Summer 2021 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. Sometimes we come up with big changes, and sometimes they are smaller changes to make people's lives easier. Sometimes there are no changes at all!

The Summer 2021 Executive meeting was held on July 10. This meeting was held right after the deadline for the Membership Survey has ended and enough time was spent discussing the results of the survey.

On this meeting also was reviewed the budget for next year, presented by the Shatayan. The budget was approved by the Exec team.

The members of the Executive team in attendance were:

• Serinia Edoras, the Amyrlin Seat
• Mieriana Souvra, the Keeper of the Chronicles
• Cassie Dainar as Shatayan
• Toral Delvar as Archivist
• Erin al'Denael as Director of Community Outreach
• Melisande Arneil as Director of Events and Conferences
• Aleita Taviah as Director of Marketing
• Alenya Al'Roran as Director of Membership
• Ilverin Matriam as Director of Research and Records
• Deoan Kakarot as Director of Technology
• Mendo Cath as Director of Technology

Announcements

No staffing changes to the exec team.

Amyrlin and Keeper Presentation Topics

Membership Survey Review - A big thank you to those who filled out the Membership Survey! 76 people filled it out, and about 33 people filled out the whole thing. This is about 22% of the active community. We have 332 members who have been active in some way over the past few months, so the 76 number is a statistically significant sample of active membership with a 10% margin of error, and the 33 people is statistically significant with a 15% margin of error. For those of you less familiar with statistics, this is a measure of how likely these responses are to represent the feelings of our active members. The margin of error number is what percent of our full population may deviate from the overall responses we received.

Overall Insights

• Majority of respondents are over 35 years of age
• Overall satisfaction with the site is pretty good
• Interest in bringing back the Guilds in some way: 47% in favor, 32% not, others had additional ideas
• How people prefer to engage with Admin = through their Membership Admin and Email - Based on these results we believe we should resume only posting the Exec Feedback forum quarterly after these meetings. This should utilize it more intentionally and help bring attention to it when it’s most helpful.
• Admin responsiveness received very positive results
• Application process is clear for jobs
• Not having enough time is what prevents most members from participating (posting, applying for jobs, engaging in events)
• The largest theme of comments of unsatisfied participants was that we have a culture of toxicity and drama. Members are afraid to post for fear of offending someone and are tired of anger and other members assuming negative intent - We will continue to address this through cross-group activities and Mediation

Most department-specific survey results have ~35 respondents or so. This is a relatively small sample size but can be a helpful data point/start.

Community Outreach

1. There is interest in discord events for future freeweek events,
2. The majority consider philanthropy important to their membership, but interest is pretty split,
3. Interest in Freeweeks is pretty split, but the majority do enjoy them,
4. A little more than half of members enjoy Virtual Events, with the most popular being Discord events/trivia, and movie nights.

Events

1. For Logos, there is interest in member choice, but we don't receive many submissions. We need to be cautious of over-using the Graphics Development team, as logo creation takes so much effort. We need to find a way to encourage more member submissions.
2. Lowest level of interest continues for Fall Ball/Spring Fling, which reinforces decision to move Anni away from JordanCon. We traditionally have an influx of members after JordanCon - if we can have Spring Fling shortly after in May we may be able to capitalize on people looking for more in-person events.
3. There is currently no support for events in the South Pacific.

Marketing

1. Discord and facebook lead the way.
2. No current interest in Tik Tok but this might reflect our older membership population and/or might represent an opportunity for new/younger members. There is work going on in this space but there is also a constraint on the amount of support/applications we receive for this work.
3. TarValon.Net content is most favored (slightly over books, show, etc.) which is great as it is unique/owned content.

Membership

1. Some junior members are losing contact with their mentors and there may be an opportunity to provide more guidance/training/expectations to mentors on level/practice of engagement, though the survey may mis-represent needs/expectations.
2. Great overall support for mediation program.

Research and Records

1. Finding information in the library is a challenge - This is a known issue, and we are working to make it easier.
2. Members are most interested in Classes on real life topics, with a class and discussion format
3. Majority of members feel merits are the right level of difficulty to attain.
4. There is support for adding more merits or replacing some old ones

Technology

1. Terrific support for using Discord;
2. Feelings on whether we have the right number of channels or too many are pretty close, but the majority is that it's just right.
3. Members visit TarValon pretty equally on Desktop and on Mobile.

Department Updates

Community Outreach

• The Great Charity Hunt is still underway. Please visit the Servant of All forum for current activities and to get involved. You don’t have to donate money to participate- only join in!
• The 2021 Robert Jordan Memorial Scholarship has been completed successfully. Congrats again to the winners and thank you for your participation! We look forward to next year's project.

Events and Conferences

• JordanCon 2021 was a success. We had our toast on a nice outdoor patio that we discovered. A few guests attended, and we even had a live raising! It was wonderful to get to see those who attended in person!
• We are planning to hold Anni virtually again this year, and discussions for planning that are getting started.
• Currently, we are still planning to hold in-person events for 2022, but that may change depending on what's going on with COVID at the time. The safety of our members is critical. We are discussing what these events will look like and will share updates as decisions are made.

Marketing

• Podcast is still in production. We were hoping to launch in May, but we have been delayed for various reasons. This is still coming- keep an eye on the Site Announcements for our first episode.
• Email Signatures – these are still in the developing stage
• Brand guide update – this is still in the developing stage
• Landing Page – this is still in the developing stage

Membership

• Banning transparency - In an effort to increase transparency, we will put together a Library page of members who have been banned, similar to how we have a list of Retired members. Historically, no announcement is made when a member has been banned, but you have no way to really know that member is no longer here/welcome, so we would like to remedy that by introducing a library page as a reference. Banned members will also have their merits stripped, and they will be removed from the corresponding lists. If they have been removed from the community, we think their merits should be also.
• Accountability Guide- Our new Director of Membership has put together an excellent proposal based on a system we know works, which is currently being reviewed by the rest of the admin team. The next step will be to share it with the Membership Team so they can help us revise it, and then it will be shared here for your thoughts as well.

Research and Records

• Library Copyrights - the legal research team has been reached out to in regards to this.
• We have reached the point where some members are about to earn their fourth Gold membership merit. We would like to recognize this by capping Gold membership merits at 3, and introducing a permanent Platinum merit as the fourth. Basically, when it's time for your 4th Gold Membership merit, you will receive a Platinum Membership merit instead, and that's the cap. This doesn't mean we can't ever introduce another level of recognition in the future.
• Additional benefits might be introduced to people who have earned Platinum merits, but they are not currently in the works.

Technology

• GIF insertion - There is an option we are looking into to accomplish this, but we have to upgrade/update some parts of the system first.
• Non-binary gender forum (to go along with the Parlour and Clubhouse)
  • We did not forget about this- this is dependent on a back-end permissions cleanup because the permissions are all tied together in a way that does not make introducing this forum easy. We are planning out what needs to be changed, the following step will be to make the changes, and then we will be able to set this forum up. It is coming, but it will take some time yet.
  • If you are currently in a gendered SM forum and do not want to be there, email your membership admin, the Director of membership or the Director of Technology and we will adjust your individual permissions to remove you.