[2428.CN] Cabinet Appointments (Aug-Oct 2024)

Assembly
, ,
1

Hi legislators and other citizens of the Coalition! As Prime Minister-elect, I intend on appointing a new cabinet to assist me in implementing the agenda that I have put forward in my campaign. Some of these names will be very familiar to most of you, while some will be new to the cabinet.

I am pleased to put forward these names for the Assembly’s consideration and approval:

  • @ProfessorHenn as Deputy Prime Minister, with oversight on Foreign Affairs and Integration efforts in general. They clearly need no introduction, and they will continue to provide valuable guidance to the whole cabinet in the upcoming term.
  • @Coltranius as Minister of Defense, taking on the statutory role of my appointed designee in the Admiralty per the Military Code. He has been one of the top performers in the SPSF since he joined in May, having promoted to Ensign in only a month since he joined. He will ensure continuity in terms of the high-quality work that Vrigny has done in making the SPSF a far more effective defender force in the previous term, and I hope that the Assembly and especially the SPSF officer corps gives him the fullest support in this endeavor.
  • @ConcreteSlab as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Slab is a familiar face to most in the region and in the broader GP world as well, and has in fact served as our MoFA not too long ago. His emphasis will be on continuing efforts to engage with our closest defender allies on all fronts, especially on events and WA matters, while expanding relations with other regions where possible. He will continue engaging with experienced TSP FAers in FACom both here in the usual areas of the Assembly as well as on the Discord. He will also work on the details on the trial ambassadorial system that I suggested in my platform.
  • @xshotss (aka Jay/PGAC) as Minister of Culture. Jay will be new to the cabinet, but he has served with distinction under Silva as Secretary of Culture in the previous term. He will put forward many interesting events and ideas to make TSP more fun on all platforms (game-side, forum-side, and Discord-side).
  • @maluhia as Minister of Integration. Even though he has only recently returned, I am sure that Maluhia is no stranger to long-time TSPers, having served in various TSP cabinets, and I am glad to have him on board in this keystone role in the cabinet. His priority will be ramping up integration efforts, including working on a new mentorship system, recruiting and managing the volunteers that will be needed to run it, and so forth. On top of this, Maluhia will also be engaging with experienced RMBers where possible on gameside integration efforts.
  • @NoOne (aka 7Trees) as Minister of Engagement. Like Jay, NoOne is new to cabinet but also served remarkably well under Silva as Secretary of Culture, and will be in charge of my plans to make this a cabinet that engages actively with everyone on all fronts on happenings in the region, as well as unleashing creative writing output from the broader TSP community where possible.

I will remain as OWL Director in the near future, but if plans work out I will be able to appoint a new OWL Director sometime in the middle of my term.

Briefly, I would like to thank outgoing PM @Penguin, outgoing MoD @Vrigny and outgoing MoC @Silva for their guidance and support in the outgoing term. I am sure that they will continue to provide valuable support from outside cabinet to the new team wherever possible.

I have invited the appointees to expand on their respective agendas in this thread, and we will all be standing by for questions before I move these nominations to an individual vote.

10 Likes
2

First off, I would be honored to once again be a part of the Cabinet and this time serve as Minister of Integration. I would like to sincerely thank Prime Minister Lordnwahs for entrusting me with this important role. We have tons of work to do and I’m excited to roll up my sleeves and get to work.

Let’s admit it: we have a lurking problem in our region with integration and user engagement. Citizens aren’t participating in elections, people aren’t getting involved in our political system, and new (and interested!) nations aren’t routinely joining our forums and Discord server. A lot of the actual integration and engagement issues stem from the “divide” between the offsite and gameside communities. But we’re one region—one Coalition—and we have work to do to bridge these gaps. As Minister of Integration, I plan to gather a group of folks who are active on both the RMB and in our political scene so we can talk with individual nations about the political and roleplay offerings on the forums and Discord. I want to know the reasons why people aren’t getting involved or at least joining the forums. Lack of interest? Never knew about it? Restrictions?

If I find some young nations who are interested in the political scene, I plan to personally reach out to these folks and have a little discussion about what they’re interested in and how they can get started. When I first joined this region, I was clueless and made moronic political decisions. That’s because I didn’t understand our regional political norms. If we have experienced nations explaining the political dynamics of the region to young and interested nations, they would get acclimated faster, find themselves well-oriented, and be set-up for success. This is a less-structured version of the mentorship program. I don’t want this mentorship scheme to be a “me project”. I bet some folks are interested and helping out and their support and assistance will be greatly appreciated!

We also have some other issues and projects to deal with. I’d like to see us boost energy by reopening the South Pacific University and reconvening Assembly discussions about recruitment post-frontier/stronghold update. There’s plenty of work we have to do, and I believe we have assembled just the team to make our goals possible.

Once again, I would like to thank Prime Minister Lordnwahs for this opportunity and if confirmed, I’m excited to get to work and serve the Coalition.

