Fall 2022 Executive Meeting

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General

The Executive team, made up of the Officers and Directors, meet four times a year to check in as a full group, review our progress together, and make some strategic decisions.

The Directors and Officers met on October 15 for our quarterly (Fall) strategic update meeting.

The members of the Executive team in attendance were:

Announcements

Welcoming Qamra Daielin to the executive lines, as the newest Director of Technology.

Notes

Amyrlin Seat

The departments will be coming up with simple metrics that can be tracked on a frequent basis and used to feed into the Annual Report. The goal is to help each department complete their portions of the Annual Report quickly and easily. In concert with the Cordamora, the list of duties and responsibilities for the Director of Membership were updated to remove the requirement for Xenforo knowledge and back-end changes. When needed those actions will be performed by the Department of Technology. Also clarified the separation of roles between DoMem and Cordamora. Cordamora is the deciding role for items such as official warnings and temporary bans. DoMem has input on these actions but Cordamora is the lead role.

Keeper

Signature rules are being changed to limit the requirements to items that impact the experience of other site members. New signature guidelines are:

  • Graphical signatures are not to exceed 500 pixels wide and 100 pixels high. If you have a 500x100 graphical signature, that is the maximum size. If you have a 350x100 signature, adding graphics up to 150 pixels wide is fine. While broadband internet and larger screen resolutions are more prevalent now, it is not universal. Several active community members have slower internet speeds. Large signatures on small resolutions (tablets, landscape phone viewing) are also something we wish to be mindful of. We think these recommendations will help prevent negatively impacting any users' experience.
  • Graphical signatures can also include lines of text; please keep that number to four or less.
  • With standard text size and the normal spacing in between, a signature with 10 lines of text is roughly equivalent to a graphical signature 100 pixels high and 4 lines of text.
  • Please do not include flashing, seizure-inducing gifs or emotes in your signature.
  • Text signatures need to be compliant with the site's Code of Conduct.
  • Signatures need to be PG. Many areas of our site are viewable by people without an account, and as such we feel that our outward-facing information does not need profanity.
  • Keep text signatures a reasonable length. Text signatures that are huge and require lots of scrolling can be frustrating for members viewing on a computer or tablet (tablet settings dependent). If there is a massive quantity of text that you want to include, perhaps use a smaller font size.

Signatures that fit within the recommendations will be fine. Signatures that ignore all of the above and negatively impact the experience of members viewing the site due to limited bandwidth, screen resolution, or unreasonable length will need to be adjusted. We are trying to move away from a strict, rigid policy but we also want to be respectful of possible limitations users might have.

Work to complete the Annual Reports that have been missed is ongoing.

Cordamora

The Mediation team has been refining procedures and working on additional methods to streamline the process and make it both simpler and faster to improve the site experience with mediation.

Shatayan

Working with the Director of Outreach to get Patreon rolling. The goal is to have Patreon set up with initial digital rewards by the end of the year. Rewards and tiers will be evaluated and refined over the next year or two to provide more tangible reward item options. Minor budget update was provided for Marketing with a reduction of expected expenses of approximately $500.

Events and Conferences

Discussion took place about Euro Party 2022. The Tower took a large loss for the event due to less than expected participation. There is a plan to create a focus group for the next Euro Party event to determine how to increase participation and ensure this event can break even.

Marketing

Search Engine Optimization was discussed. This is a long-term, ongoing project in coordination with Technology. A new front page is nearly complete which will provide key-words. More to come.

An official Tower Calendar is being finalized to ensure everyone can remain aware of the events in other departments.

Membership

A discussion was held about potentially adding "made real" to the Citizen requirements. This was not approved based on these being the newest members who will likely not be comfortable being required to have a video or voice chat. An alternative proposal was made to add being "made real" as a requirement to access the Tower Discord "Voice" chats. There are technical details that would make this proposal difficult to implement. Currently this suggestion is still under discussion.

Online Events

  • Discussion was held on the plans for Shaoman (which had a couple of hiccups but otherwise seemed to be an amazing event).
  • Guild planning is still ongoing. There should be a final update on the plans for implementation by the next Executive meeting (January 2023).
  • The handoff of duties to the new Director are currently in progress.

Outreach

  • Patreon was discussed (see also the Shatayan section). The initial plan is to do a soft launch with limited admins to ensure there are no problems and then open to the wider community. An initial selection of digital rewards will be available. Once more data has been collected on the popularity and predictability of funds from Patreon, additional rewards will be determined and added. Some rewards are likely to be solicited as member donations of time and goods.
  • Tower Fundraiser is currently planned for the very end of the year. The income goal will be reduced due to the knowledge that many members may not be capable of donating due to holiday expenses.
  • Servant of All is continuing to generate monthly focus items. Expect to open for new team member applications in the near future.

Technology

Currently working with Marketing to get Search Engine Optimization work completed and get a new Front Page launched.