Good evening followers, friends, and random people who may be reading this on a feed somewhere far far away.
I would like to take the time to post current thoughts on the state of EGO Alliance.
From what I have seen, an alliances goal, first and foremost, usually is to group people together to accomplish a goal that, on their own, corporations and individuals are unable to accomplish. Its what led IT to become over 5000 players strong, its what led CVA to govern an entire region, and its what drove Goonswarm to... do whatever significant thing it was that Goonswarm did.
But what Im seeing from EGO is a group of very talented players, who lack numbers and a definitive goal. I think what could drive this alliance into the major alliance stage would be a simple, measurable goal to achieve and strive for. It doesnt have to be big or fancy or elaborate. Something simple, like "Become the largest alliance in Eve," or "Annex __________ Region."
Hefty goals, but they give people a sense of what they are working towards.
Without goals like this, people log on to their subscription MMO and dont really do anything that is meaningful to either their corporation or alliance. The exception to this rule would be the inner circle of people who work together almost daily in the alliance. They may drive for....something. But what impact does that have on achieving any type of 'end game?' If it has anything to do with it, its minute at best.
In my honest opinion, Arrogance needs to find a temporary home that is easily accessible by others, recruit players to not only our corporations, but our alliance, and then set our eyes for a bit of 0.0 somewhere in New Eden, and then go for it. Hot drops, caps, camps, bubbles, everything.
Ambitious, maybe? But I wouldnt be where I am today if I took an overly cautious approach to everything.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Blog Banter 22: Corporation Cooperation
Welcome to the twenty-second installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
This month topic is brought to us by L'Dene Bean of Nitpickin's who asks: Why, and how did you pick your corporation? Is your loyalty solid or just until a better placed organization "recruits" you. The shorter version: Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why?
Well, first off, let me say that I am excited to post about my first Blog Banter. I’m lucky as this one caught my eye. For anyone who knows me either in real life or in EVE, you will know that I am fervent about organization and team building. I think it stems from what I do in real life. I am fascinated by the level of cooperation that Eve almost forces people to achieve. With that being said, I didn’t pick a corp to join. None out there really appealed to me. I have always been a self starter and I wasn’t going to let Eve be any different.
I’ve formed many-a-corporation in my time in Eve, and I viewed each of them as a sort of trial-and-error. My first corporation, The Interstellar Trade Organization (ITO), failed due to poor foresight in the flaws of the structure that I laid out. The next one, GalSpan Inc (GLSN) failed because of a coup d’état. Each of these failed for very solid reasons and gave me valuable lessons as I moved forward in Eve.
My current Corporation, The New Eden Trade Union is nearing one year in its existence. We have already seen many ups and downs, war decs being some of our best moments, and RL issues taking some of our best away from the game would be considered a down-side. But to answer the question laid out: Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why? My answer would have to be those who step up and help move our corporation forward.
I have made many friends in real life from this corporation, something that has never happened before with any other virtual organization. A friend in game, John Brutorin, after only 6 short months in NETU, ended up (by complete chance) moving to Colorado (Where I live) and now works with me at my real life job. I am both his supervisor in game and in real life, and Im glad to have him as a friend. Another example of this would be a corpmate of mine who I found out lived 5 minutes from me, and who ended up becoming a very close friend.
It goes beyond that though… people in Eve who show a passion for the game and who also yearn for fellowship in an organization have my loyalty, not only as a friend, but as their CEO. I owe it to everyone in that organization to not only be a resource for them in game to allow them to have fun and achieve new goals, but also to be a resource for them as a real friend. That friendship between the people in this group is what sets it apart, and is ultimately what makes Eve worth playing. As I have read in peoples Blogs for many months now, the point of Eve is to "Do stuff...with people."
Kinda long and cheesy, but I think it was a good topic and my answer for this first Blog Banter was dead serious.
If you guys want to learn more about our group and see what we’re all about, let us know.
www.netu-eve.com
I’ve formed many-a-corporation in my time in Eve, and I viewed each of them as a sort of trial-and-error. My first corporation, The Interstellar Trade Organization (ITO), failed due to poor foresight in the flaws of the structure that I laid out. The next one, GalSpan Inc (GLSN) failed because of a coup d’état. Each of these failed for very solid reasons and gave me valuable lessons as I moved forward in Eve.