6 Likes
3

I find this framing a bit weird because I feel like a lot of people have been admitting this. Some of them have been admitting it repeatedly. Few people actually back this up with evidence. I’ve said before that integration numbers are unreliable and hard to come by, but they’re possible. It’s possible to measure the average daily views of dispatches since their publication, and so it’s possible to compare the effectiveness of dispatches that ping people (like the SWAN dispatches) and dispatches pinned on the WFE (like the welcome dispatch). It’s possible to look at how many users are actually joining the forums, or to compare the numbers of citizen applications and introduction posts to estimate how people are arriving here. It’s possible to look at how the number of Delegate endorsements compares to our regional population and how many of those endorsements come from newer players. Saying we have a problem is a great hook, but…

This will sound more aggressive than I mean it to be, but — how can you have all these plans for integration if you don’t even know what problem you’re trying to solve?

This sounds like throwing a bone to Henn’s campaign but not like a political agenda. Where do you actually stand on this issue? Do you feel we should recruit from other regions? (Also, does the Prime Minister?)

4

I really think that number of nations are not one of our problems. Is much easier to say that “we need recruitment”, but i doubt it. Our problem is to attracting people for the politics and if we do not have anything to help with it, the recruitment will be nearly useless.

Why?

5

I like the underlying goal of understanding what keeps people, but why do you need to “gather a group of folks” rather than just posting a regional poll?

TSPU is simply a subforum where discussions on RL topics take place. What is there to reopen?

Why?

I see various ideas but I’m not sure I see a comprehensive vision for how to integrate the region and promote involvement. In fact, is it possible to have an integration platform on its own rather than in collaboration with other domestic-focused ministries?

6

Hello everyone! I have been appointed as Minister of Culture, a position I have been interested in throughout my period as Secretary of Culture.

Anyways, here are my plans for the upcoming term:

Timezone-specific secretaries

Similar to Silva’s term, I will hire two secretaries that will work tirelessly with me so that we can ensure the ministry will thrive. However, I will make sure that every secretary has a specific time zone so that they can host events in their time with no problems respectively. Being a secretary taught me a lot about politics in the South Pacific, and it was the reason I was confident in my abilities of becoming MoC in the first place, and I want to make other people experience the same thing. I think secretaries will bring a lot of people into politics, while not having the same responsibility as an actual cabinet member would have, and they would have more freedom to experiment and learn along the way.

New events and competitions

My secretaries and I will get one event for each time zone every week (GMT, EST, and AEST). I think that hosting events in every time zone will make it fair for everyone that wants to participate, as they can just participate in the events hosted in their time zone. My team will host game nights, trivias and competitions so that we can ensure everyone has a great time in the South Pacific.

Awards

In my term, I will create a awards system in which residents will earn awards and badges for certain achievements. These awards can be given out to winners of competitions and events. I will also hand out these awards based on statistics like “most liked RMB post of the month” (just an example) or something along those lines. Awards can include:

  • Choose the regional poll for the day
  • Host one of our weekly events
  • Custom made badges
    And much more!
    These rewards will encourage people to participate in events, as well as just bring activity to the region itself.

My plans for Knowhere

Some context: For those of you that do not know; me, Silva and No One created a canon which will operate in the RMB of the Knowhere region, and the nationstates website itself.

My first plan for the canon is to expand on the roleplay, add NPN’s (non playable nations), and give players a base platform to RP on. My second plan will be to advertise it as much as I can in the RMB and discord. As Knowhere grows in size, I will start hosting events and competitions for RPers such as “featured Knowhere articles” or featured nations. If the map starts filling up with people, I might expand on the map further to allow more people to join. I will also moderate the region with the canon managers to ensure that there is no godmodding, to make it fair for everyone RPing in the canon.

Thank you to Lordnwahs for entrusting me in this role and giving me this opportunity.

2 Likes
7

One thing I experienced during my term was people’s lack of interest in participating in Discord events, for example. The most current example being Independence Day.
So how do you plan to get around this? Why is there so much lack of interest?

1 Like
8

I worry that there’s a lot of focus within your agenda on holding generic events and handing out medals instead of having a comprehensive plan to build a regional culture that itself lends itself to participating in events. How would you address that?

1 Like
9

I appreciate the questions. My answers are below. If I missed a question, please tell me!

The overlying problem I’m trying to solve is integration and getting people involved. There are many root causes of the issue that still need to be solidified. We need to figure out (and by this I mean confidently know and understand) the causes of why people don’t get involved. We have well-rounded ideas of what these issues are, but we need to firmly cement them in our minds.

Yes, I do believe we need to ramp up our recruitment efforts. I can clarify that the Prime Minister does as well.

It actually is. It might not be our most pressing issue at the moment, but recruitment needs to be addressed. Over a year ago, our spawns were halved as part of the frontier/stronghold update and we still haven’t formulated a concrete response to it (in terms of creating a recruitment plan). With increased recruitment, we’re getting new folks who could be interested in joining the political scene.

Personally, I would love to discuss sports, politics, and other stuff with my fellow South Pacificans. We don’t need this to be an exact iteration of the university, I just want a more formalized way of discussing real world events (which I’ll touch on below).

