MEET THE CANDIDATE: Kyoko (samara.barzane) November 11, 2018 -- Summary

Here you might discuss basically everything.

Moderator: SC Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Kyoko
Pundit
Pundit
Posts: 303
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:23 pm

MEET THE CANDIDATE: Kyoko (samara.barzane) November 11, 2018 -- Summary

Post by Kyoko »

MEET THE CANDIDATE: Kyoko (samara.barzane) November 11, 2018 Summary

Sunday afternoon I held an informal Meet the Candidate at C.D.S Amphitheatre in Colonia Nova. The informal format, while rewarding as a means of connecting does not lend itself easily to a transcript. So, I will summarize a bit of what I said, as well as the questions and topics that were generated by the participants.

I began by tossing my prepared remarks and telling some stories related to my campaign slogan, Respectful, Responsible and Resourceful.

For me, the first "R" includes Respecting (and valuing) our fellow citizens, our political structure, our traditions and our beautiful regions.

The story I told to underline Responsibility was my first estate manager "disaster," in which I turned The C.D.S. Amphitheatre into a water feature. Boy was I embarrassed. I confessed and was rescued by Rosie Gray and Sudane Erato. I promise you first, that I will lay off terraforming for a while, but second, that I will always take responsibility for my actions as citizen and chancellor.

Resourcefulness is a necessary skill in any community, but right now, until we generate an uptick in land purchases, we don’t have a lot of extra money lying around for events. Examples I gave were the citizen-generated events during Oktoberfest. The Pub Crawl was organized by citizens. My only contribution was setting the DJ stream at The Art Café! We had a blast and it was free. Having heard about Delia Lake’s Horseback tour of Friedsee I asked if she would be willing to lead that for Oktoberfest. She said yes and we had a wonderful tour of our beautiful Alpine regions. Mostly by horseback, but with one intrepid bicyclist!

After Oktoberfest was finished a group of citizens organized a Halloween event. With a citizen DJ and really spooky décor it was a success, despite the Linden servers having a very bad day. I was off-grid and was sorry to miss it. Again citizen-generated and free. And there are so many ways for that it happen again.

One question that was asked later on was the following: “Since you've been in the PIO shop you understand event planning, so what do you have in mind to encourage individuals to hold events?”
My response was that you just show the citizens that you trust them to do it. It also has to do with being open to new and old ideas.
(Added: When people are given the space to create there is ownership. And I am convinced that “ownership” of what happens in C.D.S. is crucial to community vitality.)

The first question from the attendees was: “What are your plans to reduce the "yellow" on the map?”
One of the main tasks of the incoming chancellor will be to turn those to green or (shortly) snow. While it's the chancellor's task, it is also the task for all of us. What do we value about CDS? What might need to change? How can we effect that change?

My three prongs are Marketing and Citizen Retention, Outreach and Events. They are all connected.

In MARKETING we need to refresh and refocus our advertising. (It was also mentioned later “we can all increase the visibility of this community by making a profile pic, posting about events or details on our profile social wall.”)

As for OUTREACH. Develop ways to cooperate with other communities on items of mutual interest. Whether it's events or projects we both support that's a gain for both communities in life and vitality. Cooperating with other communities should not involve poaching, but developing a reputation as a good community to work with helps drive interest and hopefully, more green and less yellow.
(Added: Some Role-playing groups will be more appropriate partners for us than others as we are not a role-play group ourselves, but there are projects and events on which we can cooperate. Relay for Life in Second Life is an obvious one. I was on a mixed humanoid/furrie relay team for a number of years. We were all relaying for the same reason. Currently I am on a Steampunk/Tinies relay team.)

I've already talked about EVENTS as a community project under Resourcefulness. Marketing involves selling our community obviously. But Outreach and Events also help “sell” our community. We have a list of where we post about events and adjust our event PR to potential differences in audiences for the style of event. If we are an engaged community working together on these prongs, we can get a lot done.

Other Questions & Topics discussed:

SL Destination Guide: We are in there ( https://secondlife.com/destination/neuf ... lang=en-US ), but we need to work on how to appear earlier in the listings.

Citizen Retention: “Once you get new citizens, how you plan to keep them?”: First, as mentioned, we need to welcome newcomers quickly. The LUC is currently working on an updated list of places in C.D.S. to visit and enjoy. And if we are an engaged citizenry, that will create energy to draw them in. There are other citizen-generated projects in the works.

Another topic was metrics:
How will progress on these 3 prongs be measured? Obviously less yellow on the map is a major metric to watch. We can measure the effectiveness of our advertising, measure attendance at events etc . . . And these metrics will be set up and analyzed, but if we are working together on the three “prongs” the yellow will recede. I keep emphasizing that is up to all of us! Because it is. No one person could or should try to do it all.

Why am I running.

Over my time in C.D.S. I came to appreciate the democratic ideal that drives C.D.S., and began to notice the citizens who were working for the well-being of our community. The Art Cafe was part of my hoping to provide a resource for C.D.S., its citizens and our visitors.

As Public Information Officer for the 29th term I attended most of the Resident Assembly meetings and was overwhelmed by the quality of our elected representatives and the care they were taking with the welfare of C.D.S. Additional experience on the Land Use Commission has only reinforced that realization. Our representatives really care. My "vision" for C.D.S. comes from these experiences; that we need to find ways to keep the C.D.S. project fresh and vital, and that we ought to explore future options together as a community.

The fact is, the bulk of the Chancellor's job is paperwork and details, all important, in keeping the engine humming, but not glamorous. The opportunity for the chancellor to effect much change in 6 months is smaller than you might think. But the path that ARE open are ones we can travel together and bring about that change.

CDS Citizen
Post Reply

Return to “General Discussion”