My current Corporation, The New Eden Trade Union is nearing one year in its existence. We have already seen many ups and downs, war decs being some of our best moments, and RL issues taking some of our best away from the game would be considered a down-side. But to answer the question laid out: Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why? My answer would have to be those who step up and help move our corporation forward.
I have made many friends in real life from this corporation, something that has never happened before with any other virtual organization. A friend in game, John Brutorin, after only 6 short months in NETU, ended up (by complete chance) moving to Colorado (Where I live) and now works with me at my real life job. I am both his supervisor in game and in real life, and Im glad to have him as a friend. Another example of this would be a corpmate of mine who I found out lived 5 minutes from me, and who ended up becoming a very close friend.
It goes beyond that though… people in Eve who show a passion for the game and who also yearn for fellowship in an organization have my loyalty, not only as a friend, but as their CEO. I owe it to everyone in that organization to not only be a resource for them in game to allow them to have fun and achieve new goals, but also to be a resource for them as a real friend. That friendship between the people in this group is what sets it apart, and is ultimately what makes Eve worth playing. As I have read in peoples Blogs for many months now, the point of Eve is to "Do stuff...with people."
Kinda long and cheesy, but I think it was a good topic and my answer for this first Blog Banter was dead serious.
If you guys want to learn more about our group and see what we’re all about, let us know.
www.netu-eve.com
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Something CCP should Consider
So recently, I have been toying around with new mail clients, trying to separate my eve-related email, game mails, and recreational information from my personal email which I use for, well, just about everything. I downloaded a new client, ThunderBird (If you havent tried it, I HIGHLY recommend it. And if you know me, thats a big deal. Im very picky about software), and it works very well for keeping stuff separate. While I was toying with it, I came across a great idea that (although probably several years away, if at all possible) would make the game so much more integral into my offline-time.As if any of us need that to happen. =)
CCP should begin developing a way to funnel a players in-game Evemail into an offline, 3rd party mail client, such as Outlook, ThunderBird, Entourage, ect.
This way, instead of having to go through the whole 'log on to evegate, click, click, click... wait... then look at evemail' we would be able to get it sent directly to us while we are offline.
I want other people opinions on this. Let me know what you think. Maybe if its a hot enough idea we can present it to the CSM and possibly get it on CCP's radar.
Leave comments or email ranisgarr@gmail.com
Thanks guys!
Friday, October 15, 2010
Bounce Back, Part II
A quick little update on progress on my corporations bounce back from this slump we are in.
In my last edition of Bounce Back, I posted a few goals that we need to focus on in the coming weeks. They included:
-Getting Evals up again
-Getting Green scores in evals
-Discussing census results with leadership
-Staffing Personnel Department
-Assigning TL's and CTL's to fill vacancies
Lets break this down a little bit further and evolve our direction to better fit what we have learned.
1. Getting Evals up again
This one is important. It measures our progress in an honest way, which lets us understand where we need to spend more time fixing problems, and where we need to recognize those people for doing good work. Evaluations may be a pain sometimes, but they show leadership and TM's alike that we are tracking our progress and that we care that progress is being made. To modify this from the last post, I would add "And make the evals available for all Team Members to see."
2. Getting Green scores in Evals
This one is a given. Green scores mean we are doing very proficient in certain aspects in the corporation. Currently, we have an overall score of probably 4 or 5 (out of a compounded 8 points total), so we are sitting at a Red overall score. In all honesty, this will be fixed when people can step up to the plate, and help us to get recruitment, mining, production, pvp, missioning, training, ect... back on the road.
3. Discussing Census Results
This one was a little hasty on my part. Yes, a very good goal for long term growth, but it hindsight, it serves no direct benefit to getting us back on track in the now. Discussing these results is just going to tell us what our corporation already knows. We have a lot of work to do. Still going to keep this goal, but taking it off of our immediate to-do list.
4. Staffing Personnel Department
Probably the highest priority as of right now. I, as CEO, have a lot to work on, from alliance discussion and directional talks, to managing the corporate decisions, direction, and execution as a whole. It would be far too taxing to add "recruiter" to that list of tasks. That is the whole reason we formulated this department in the first place. NETU's Personnel Department is the most crucial department to our corporation's success in coming out of this slump. That being said, I am keeping this as a top priority.
