[Announce] Fleet Address January 2008

[blanhe2]

Greetings!

It's been a while since I wrote one of these, and with the new year, it 
is as good an opportunity as any. In fact, it is overdue. For TFE, the 
last year was a difficult one. We lost several key players to RL and the 
effects of that were felt throughout the organisation. Several key staff 
people had to take on dual roles and that took its toll on those people. 
  Our main focus in the last year was to keep the SIMs going and apart 
from the Intrepid (on which SIMming was suspended for the time being) we 
succeeded. What suffered amongst others, as a result of all this, was 
our fleet level SIMming.

It wasn't all bad news in 2007, after the Summer, things started to turn 
around for TFE and it was definitely looking up, and the fruits from all 
the hard work were starting to show when we quietly celebrated our 6th 
anniversary on November 20th. The best news was that several former 
members returned to SIMming with TFE. If anything shows that TFE has 
always been, and still is, a quality SIM group, it is the fact that 
people always seem to return in the end, when RL allows. Welcome back to 
all of you who have returned, and welcome to those of you who joined in 2007

With the new year, and with our SIMs stable again, we have several new 
COs, and with the new crewmembers we can continue training people up for 
more. For future command roles. So, what is in our immediate future for 
2008 so that TFE can regain its full strength and we can bring the 
Intrepid back to life?

- Advertising and Recruitment. The only way we are going to get more 
members is by doing that. And each of you can help with that. Word of 
mouth is one of the best ways to advertise, so, if you know someone that 
loves Star Trek and loves creative writing, suggest joining TFE. At the 
same time, we will be advertising TFE and individual SIMs in various 
places, top site lists, recruitment forums and groups etc. We are also 
considering using podcasts to help spread the word. There is always a 
natural turnaround of people and the only way to grow is to get more 
people than we lose through natural ebb and flow within SIMming.

- Train current crew members for command and other roles in TFE. We have 
seen several new COs over the last year, that means also generally new 
XOs, and other shake ups within a SIM. All this means people get a 
chance to learn by doing, and we also have our Senior Officer Training 
and Command Course training programs to help.

- Find more volunteers to help us with key parts of TFE. We have a Wiki 
database without a dedicated administrator. We want to add a lot more 
information to it, but the Senior Staff members are all pretty busy. So, 
if you have experience with running a wiki, know how to be an admin for 
it and create pages and information in it, please email me.

- Finish updating the TFE website. This was sadly neglected throughout 
the Autumn due to time reasons. Here, too, we could use the help of a 
volunteer. If you have HTML experience and want to help out by becoming 
our webmaster, please email me.

- Continue into the next phase of the Romulan war. Fleet plot part 2. We 
  finally finished part 1 of the fleet plot which at the end revealed 
that the Romulans were behind all the troubles and hostilities that 
faced Starfleet. This year, we'll continue the story, and you will see 
fleet level logs come out over the galaxy list which show the bigger 
picture beyond what your character goes through on its SIM. These logs, 
too, will be used to advertise and recruit with. The other thing it does 
is provide practical experience on participating and coordinating joint 
SIMming for COs and fleet staff, as well as regular crew members.

- Update and adapt the TFE staff structure and organisation to how we 
have evolved. We set up a staff structure several years ago, since then 
TFE has evolved and we need to adapt our formal structure to what we are 
actually doing and the changes we have made to the way we operate. The 
Senior Staff is here to support the COs and the SIMs and to make sure 
that you, our members, are having fun SIMming with us!

- Academy - Find more instructors, bring some of the advanced courses 
back online.

Finally, I would just like to make sure everyone knows who is on the 
Senior Staff and what our current structure looks like:

Fleet CO: RAdm Suzanna Batenburg (aka Suzanna)
   Deputy Fleet CO: Cmdr Will Rice (aka Jon)
Acting Fleet Ops Cmdr: RAdm Suzanna Batenburg
   Deputy Fleet Ops Cmdr: Cmdr Will Rice (aka Jon)
Academy Commandant: ACapt Jajin Wu (aka Hunter)
Fleet Advisor: Commo Thomas Garroway Ret. (aka Rob)
Fleet Advisor: RAdm Lilly Palmer (aka John)

We are always looking for volunteers, I've mentioned a few specific 
ones, but the Academy could always use more people, especially when our 
recruitment drive starts in earnest and we get all these new people! So, 
if you want to help make TFE a better place, help us improve on what we 
are doing, step up and help us out!

That is all for now... I would like to wish everyone a prosperous and 
healthy 2008, and I hope you all will enjoy SIMming here with us in TFE!

Suzanna

RAdm Suzanna Batenburg
Fleet Commander
Starfleet: The First Era
"Everything fits, otherwise we will make it fit."
http://www.firstera.net