Project Provide: A Megathread

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So... What is Project Provide?

Project Provide is an initiative undertaken by the Ministry of Home Affairs to provide oncoming Executive Staffers with the information they need to not only become successful contributors in their respective areas of focus but also to assist newcomers in their journey towards becoming diligent Deputy Ministers who'll be the future of the North Pacific's governmental administration. It is the mission of Project Provide to better prepare talented North Pacificans for the next level of their NationStates careers here, and the overseers of such a project strive to do this by incorporating literary text elements with engaging audio content and on-screen visuals. The program will involve productions about each Ministry and will seek to train Executive Staffers who want to know more about the options available to them.

That's great! But, it sounds a bit too idealistic no?

You'd be surprised - what with the rising popularity of the Northern Broadcast Service (NBS) and the ease of access to information that comes with uploading comprehensive information in a video format, there's a lot of potential for something of this scale to be widely successful.

Hmmm... Fair enough, so how does this all work?

It's pretty simplistic, actually. Over the next few weeks, the leadership of the Ministry of Home Affairs will be consulting with various members of the Executive Staff who they believe can be of help in Project Provide's goal of producing tutorial scripts. Each area of regional focus, represented by a designated Ministry in the government, will have its own separate tutorial video with subsequent videos following it that'll outline the day-to-day runnings of that respective Ministry's personnel. The information included in each video will take a more in-depth look on not only the specifics involved but also the prospective future for the tasks described and whether or not they're available to do upon entry.

You said it was simplistic, but that sounds like a lot...

For right now, it is. But, it only seems that way because for the past couple of months the Ministry of Home Affairs has been rather stagnant when it comes to its work output. Unfortunately, under my predecessor, we dealt with a lot of early setbacks due to leaves of absence, and while that isn't entirely their fault it is a contributing factor as to why this collaborative effort seems to have been launched so suddenly. Luckily, this is a most excellent way to get things back on track and continue moving forward.

Alright, that's all understandable. How can I help?

There are a plethora of ways to become involved with Project Provide, as the entire point is to make mentorship more inclusive and also still allow for more fluid communication between the knowledgeable figures of our region and those who could just now be learning about the game. The good news is that for the lineup that the Executive Council has planned, we'll need all of the help we can get! That's where you come in, my friend, because if you're reading this then you're probably on the Executive Staff for some ministry right? Every small gesture makes a difference, so if you have a topic you think newcomers ought to know about and it's one that hasn't already been covered you should consider asking an overseer to coordinate planning for that with you.

Sounds good, but who are these overseers?

The overseers are upstanding North Pacificans, just like you and I. They too love their region very much and so they've decided to invest a bit of their time into training up the newer generation (whoever that 'new generation' may consist of). Each overseer has been assigned with managing a starting script and all of them are currently members of the Ministry's leadership team. After the first couple of tutorials are produced, the Ministry of Home Affairs will evaluate their level of success and then decide if pursuing the creation of more tutorials would be helpful. At the time of writing this, we plan on having five main video tutorials that'll serve as introductory pieces for those who've just been accepted into the Executive Staff to learn about the Ministry they seek to get involved with.

Right, right. Okay, so that's what an overseer is, but like... who are the actual people behind all of this?

I'm glad you asked! At the time of launch, each Deputy Minister whom I appointed as of the opening address that I gave since becoming the Minister of Home Affairs is included as an overseer for Project Provide. As I said before, they've all been assigned separate tutorials to manage up until the time of production, but they were all chosen based off of what I believe their strong suits to be. For the Ministry of Communications' script, you have @Bobberino and @Marcus Antonius as overseers. In addition to being Deputy Ministers of Home Affairs (DMoHAs), both of them are also Deputy Ministers of Communications (DMoCOs). For the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs' video, you have Deputy Minister @Trondstorm and myself as overseers. I'm a Deputy Minister of World Assembly Affairs (DMoWAA) and Trondstorm is someone who I know I can count on to do his very best always.

For the Ministry of Culture, Deputy Minister @Brendog is who'll you'll report to with ideas and/or progress. He himself is an Executive Staffer serving CU, and so with his versatility to work on things such as event management, RolePlay promotions and entertainment, he'll be a great operative for the overseers. Last, but certainly not least, Deputy Minister @BMWSurfer has been tasked with overseeing the Ministry of Home Affairs' tutorial video script. As a former Minister of Home Affairs in how own right, you can trust that he'll be proactive in pushing forth progress and bring a set of experienced hands to the overseers of Project Provide.

Wow, that's a nice lineup you have there! Will the overseers be writing the scripts themselves or? I know you said that Executive Staffers are needed for this one.

Yes and no. Obviously, in order to achieve the best drafts possible for production, a second (or sixth ) set of eyes will be required to review each script and verify that the information included is both accurate and applicable to the subject matter. However, that being the case, for the most part, Project Provide would love to encourage our everyday Executive Staff members to write sections of their own and involve themselves with their Ministry's accomplishments. If you're able to take on a smaller task such as looking over a draft script for a video, then go ahead and do it!

Project Provide and its overseers welcome everyone who wishes to share their opinion on how we can make this a more valuable asset for North Pacificans on the rise. NationStates is game, remember that, and as with any game it's meant to be enjoyed. The more you know about the fun you'll be having the more you'll know if you're actually having fun or not. So don't shy away from offering constructive criticism, even if you aren't directly involved in the production process.