5. Assigning TL's and CTL's
Equally important to just about everything else, as we need leaders to split the workload to take the overall pressure off one-another to complete complex tasks. For now, however, we have an experienced group of DTL's and myself which can take on the more high-level tasks for now (CTL level). We can, however, use Team Leaders. The difficulty in this task is finding people in NETU that have the time to take up an officer-level position. These positions are not overwhelmingly difficult. I work 40 hours a week, preparing for school full time, and I am the CEO of a virtual organization, yet I can still make it work and have fun.
We need to put it out there that you dont have to give up fun and enjoyment in order to be a leader in NETU.
I close this out with a copy of the letter used to stir up interest in helping us move forward. Once again, I will continue to analyze what is work, what isnt, and why.
Taken From: NETU Corporate EveMail
Issuer: CEO of NETU
On Behalf of: NETU Personnel Department
MessageName: The Promise
From: The Office of the Chief Executive Officer
To: The Members of the New Eden Trade Union [NETU]
Subject: A Promise from NETU Leadership
Team,
NETU is nearing its first anniversary, and we have come a long way. For anyone that remembers, we began in Hek as an industrial powerhouse. We moved to Hentogaira to pursue Industrial interests, making hundreds of millions in liquid ISK and assets. Shortly thereafter, we moved to Devoid and Domain to write the next few chapters of our existence. Now we find ourselves in Galente lowsec preparing for 0.0.
Its important for us, as leadership, to recognize who and what led us to this point. The answer is simple: You. Without people working hard and genuinely believing in our corporation, our leadership, and our fellow TM’s, we would never have reached this point in our existence.
That being said, we have a lot of work to still do in order to achieve our goal of becoming the best corporation ever. We have positions to fill, tasks to complete, and projects to work on. Its going to be a hell of a ride, but the end result is more than worth it.
Tayt Sylus, Lyntt, and Myself are incapable of running every aspect of this corporation on our own, so we invite you interview for one of the many open positions in the corporation and help us move this corporation forward. And we back this with a promise endorsed by all of us:
If you dedicate your time, your effort, and your experience to help make this corporation more fun, successful, and profitable, this corporation will become dedicated to putting the time, effort and experience we have into making you more successful and profitable.
Nothing accelerates the gaming experience in EvE like being able to make a difference in the community of players you are affiliated with. I know this first hand, as I have witnessed this first hand, many times in the past five years of playing EvE Online.
Do you want to have your corporation and alliance talked about in the in-game news? Do you want to hold space in 0.0? Do you want to have alliances coming to us for that capital ship they want built? Or how about having the bragging rights of being a corporation with 100+ players with 0% inactivity?
It starts with You.
You have the word of all three members of senior leadership in the New Eden Trade Union, that if you want it, we will help you get it. If you would like to learn it, we will teach it. If you help make us a better corporation, we will help make you a better player. Drive change and growth, and see the same in return from us.
Get started with your higher career in EvE. Contact any one of us, and we will get the ball rolling in the right direction.
Best of Regards,
Ranis Garr
Chief Executive Officer
New Eden Trade Union
“A Ship is Safe in Harbor, But That is Not What Ships Are For.”
~William Shedo
In my last edition of Bounce Back, I posted a few goals that we need to focus on in the coming weeks. They included:
-Getting Evals up again
-Getting Green scores in evals
-Discussing census results with leadership
-Staffing Personnel Department
-Assigning TL's and CTL's to fill vacancies
Lets break this down a little bit further and evolve our direction to better fit what we have learned.
1. Getting Evals up again
This one is important. It measures our progress in an honest way, which lets us understand where we need to spend more time fixing problems, and where we need to recognize those people for doing good work. Evaluations may be a pain sometimes, but they show leadership and TM's alike that we are tracking our progress and that we care that progress is being made. To modify this from the last post, I would add "And make the evals available for all Team Members to see."
2. Getting Green scores in Evals
This one is a given. Green scores mean we are doing very proficient in certain aspects in the corporation. Currently, we have an overall score of probably 4 or 5 (out of a compounded 8 points total), so we are sitting at a Red overall score. In all honesty, this will be fixed when people can step up to the plate, and help us to get recruitment, mining, production, pvp, missioning, training, ect... back on the road.