A poll is helpful. It can tell me tons of things. In fact, I might even use a poll alongside this group of politically-active RMBers. But a poll can’t tell me about each respondent—who they are and how to get them involved. This group can help me and the Prime Minister gather an understanding of who (and actually who these people are) might be interested, and we’ll take it from there.

You are right. It’s just a subforum. But I’ve heard chatter about TSPU in the past week, and a couple months back. Yet, there’s been no progress on reestablishing it. We don’t need a full-fledged project on this, but I just want a place for people to discuss real-life topics in a more formalized matter.

As of now, there are only three topic threads about real-life events. I’ve authored two of them. And literally as I write, Pronoun published another one. These topics are all about things that pretty much have a start and an end date. What if we create topics that are about a general topic (i.e. American politics) that can go on for years but just adapt with time?

As I mentioned above, we need to ramp up our recruitment efforts.

4 Likes
10

Could you reframe the question, please?

1 Like
11

I think people’s lack of interest is the biggest obstacle in a ministry that requires a lot of engagement from the community. I believe the lack of interest shown in the independence day event was due to a couple of reasons.

  1. Some games hosted in the event are not well known, or familiar to most people. (Except for CANS and garlic phone)
  2. The event was not advertised enough in the RMB.
  3. Adding onto the games not being well known, the games were not accessible for some people ie mobile users, or people without Steam/other platforms. (Specifically duck duck goose)
  4. The poetry contest might have not been that desirable or fun to some people.

I plan on fixing this by appealing to the biggest demographic, as well as finding the right game for each event. I’d also add an incentive/reward that people can strive to complete, as encouragement to engage in the events. I think it could also be improved by hosting on weekends and/or in evenings when most people are available.

Quick note, I think that the events on independence day should’ve been actually independence day-themed or something relating to the South Pacific’s values and history itself.

I will answer Kris’s question once they clarify their question further.

1 Like
12

Oh, I see. Well, resuming the discussion about recruitment will certainly be something, to say the least, interesting. Thank you for the responses.

13

Thank you, Prime Minister-elect, for the confidence in me as Deputy Prime Minister once again. My hope is to continue to serve the new administration admirably, and to continue to build on what came before. We have no purpose otherwise.

The focus on integration is chiefly to help assist Maluhia formulate and execute on policy, with an emphasis on assist. We’ve spoken about recruitment and I look forward to helping develop that policy, but otherwise I’m not looking to steal the thunder from him on running things.

With foreign affairs, my position will be to jointly run this position, given the existing relationships I have with friends, allies, and potential partners, and Slab’s goal of kickstarting the ambassador corp again and getting fully up to speed on what I’ve been doing as MoFA the last few terms. I’m also here to help advise and train the next generation of FA talent.

As always, I remain open for questions.

6 Likes
14

Yes, the games were. All of them.

And yet there wasn’t much engagement. CANS was the biggest of them, however.

How would you advertise an event well in RMB, excluding regional telegrams?

What exactly went wrong with the ambassadors before? I’ve heard some people talking about this, but I’m not exactly sure why we got rid of them.

15

Not Duck Duck Goose, though. When I hosted the event, I knew nothing about it. It also has a very small player base, as I spent around 20 minutes searching for a round with no results.

I plan on advertising through posting RMB posts throughout the day, or on specific times ie. 1 hour before the event, 10 minutes before, etc… I would also do the same thing but on the Discord.

16

I was referring to accessibility :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks for the answers.

1 Like
17

Ambassadors and the staffer system as a whole were removed in early 2023 because of the huge bloat they had developed into, and the lack of any actual movement within their organizations in any positive direction.

2 Likes
18

I think it’s worth expanding more on my stance on recruitment here given the questions regarding it, which I didn’t mention in my platform but it featured in Henn’s.

Maluhia is totally right that recruitment is something that we should at least try to get a handle on in this term in some form or another, and he has spelt out the reasons why it’s crucial that we get our act together on this. It will be something that takes some effort to get off the ground, which is why I am keen on our integration efforts being directed towards it from the get go, along with kickstarting the mentorship idea that I raised in my campaign.

For what it’s worth, I do agree that it is difficult to discuss integration without reference to other existing projects that the cabinet will undertake. There needs to be something to direct new nations into, and that necessarily will be a whole-of-cabinet effort. Regardless, so long as we need a logistical framework to kickstart any program to integrate the region, it is my view that there has to be an integration platform, and this is what Maluhia and Henn are bringing to the table.

1 Like
19

We’ve often just taken it as a given that the Ministry of Culture hold events and that more events is a good thing — but the only institution that the Charter tasks with holding events is the Coral Guard. What the Prime Minister is actually responsible for is “promoting regional culture.” How do your proposed events and activities support that goal?

20

Great question! I think that my proposed events and activities are promoting TSP culture due to a couple of reasons. I do not envision the ministry of culture as just hosting a bunch of events for no reason, of course. However, I will host events that relate to the South Pacific and its community, and attempt to foster a sense of community and connection between residents, and showcase the close-knit nature of the South Pacific. I think that by brainstorming with my secretaries about cultural events, we can promote TSP’s culture further.