- Pronouns
- He/Him, They/Them
Oh hey look, we’ve earnt a goddamn seal now.
In the three weeks since we’ve started Culture has advanced massively towards where myself and McMasterdonia want it to be. Whilst we didn’t get off our planned cultural event due to shenanigans, we’re developing each and every day our existing and future programs to the point where Culture will truly be TNP’s best ministry. That’s my goal, that’s my team's goal.
Most ministers when they come in at the start of a term do a roll call thread. Seeing the need to discern who was around to help and who very much wasn’t quickly, I instead reached out to every member of the ministry on discord. We quickly identified who could contribute this term and who wasn’t able to. More work is needed in this regard, to ensure that the joinable group on the forum matches those that are in the executive discord and on the executive staff sheet.
In terms of Deputy Ministers, I appointed Em and Sarah who have both contributed massively already this term. Em has been my primary contact with other ministries, and I’d like to praise him for his work in Radio - the RP Spotlight series is very good. Sarah has been a whirlwind of energy this term, providing suggestions and impetus in almost every area of the Ministry. The competitions (more on this later) are almost all her work, and she will be a hugely important part of the ministry going forward. More deputy minister appointments may be forthcoming, and the opportunity remains open for anyone to step up and earn that kind of appointment.
Already this term we’ve hit my target of starting Theme Thursday every Thursday at midnight GMT, and keeping it going well into the night in later timezones. This makes it much more of an event and I again offer my congratulations to the winners thus far: the Most Delicious Dessert, Kyle, the Most Elite Gamer, Praetor, and the first Decades of Delirium winner, Arc. My congratulations also to TNP’s Memeiest Memer, Wonderess, for winning our first contest. We have another one in progress - see more details here: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1499122
We also started a massive overhaul of the gaming server. Our attempts here are to turn it into a long term viable community going forward, and in these efforts I have to thank a number of people: Prydania, Mourxordia, Yalkan, Fishy and Dreadton have all contributed heavily, as have El Fiji Grande and Oracle. With the work going into the server and the plans we have for it, there’s a lot more to come and we’re really looking forward to making sure it’s a success both this term and in the future.
Looking forward to the rest of the term and for the month ahead, we plan to continue with currently announced projects - Theme Thursday will be getting bigger and better and expanding to new venues both in TNP and outside of it, we plan to run multiple competitions with some special prizes for the winners and our push for the games server will continue also.
As well as all of that, at the suggestion of McMasterdonia I’m very pleased to announce the return of A Message in a Bottle. This project was previously run in 2020 and I’m very happy to see it return. Check out our announcement for it here, and I look forward to reading all the messages.
We also plan to revamp and overhaul two further projects, one big and one small. The small one is the Roleplay dispatch published by the Northern Light. Whilst serviceable, it is outdated and requires work. My team and I will be working with the RP moderators to ensure that this is both accurate and worthwhile going forward.
The big project is the seemingly sisyphean task to make the North Pacifc University fit for purpose. Multiple people, including myself, have tried and failed to fully make this a reality and despite the good work of Marcus Antonius and others, it is still not yet fit for purpose. Big changes are coming for this and we will be working with all stakeholders to turn TNPU into something to be proud of.
Along with all these announced projects, we will also be focusing on low-level activity. This kind of activity isn’t anything really announceable or remarkable, but is firmly based in being around, encouraging others to join in, in just being there to chat, engage in VCs, watch alongs, gaming sessions, there’s a hell of a lot that we can do to contribute to the culture of TNP without that activity being part of an established program. Going forward, we really want to emphasise these kinds of contributions, and also recognise the people who engage in this sort of activity. There’s a lot of TNPers who do this and they generally don’t get the recognition they deserve sometimes, so we’ll try and address this.
And that’s all I got. When I made my opening address, I hoped we’d be about where we are at this, but I also see now that we’ve put in the foundations for even greater and greater success going forward. In that area we’ve exceeded my expectations, and I very much hope we can continue to do so, as well as meeting and exceeding all of yours.
St George
Culture Minister