3. Discussing Census Results
This one was a little hasty on my part. Yes, a very good goal for long term growth, but it hindsight, it serves no direct benefit to getting us back on track in the now. Discussing these results is just going to tell us what our corporation already knows. We have a lot of work to do. Still going to keep this goal, but taking it off of our immediate to-do list.
4. Staffing Personnel Department
Probably the highest priority as of right now. I, as CEO, have a lot to work on, from alliance discussion and directional talks, to managing the corporate decisions, direction, and execution as a whole. It would be far too taxing to add "recruiter" to that list of tasks. That is the whole reason we formulated this department in the first place. NETU's Personnel Department is the most crucial department to our corporation's success in coming out of this slump. That being said, I am keeping this as a top priority.
5. Assigning TL's and CTL's
Equally important to just about everything else, as we need leaders to split the workload to take the overall pressure off one-another to complete complex tasks. For now, however, we have an experienced group of DTL's and myself which can take on the more high-level tasks for now (CTL level). We can, however, use Team Leaders. The difficulty in this task is finding people in NETU that have the time to take up an officer-level position. These positions are not overwhelmingly difficult. I work 40 hours a week, preparing for school full time, and I am the CEO of a virtual organization, yet I can still make it work and have fun.
We need to put it out there that you dont have to give up fun and enjoyment in order to be a leader in NETU.
I close this out with a copy of the letter used to stir up interest in helping us move forward. Once again, I will continue to analyze what is work, what isnt, and why.
Taken From: NETU Corporate EveMail
Issuer: CEO of NETU
On Behalf of: NETU Personnel Department
MessageName: The Promise
From: The Office of the Chief Executive Officer
To: The Members of the New Eden Trade Union [NETU]
Subject: A Promise from NETU Leadership
Team,
NETU is nearing its first anniversary, and we have come a long way. For anyone that remembers, we began in Hek as an industrial powerhouse. We moved to Hentogaira to pursue Industrial interests, making hundreds of millions in liquid ISK and assets. Shortly thereafter, we moved to Devoid and Domain to write the next few chapters of our existence. Now we find ourselves in Galente lowsec preparing for 0.0.
Its important for us, as leadership, to recognize who and what led us to this point. The answer is simple: You. Without people working hard and genuinely believing in our corporation, our leadership, and our fellow TM’s, we would never have reached this point in our existence.
That being said, we have a lot of work to still do in order to achieve our goal of becoming the best corporation ever. We have positions to fill, tasks to complete, and projects to work on. Its going to be a hell of a ride, but the end result is more than worth it.
Tayt Sylus, Lyntt, and Myself are incapable of running every aspect of this corporation on our own, so we invite you interview for one of the many open positions in the corporation and help us move this corporation forward. And we back this with a promise endorsed by all of us:
If you dedicate your time, your effort, and your experience to help make this corporation more fun, successful, and profitable, this corporation will become dedicated to putting the time, effort and experience we have into making you more successful and profitable.
Nothing accelerates the gaming experience in EvE like being able to make a difference in the community of players you are affiliated with. I know this first hand, as I have witnessed this first hand, many times in the past five years of playing EvE Online.
Do you want to have your corporation and alliance talked about in the in-game news? Do you want to hold space in 0.0? Do you want to have alliances coming to us for that capital ship they want built? Or how about having the bragging rights of being a corporation with 100+ players with 0% inactivity?
It starts with You.
You have the word of all three members of senior leadership in the New Eden Trade Union, that if you want it, we will help you get it. If you would like to learn it, we will teach it. If you help make us a better corporation, we will help make you a better player. Drive change and growth, and see the same in return from us.
Get started with your higher career in EvE. Contact any one of us, and we will get the ball rolling in the right direction.
Best of Regards,
Ranis Garr
Chief Executive Officer
New Eden Trade Union
“A Ship is Safe in Harbor, But That is Not What Ships Are For.”
~William Shedo
Monday, October 4, 2010
Bounce Back, Part I
In the recent months here's what went down...
I took a break after the pressure of being a CEO (The mails, the convo's, the questions, the demands, the this-that-and-the-other, ect) got a little tough in conjunction with increased stress at my RL job.
Upon my return, here's what it looked like. Inactivity was way high, people logging on was infrequent, and people doing things with one another in the corp wasnt as impressive as it was just a few weeks back.
