Town Hall Discussion - 29 October 2011

[Leora Oldessroth]

Did you hate the results from Admin meeting this year? Curious about how the reorganization of the departments is going? Have a question about the status of a project?

Well, you're in luck! In addition to the regularly scheduled Office Hours previously announced, Viv Sedai and I, and as many of the Executives and Officers we can round up, will be in chat on 29 October 2011 at 3 p.m. Mountain Time (4 central, 5 eastern, etc) for a Town Hall meeting. This event has a specific agenda: gathering direct feedback from members on items discussed at the last Admin meeting and the implemented changes as well as answering any questions you have about those items/actions.

We will be doing this in a special format so there will be some semblance of order and have asked Jeffan Gaidin to serve as the moderator for this event. He will post in this thread with further logistics including the chat room, the rules and other stuff.

Can't make it to chat on that day? Don't like chat and refuse to go? We've got you covered! Jeffan Gaidin will be taking questions in advance to pose during the Town Hall if you can't be there to ask in person. See his post for info on how to do that. Additionally, a log/transcript of the event will be published to the site at large after we're done so you can review it. If for some reason we cannot fully answer a question during the Town Hall we will post the question and answer on the Executive Blog after the event.

Important Notes:
- This is not a free-for-all forum. We are limiting our agenda to announcements coming from the Admin Meeting this year.
- We are not promising you that any outcomes will be determined by this event or by some sort of popular opinion of the Town Hall participants.

Time Converter if you need to figure out your local time when we're doing this: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

Items on the Agenda include any announcements made in these threads:
Admin Meeting Notes - Part 1 - Executive
Admin Meeting Notes - Part 2 - Membership and Moderators
Admin Meeting Notes - Part 3 - Admin, Research, Marketing
Admin Meeting Notes - Part 4 - Outreach and Events

Hope you can make it!

 

[Jeffan Caliarthan]

For those of you that are able to attend the chat event:
First, you're going to have to be able to join chat! For those unfamiliar with IRC, we have a pretty standard applet on our site that accesses our main room, #wheel, and from there, you can get to any channel that you'd like. We're going to be holding the Town Hall meeting in #oldewarderandhen, which is the chat room that we use if we have anything very specific to discuss that wouldn't belong in #wheel. Per the post in introductions, here's information on chat:

Click here to join #Wheel through Java Applet.

Click here for IRC help.

Click here for the IRC guidelines. (Be sure to read this before joining the Tower channels.)

Click here for The Dark One's Lair (chat commands).

As I mentioned, we're going to be using #oldewarderandhen for the Town Hall meeting. To join that channel from #wheel (where you'll be directed after you put in your name and hit "Connect"), all you have to do is type in the following, without quotation marks: "/join #oldewarderandhen"

Now that you're in chat, here's how the basic format is going to work. To reduce confusion and to make it easier to provide a clear transcript of the event, we're going to mute the channel. What this means is that those without operator (@ symbol next to their name if you're using a private client, or a gold star if you're connecting from our chat applet) status won't be able to talk directly into the channel. As I said, this is to reduce confusion and to make it easier for a transcript to be copy/pasted into the library for everyone to see, so don't get offended that we're denying you your ability to speak! As a note, this only affects the one channel, #oldewarderandhen, so if you want to talk in #wheel while you're doing this, you'll definitely be able to.

To submit questions that you'd like asked, you're going to PM me in chat. My handle in chat is "Jeffy". This is pretty much always done by double clicking on a nick in the sidebar, but otherwise you can type in the following, again, sans quotation marks: "/query Jeffy" - and a new window/tab will pop up where you can type in your question. If you're not sure exactly how to phrase your question, I'm more than happy to work with you on consolidating your question as much as possible for the Officers and Execs to answer.

As Leora Sedai said, the Town Hall meeting is going to have four parts covering specific portions of the Admin Meeting, so if the question you want to ask is about the "Executive" section, make sure to get there in time to ask your question(s)! I'm not sure if we'll be doing a small part at the end for any miscellaneous questions, but just to be safe, I would make sure to get there as promptly as possible.

For those that won't be able to attend:
Well, this is a lot easier for you guys! All you have to do is PM me your question. I'll copy it to the nifty little gdoc I have that'll list all of the questions, and then we'll do our best to get it asked and answered for you. If you'd rather e-mail me, that works too: my e-mail is jeffan@tarvalon.net - I'll be writing them down in the order that they're received, and most likely I'll be asking them in that order as well (I can't think of a reason why I wouldn't, but one might come up, so better safe than sorry).

If you're not sure whether or not you can attend:
PM or e-mail me your question anyways! If you show up to the chat event, it's not too hard for me to remove your question from the list. This way, you'll be sure that your question can be asked and answered whether you're there or not.

Also, a note! If more than one person asks a similar question, I'm going to be consolidating them into one. Again, this is to reduce clutter on the transcript, and it'll save us all some time.

I really hope you all can make it to the event, and I'm hoping it goes well so we can do it again next year!

If you have ANY questions at all, feel free to ask either in this thread or shoot me a PM, and we'll try and get it answered for you!

 

[Alyria Ess]

Does Jeffy promise not to moderate our questions, since we can't ask them directly?

 

[Jeffan Caliarthan]

I will be as verbatim as possible! This basically means that I'll edit out any nasty swears that the children shouldn't hear. :nono

 

[Alyssa Letherio]

this is a great initiative
Going to try to make it!

 

[Mathei Kardone]

This is eerily close to halloween.

I have to just say what everyone else is thinking:

is this a costume party?

 

[Lia Kellenit]

I'll be interested to see the questions, I couldn't come up with any myself.

 

[Jeffan Caliarthan]

Bumpity bump! This happens tomorrow!

 

[Leora Oldessroth]

:joy Great minds, Jeffan! I was just coming to bump this. But, yes, tomorrow! If you can't make it in person and have a question, please get it sent in!

 

[Aduiavas Ida]

Re: Town Hall Discussion - 29 October 2011 - TODAY!

Will the questions and answers be collected and posted somewhere for everyone to read afterwards?

 

[Leora Oldessroth]

Re: Town Hall Discussion - 29 October 2011 - TODAY!

Yes!

 

[Jeffan Caliarthan]

Re: Town Hall Discussion - 29 October 2011 - TODAY!

A library article will be created shortly after the event's over.

 

[Jeffan Caliarthan]

Re: Town Hall Discussion - 29 October 2011 - TODAY!

And here it is!

A big thank you to those that attended, and to all of those who sent questions!

 

[Leese Sulan]

Re: Town Hall Discussion - 29 October 2011 - TODAY!

Balls. I wish I had seen this announcement in time.