Consulate of Aberdeen

These past three months, serving the government in the realm of foreign affairs, I realized just how wide, diverse and enjoyable the larger NS community can be. I met many great nations and peeked in on many cool regions.

Click to expand...

My fellow Aberdonians, I am here to tell you now that the state of our region is good. Yes, there are noticeable differences in certain aspects of our region, but overall health and community is just fine.

Aberdeen has experienced several changes since I became Prime Minster a little over three months ago. Anyone who has had the thankless job of following in the footsteps of a leader who so undeniably left his imprint on his office, can attest to the truth I tell when I say that it has not been an easy task to follow in the footsteps of Forgottenlord. However, I believe that Aberdeen has been as busy the past three months as it ever has been during any previous time after its founding.

The HoM has not been idle with the “retirement” of its most prolific contributor. In September, Coretta proposed Bill 19, “House Resolution Act” which would become Law 12. Forgottenlord proposed Bill 20, “Political Party Limitation Act” which became Law 13 after a fierce debate and a vote of 7 for and 6 against. November, arguably the busiest month sawa three different pieces of legislation being voted on by the HoM – HR-1, Bill 21 and Bill 22. HR-1, was the first resolution to be passed by the HoM utilizing the process set forth n Law 12. It established the creation of The Forgottenlord Star of Outstanding Service and awarded Fl himself the first presentation of this honor. Bill 21 was drafted by Bloopa and attempted to establish a regional force to be used at the discretion of the serving PM in times of emergencies. It ultimately did not pass after a vote of 8 against and 3 for. Bill 22 was drafted by Mittsville and established an endorsement limit for nations in the region other than the Prime Minister. Bill 22 became Law 14 after a vote of 10 for and 2 against.

The last piece of business the HoM conducted was a vote on the proposed Charter by Dundee East. Due to the fact that the founder has been absent form regional activities for some time now, the Charter was voted on in its most recently updated form, but did not even garner a majority of the votes. With a vote of 5 against, 2 for and 3 abstain, it clearly did not gain the required 2/3 majority to supplant the UNA Constitution as the supreme law of Aberdeen.

The past three months has brought new faces to the Cabinet as well. After my election, every Cabinet member that was appointed had served in the regional government before. Combined with this team of experienced nations, I created the new Ministry of Culture, originally headed up by NewFoundCanada as a way to bring more activity and a greater sense of community to the Aberdeen forums. That initial team of experienced individuals was not long put together, when Coretta, Min of IA moved in RL and has since had problems connecting to the internet as a whole. Mittsville resigned from Min of Immigration – also due to RL issues and NFC also experienced connectivity issues. By the beginning of November the Cabinet was composed of DBL as Minister of AMID and Heklo as Minister of FR. Action was taken and by Mid-November our cabinet was back up to full strength with Aioran being appointed Minister of IA, Bentay serving as Min of Immigration, and Pandadice taking on Min of Culture. It has been pointed out that this is the youngest and most inexperienced Cabinet Aberdeen has ever seen, but so far the future looks very promising! This represents the “next” generation of leadership in Aberdeen, and it is great to see nations stepping into new roles and expanding their overall NS experience.

As for forum usage and activity, there has been an average of 49.46 posts a day since the first day of Novemember. Our activity as of late has been phenomenal. The Cbox has been used as it was originally intended to be utilized and has been busier than ANY of our former chatrooms or mIRC channels. Hands down. Our sense of community on the forum has increased, and though the Ministry of Culture has yet to actually make any formal awards or open any new games, the hoped for outcome has been the same.

One of the biggest, visible differences that Aberdeen has undergone the past three months is that we have dropped in membership form hovering between 95-85 member nations to barely staying above 60 nations. It might have happened slowly, but we have CLEARLY dropped in numbers. Instead of assigning any blame for our current situation, I want to point out three things. First, the rate of die off for nations has sharply declined over the past month. Yes, there are still nations dieing off (The Holy Republic of Cruxylvania died off 9 hours ago as of this writing). But we should be encouraged that the previous die off happened 4 days ago. In other words, we are not loosing nations very fast at all. Secondly, We should view this decline within the larger decline of NS as a whole. Within the past several months, the game as a whole has lost several thousands of nations! Almost EVERY region that I know of has experienced some decline and die off due to this fact. The exceptions to this rule have been those regions founded within the past 3-4 months. As such, every region is fighting even harder now for recruitment and thus gaining new members is harder now that it was a year ago. Finally, I want us to take a look at our regions past history. A month after its founding, in late May or early June 2005, Aberdeen hit the 70 nation mark and great celebration ensued! Over the course of the summer and fall of 2005, our region hit a low of 19 nations at one point. After some emergency recruiting and re-organization of the regional government, Aberdeen then exploded in membership form late December through the month of January 2006. Many of you who are reading this now came from that explosion in growth. We hit our all time hi of 143 nations in mid-January and have been “declining” in numbers since then, with the occasional bump in recruitment to maintain current nation levels. Currently we have 61 nations, and while that number seems low, I would argue that we have a stronger community than we have ever had in the region before and thus our numbers are ok. Keep in mind that we have also lost several nations due to die off that were once very active members of this community. Dundee East, FL, Coretta, NFC, Capitalsit Neutrality, and Flatisia, have all departed our region (nation wise that is – some still haunt our forum *cough* FL *cough*) within the past 3-4 months. So to wrap this up, would I like to see our region above 100 nations again? Yes, of course! Do I think my election campaign goal of 200 nations in Aberdeen is still realistic? Maybe not, but I do think that we are in a perfect position to double our membership within the next month or two and KEEP and ENGAGE new nations so that hopefully they will become active members of our community. In summary, we should be able to double our nation count and active community base by the end of January. I will work with the current Min of Immigration to help accomplish this goal.

As to other goals and aspirations of this government, I would like to point out that while I really had nothing to do with it, our RP forum has once again become a central theme to define Aberdeen as a region. And not to exclude anyone there are still several member nations who make good use of the Word Games forum – so much so that a few of our active word gamers are closing in on the 1,000 post mark.. Both of these forums could be even more active with new members. I would like to see more crossover as well. AMID is currently working on putting together an Aberdonian task force made up of AMID Deputies in the event we are ever asked to support our allies in a time of invasion. Finally, in speaking about Foreign Relations, I would like to see us do a little more dealing with our current allies and focus more on getting to know each of the four regions better. To that extent, I will be placing puppet nations in Futaba Aio, Jethnea, and Flavian Amphitheatre (I already have a nation in Charis  ). Our regional ties with Charis should also be strengthened, and I would like to explore different ways we can make that happen over the next few months. My government will also look into the establishment of Aberdeen News Service updates every two weeks.

As for my UN involvement, it has been more non-existent until this past week. I have written two UN Draft proposals, one of which I feel is almost ready to be submitted, and one of which needs a crap-load of work. I feel that as a region, we should look over the different Proposal drafts that are in our UN Forum and determine if we want to follow through with those ideas are not. I have began taking a more “active” role on the jolt UN forums and on a couple UN focus group forums as well. It is my intention that this involvement will continue and that I will truly represent Aberdeen’s voice to the UN.

In conclusion, as I have pointed out above, the State of the UNA is rather good. We have our areas where we can improve and where more nations pitching in would be nice. But in a region such as ours that is continually changing and re-focusing our energies, I see that Aberdeen is doing great. I look forward to serving as Prime Minister of this region through the end of my term and have faith that Aberdeen’s future can be brighter than our past.

Michael Carmack
Speaker of the House of Imperfectia
Prime Minister of Aberdeen

Click to expand...