I look at this as an opportunity for my own development. There are lessons to be learned here, and I want to record them, so that if this happens in the future, I know how we went about dealing with it, and if it was successful or not. This series is going to be called "Bounce Back" and will be broken into parts.
What we have established so far:
-Using our corporate census, we identified people who expressed both interest and willingness in leadership positions. We will interview these people, and move them to fill our personnel department.
-Lyntt and Tayt have been moved up from CTL's to a new position of DTL (Divisional Team Leader). The corp has been split into two divisions, each with a primary-function department, and an "off-site" department, and have been assigned 'numbers.' D100 and D200 (D100 to encompass Navy and Logistics, D200 to encompass Indy and Personnel).
-Steady recruitment of players has begun, and we will take some of these guys who have interest in helping the corp, and set them up (in the future) as recruiters.
What we need to work on:
-Getting the Department Evals back up and running
-Getting scores green again
-Setting up a meeting to discuss census results to identify where we need to spend the most time working on our weaknesses.
-Staffing our Personnel Department
-Carefully assigning TL and CTL's to the departments that have vacancies (which is all of them. *Sigh*)
We already have a new guy who said during casual conversation, that he would do "anything to help the corp," so I'm looking towards eventually moving him into recruitment. I would really like to get a part of the Personnel Team dedicated to finding new and inventive ways to recruit, so that they maintain our growing and diverse corporation... and taking people onboard who have experience and who know how to take a joke (aka - thick skin required).
Side note: Mumble? Not really diggin' it. Im a bigger fan of vent, just because of look and feel. Sure there is some more functionality available with mumble (ie - the quieting of ambient sound when someone is talking) but vent is more universal - and more potential recruits use it anyways.
So overall, the topic of the next week or so is going to be manpower and recruitment.
Will post with updates, key learnings, successes and opportunities, what works, what doesnt, and why, as well as future action steps to help move our Bounce Back forward.
Also, check out our new and improved website - www.netu-eve.com
I took a break after the pressure of being a CEO (The mails, the convo's, the questions, the demands, the this-that-and-the-other, ect) got a little tough in conjunction with increased stress at my RL job.
Upon my return, here's what it looked like. Inactivity was way high, people logging on was infrequent, and people doing things with one another in the corp wasnt as impressive as it was just a few weeks back.
I look at this as an opportunity for my own development. There are lessons to be learned here, and I want to record them, so that if this happens in the future, I know how we went about dealing with it, and if it was successful or not. This series is going to be called "Bounce Back" and will be broken into parts.
What we have established so far:
-Using our corporate census, we identified people who expressed both interest and willingness in leadership positions. We will interview these people, and move them to fill our personnel department.
-Lyntt and Tayt have been moved up from CTL's to a new position of DTL (Divisional Team Leader). The corp has been split into two divisions, each with a primary-function department, and an "off-site" department, and have been assigned 'numbers.' D100 and D200 (D100 to encompass Navy and Logistics, D200 to encompass Indy and Personnel).
-Steady recruitment of players has begun, and we will take some of these guys who have interest in helping the corp, and set them up (in the future) as recruiters.
What we need to work on:
-Getting the Department Evals back up and running
-Getting scores green again
-Setting up a meeting to discuss census results to identify where we need to spend the most time working on our weaknesses.
-Staffing our Personnel Department
-Carefully assigning TL and CTL's to the departments that have vacancies (which is all of them. *Sigh*)
We already have a new guy who said during casual conversation, that he would do "anything to help the corp," so I'm looking towards eventually moving him into recruitment. I would really like to get a part of the Personnel Team dedicated to finding new and inventive ways to recruit, so that they maintain our growing and diverse corporation... and taking people onboard who have experience and who know how to take a joke (aka - thick skin required).
Side note: Mumble? Not really diggin' it. Im a bigger fan of vent, just because of look and feel. Sure there is some more functionality available with mumble (ie - the quieting of ambient sound when someone is talking) but vent is more universal - and more potential recruits use it anyways.
So overall, the topic of the next week or so is going to be manpower and recruitment.
Will post with updates, key learnings, successes and opportunities, what works, what doesnt, and why, as well as future action steps to help move our Bounce Back forward.
Also, check out our new and improved website - www.netu-eve.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)