Finishing up the Term

[Jamie Palisades]

CDS voting polls have closed, and we expect to have results announced shortly. Good luck to all. The newly elected faction with the highest vote will produce a new leader of the RA ("LRA"), who will call a first meeting, possibly within a week. At that meeting, or soon after, they will elect a Chancellor -- for those who are new citizens, let me mention, my job is appointed by the RA, not directly elected. I have served 3 terms in the job, and was LRA before that.

I might be willing to serve again, if there are not committed and credible candidates. But I am concerned that we also rotate positions, and seek out willing talent. So I am posting now, to invite others to consider the role. (When I was first considering it, it seemed difficult to learn anything about the real time commitment and demands of the job. Trying to fix that with this post.)

I'd be happy to talk with interested parties about what it requires, and will mention a few items here. Here are the main features of the job:

* It supervises our other positions, including key senior contributors. This role really must be filled by someone who can collaborate, build morale and not pick fights - or else you lose your volunteers. Which would be very bad for CDS.

* It has a lot of power ... which normally should not be used! The Chancellor can veto RA legislation, .. make decisions about whether your house is built right and obeys CDS zoning, .. and eject people from sims. Not a post for a jerk.

* She or he also must try to comply with a large collection of laws. (To get an idea, scan this Forum page's post titles. Or our statues.) So, it requires someone who is reasonably attentive, will be widely trusted, and has some understanding of our system. I'd strongly recommend against appointing a very new resident.

* The Chancellor also is, or should be, a chief organizer & promoter. A big part of the job -- to my surprise -- has been maps, signs, events, promotional buildings and meetings, and work with other sims and SL groups to promote CDS. Ultimately, all to keep our land filled up with paying citizens, by and our citizens happy with our community, by outreach to new visitors and possible residents, and encouragement of volunteers.

* One more class of activity worth special mention is the encouragement of our artisan contributors. There are a lot of them. They want and need encouragement. That takes time & personal attention.

On the average, over 3 terms, I think these tasks took about 3-10 hours of my time each week. That time commitment is not an official requirement -- we had one or two chancellors who almost never logged in to CDS during their term -- but it's probably needed to do a reasonably good job.

(continued on next post)

[Jamie Palisades]

(continued from last post)

Here are some major remaining concerns, and things that will need attention:

** The economy. The land market in SL is still shaky and unpredictable. We've made great progress in staying mostly fully rented out -- if you know the vacancy rate at other places, you'd know we are well ahead of the pack in retention. We should consider going nonprofit (and thus significantly cutting our costs) for all CDS sims. Our covenants also are not well coordinated, and our price-per-prim varies widely from sim to sim. Fixing the latter requires RA action.

** Rent systems. We have two incompatible rent systems in place (the old CDS and old AA ones). They do not really obey our laws or needs well. There's some resistance, annoyance & big administrative hassle to changing or coordinating them. Our rent collectors (estate owners) are volunteers too.

** Web PR. We had two setbacks (in my opinion) with web-based publicity, resulting in inadequate progress. One is that we lost our co-PIO Brian Livingston, and have not been able to find another person with scripting and web publishing skills who also has adequate time to donate to us. As a result, we have not been able to add key information, like the Al-Andalus system data, to our web displays. The other, more serious, is that the nice-looking CDS web portal was built on a CMS (document and display management system) that, personally, I find very difficult and user-unfriendly to operate. Others, who are not web professionals, have shared the same view. A few of us who are web professionals disagree -- but my opinion is that, for a volunteer group like ours, we really need a system that's easy, and does not require constant acts by an administrator. Unlike a WYSIWYG easy system like blogs or Ning, the current engine is a very professional one! But if people can't use it, it's no good for us.

** Backups. We have not really fixed our security/ continuity problem -- a few people still non-transferably hold too much essential CDS property, such as buildings and backup material. (It's not they are bad people; it's just that, if they left SL or CDS, we'd be in deep trouble .) Ideally we should be able to handle any loss, and avoid the disruption that occurred (for example) when Ulrika Zugzwang left, through appropriate shared permissions & backups. Rose and I hoped to get more done there, and charm more owners into cooperating, than we've been able to achieve.

** Morale. Finally, while I was blessed with a mostly productive and peaceful RA during most of my terms, there have been some recent signs that RA members are drifting back to the personality-centric, fighting style that the RA had in 2006-07. That was demoralizing. It caused people to leave, and to stop contributing to CDS. I'd like to caution all members of the new government that, as a volunteer organization, we must have servant leaders, and facilitators of the work of others, not attackers, or artisans who want only to do their own thing. We have a beautiful place and many creative people. Let's keep both.

Rose and I have a few tasks remaining, which we are finishing up, in the few days left of the current term. There are a few appeals pending, for example; and I am finishing the fixing of some SL land and permission groups. Like all good campers, we hope to turn over the place clean, safe, and as good as we found it, or better.

The future of CDS actually looks good; we have done much to stay fiscally stable, and accomplished many positive things. In a difficult economy, CDS continues to grow! It's within the power of the government and citizens to keep building on that progress.

Warm regards Jamie