endo Affairs should definitely be merged into Recruitment. This would have my support.

[On MoWAA] I am not opening applications for this position because Aurora has done a great job and continues to do so.

If Aurora resigned - The WA Commissioner role would be, excuse my french, F’d. As would UTEP be without Aivintis. Beyond sweeping it all under the ‘we’ll focus on recruitment’ rug, how will you work to get people interested in roles such as these, which (apologies to the respective ministers) are at times quite dull and unappreciated.

Outreach is a new ministry that I founded this term. They have not done anything yet, but I would like to get it up and working this next term.

Groundhog day, I said this in two campaign posts. Outreach either needs an overarching objective/goal or it needs to go. There’s a reason I took it out back. Sorry - Australian slang. There’s a reason I killed it.

UTEP has once again done a great job.

Agreed. Aivintis deserves more appreciation for his work in UTEP.

[On Cafe and Urth] I would like to offer the servers to be more integrated with the main server so that we may recruit people and bring more attention to these RPs.

Owner of one of those servers here. Happy to discuss this with you, would be keen to hear how you intend to integrate the cafeteria further than it already is, though.


I think you’ve kept the ship steady as Delegate, so no real complaints from me. I’d definitely like to see a second term take a few more liberties, though. TEP is doing well, but don’t be afraid to shake things up and push for things to be even better.

Thanks for your time, I look forward to reading your answers.

  1. Yes, I will be considering many people, including Tommo, my current Vice Delegate. Not that I do not want Tommo to be my Vice Delegate once again, I just believe I should keep my options open.
  2. I don’t believe that it would be a waste of time, especially if we only do 2 or 3 a year. Although, if the Culture Ministry decides that they do not want to do any festivals, I will not argue with their judgment.
  3. Agreed, I was hesitant to merge these two ministries during my previous term, but I am no longer as afraid of change as I was and I will change things up.
  4. I want to work directly with these ministries or have them work directly with recruitment, for them to hire and “train” recruits. The reason I have decided to keep them in these roles is because of the low manpower the executive has, but if we can get a few good replacements just in case the need arises, I believe that would be ideal.
  5. My overreaching goal for Outreach is to have them help recruit from Urth and Valsora and also try to gain more engagement from these groups because as of right now it seems like they stay pretty closed off and within themselves.
  6. I would be happy to discuss this with you too if I am reelected.

I appreciate all of your kind words, and yes I do agree that I played it safe this last term, if I am reelected I plan to make more decisions that change the dynamic of TEP.

#GoDead #Vote4Dead #Dead4Delegate

Thank you Serge, very cool.

  1. What do you think of some of the other ideas proposed this campaign season? Which ones would you seek to implement, if any?
  2. What would you say is the Ministry in need of the most work at this time?
  3. How is a second term crucial to accomplishing your plans? If you were not elected, would you consider your campaign goals from last term to be complete?
  1. I do not agree with most of the other ideas proposed during this campaign season, but Jo’s ideas for Recruitment would be something I would love to see implemented if I were elected. I do also like the idea of the Propaganda department and may implement that.
  2. I believe that Recruitment is always in need of work, but other than that I would say Culture, as Culture is the backbone of our regional identity and engagement. I also believe Outreach needs a lot of work as nothing happened with it last term and I would love to see it used to recruit and gain engagement from the other TEP servers and RMB.
  3. I believe that I have not completed everything that I said I would in my last campaign. I have not merged Endorsement Affairs with Recruitment, I have not revitalized Culture, and I have not seen an influx of executive staffers. These are some issues I would like to focus on in this next term, and if I am not reelected I will feel like I did not complete my goals.

I realise this is a broad question, but I would like to go a bit beyond the next term or the details of the platform of each candidate: how do you see and how would you guide TEP’s evolution in the wider game, and how would you build on our region’s strengths to shape its future?

I have not stopped to think about something like this, so I apologize if these answers are not what you’re looking for.

  1. I would help guide TEP’s evolution in the wider game by attempting to form new relations with other regions that may be starting up, we don’t want to fall into the shadows, we want to rise and shine like the sun.
  2. I believe TEP is already good at establishing relations with new regions, especially with Merlo’s term where he gained us a new ally in No Big Banks, I want to do more of this to help push TEP forward.
  3. I believe that because TEP is one of the largest regions in NS they can use this in their favor to gain more allies and close relations with other nations, not saying we should use this as intimidation, but more that we are so well known that we can use this to our advantage.

what are your plans for culture?

As I said I plan to introduce more interregional events and I hope that I can personally get involved more in Culture this term. I also believe that we should have more TEP specific events to help engagement.