Nice, very nice. What happens if the Executive Staff isn't as receptive to this sort of thing as you had hoped?

Well, as with any initiative similar to this, we're optimistic. Admittedly, some people may already be too busy with real life or other government work to actively contribute towards this. That's just the reality of things because the North Pacific already has a lot of seasoned veterans who have a rhythm going for their schedules. This is something that's been talked about ever since the ascension of @El Fiji Grande as the Delegate in May, but as you can see it's just now beginning to set itself in motion under my leadership. If the Executive Staff isn't as receptive to this sort of thing then that response will be noted, but at the same time we will fulfil our administration's ambitions for Home Affairs one way or another, so these first few tutorial videos are being produced regardless.

That makes sense, just doing your job. Though, speaking of jobs, isn't creating these types of videos just an excuse for mentors to not do their job and you know... mentor?

Not at all! In fact, these types of videos are not meant to replace the mentorship program at all! Rather, we see providing audio tutorials combined with visual instructions as a way to build upon the successes of our mentorship program as we know it. You see, by no means do we plan on giving prospective mentees a link to our tutorials and then simply calling it a day. 'Yay, we mentored!' ... No, no you did not. These video tutorial series' are meant to accompany mentor-mentee interaction. In the case that a mentor doesn't recall every fine detail to performing a specific task in any given ministry (which is likely), the video does and we wouldn't want our newcomers to learn things the wrong way firsthand.

That's reassuring and all, but aren't these scripts more of a one-and-done endeavour? What's to say that after you complete a handful of these the project won't outlive its usefulness to the North Pacific?

Nothing is ever a guarantee, and this undertaking may not even meet our expectations. It's an experimental program, Project Provide is, and I think it's fair to let everyone know that up front. In the case that people wouldn't rather consume video content and instead would like a one-on-one talk with a mentor then that'll be what happens, but we'd never know what works best if we didn't try and essentially that's what this initiative is all about. We want to give newer North Pacificans the option and the opportunity to have a head start going into things, this is just another way of doing that and therefore it need be explored more.

Bingo! Alright, you sold me, I can now get a bit more invested into this. I buy the concept of what HA is going for here, but even so what direction is all of this headed in?

That's also a fair question, and I think if you're going to be possibly contributing to this effort then you deserve to know where your Ministry intends to take it. In theory, we could extend this to a lot of different topic areas. In places where some video content already exists (like with how NationStates GamePlay works or how to issue answering goes), we can always offer elaborations onto that with this. At the same time, there are new horizons to be explored!

Rather we realize it or not, our game is changing and it's different than it was five years ago when I started out. With an ever involving interface, Project Provide can aim to satisfy the player's curiosity into how things work and how they can be getting the most out of their NationStates experience.

Ooh, now there's something I can get behind! It's ambitious, but it could work. What might Project Provide be offering after these first few are produced?

Things like World Assembly authorship where there's no by-the-book method to drafting a successful proposal - we have players in our community who can offer advice, exchange approaches, and speculate on writing styles for our more serious upstarts. For R/D, we can follow the lead of other militaries across NationStates and make triggering tutorials available to our troops to further increase participation on that front. When it comes to pursuing knowledge we'll work closely with the North Pacific University to bolster the availability of our work and make it easier to find for those leaving the Docks and venturing towards the Agora. After all, the Chancellor of the aforementioned TNPU is on our staff

This was a really long thread, but I'm glad I made it through. Where do I go with questions?

If you have any questions, comments, concerns or thoughts on how we can improve the program, take advantage of my open door policy and approach me for inquiries. This is something that I brainstormed a couple of days ago, so there's probably some kinks to be ironed out. Maybe you can be part of that process, maybe not. But hey, thank you for reading this! I appreciate it and so do your Deputies of HA.

Reserved

Only you would ever ask those questions, Robes

@Robespierre whats dis im nu

Good evening, everyone!

I figured I'd go ahead and release this short statement tonight in an effort to keep both executive staffers and citizens alike well-informed with regards to the progress that's been made thus far on Project Provide. With the exception of a single day (that being the Fourth of July) we're two weeks out from the original date that this initiative was launched. Since then I've assigned each one of my Deputy Ministers of Home Affairs with a script that they will oversee the production of. Just as I described earlier this month, Overseers are in charge of their area of focus. In specifying this, I set the internal deadline for the eighteenth of July and asked each overseer to approach members of the Executive Staff who might be interested in assisting with our writing efforts.

Today is that day, and in observation of that I find myself happy to report that at this point in time the Ministry of Home Affairs' and the Ministry of Communications' scripts have been completed. I've been informed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' script will be submitted to me tomorrow morning by Deputy Minister @Brendog and I can expect the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs' script (which is being written by me) to be submitted later today as well.

In light of this movement forward, I'd like to reiterate the opportunities available to Executive Staffers at this point in time. Below you'll find shareable links to Google documents that these scripts are being drafted on, once you select the script you'd like to work on you have one of two options:

EITHER

You can suggest edits by utilizing the comment feature on Google documents (all shareable links include commenting powers, but not editing powers) OR you can make a suggestion by posting in the appropriate thread right here on the forums. Each script drafting will have a separate thread for editing suggestions, so anyone who'd like to read over the work so far and offer constructive criticism may.

Links (In Progress):