February Report - 3/11/2021

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Citizens,

Work has continued to be made during this term within the Ministry of Cards. I have detailed what we have accomplished (and what we definitely will need to accomplish) below within this announcement:

Administrative Tasks

Most of the previous users I appointed this term (i.e. @9003, @Noah's Second Country , and @r3naissanc3r) once again continue to serve as deputies. For this month, most of MoCa’s deputies served to offer advice and perform more hands-on work to fulfill several of our card programs + events.

Overall, administration has fared in a manner that is comparable to January (i.e. at a relatively efficient rate), with one exception that will later be detailed in this report.

Key Projects Completed

Most of the work completed during this month surprisingly was focused on two things in which Delegate @mcmasterdonia wished for us to complete this term. Focus on these 2 programs forced MoCa to divert most of the work on what we wished to do towards the completion of these said programs, and the results seem to have been quite positive (based on feedback we received):

Hosting a Full-scale, Cards Festival for Enjoyment by the Region (and those who might be outside the region)

This cards festival, henceforth known as the 2021 Cards Symposium, had received an attendance quantity of over 110 participants and featured 5 speakers outside of the region, all of these attendants managing to enjoy or take note of the Symposium in some manner.

Additionally, the Symposium featured 11 events to engage with all of the participants, including 5 fully-fledged competitions for users to receive valuable rewards from (whether the rewards be accolades to desired cards that are worth hundreds of bank), so we are happy that the Symposium turned out as is, even if the amount of preparation was immensely high.

(As a bonus, an issue of The Northern Lights will later be released going over several aspects of the Symposium. Please stay tuned for when it releases!)

Producing a Card Awards Competition

As part of the above Symposium, leaders of MoCa released a Cards Awards competition in order to recognize players’ contributions all throughout the span of cards’s existence. This competition required more work put into its release than the other 4 competitions that the Symposium (and was something we’ve long been trying to release before MoCa was founded), so we were glad that this finally became a reality, mostly thanks to the work of @Noah's Second Country.

Participants within the Card Awards competition have largely been content with how it was ran, and my personal favorite aspect of the Card Awards was Noah’s graphic he used to congratulate those who won an award from the competition:


These hereby conclude what we have fully completed during this month. It was extremely difficult, but we have no regrets of doing any of it.

Partially Completed Projects

Though work was almost solely focused on the Symposium and Card Awards for this month, several other projects were developed to some degree while the above were taking place:

Revamping and Expanding the Executive Card Rewards

Plans were made to adapt to his term with regards to how cards will be distributed going forward. Originally, one user was sending the cards associated with this program, but that user is now gone (more information will be detailed below in this report), so we had to adapt to the unexpected situation.

Amending the North Pacific Cards Guild Charter

Now that the projects described in the beginning of this report are now finished, a thread will be posted detailing what will be changed or added to the Charter. This will require a majority of voters to approve of the changes in the thread, all of which must be current Guild members, after which formalization of the aforementioned changes may proceed.


Projects for the Next Month

In our last monthly report (and touched upon earlier in this post), we mentioned several internal issues were (and currently still are) taking place within the Ministry of Cards. As for what these issues were, these were related to the de-facto absence of one of our key deputy ministers during this term (@r3naissanc3r). They have understandably taken a break from NationStates in order to focus more on real-life work, and currently serve as a deputy in order to handle extremely vital technical issues in which only they can resolve.

As a result of their de-facto absence, several of our card programs have been put on pause for the time being (the biggest of which was our Great Card Giveaway), and what we will do to address the sudden de-activation of some of our programs will be outlined below:

Completely Replacing the Great Card Giveaway

This is what we will be focusing on this month (and likely for the rest of the term). This program was one of the defining features of the Cards Guild, so replacing it with a cards program that possesses just as many benefits and/or incentives will be important for retaining Guild membership. A series of replacement programs are currently in the works, and we will let everyone know once these are ready to see use.

Adjusting How We Hand Out Cards Going Forward

As r3n was previously the one to hand out cards manually, MoCa has been re-examining how it can send cards for those who have earned them via one of our programs. We have been utilizing other users to send them from TNL, and the goal is to ensure that this process becomes regularized within The North Pacific. At this stage, this plan will involve Delegate McMasterdonia and Eluvatar sending out the cards on a manual basis. We will announce more about this process in due course.

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For this month, we had successfully completed several key items our Delegate wished to achieve this term - and to relatively well-received feedback from those who participated in the projects’ completion. On the other hand however, it is clear that the completion of the said items will not be enough. As the current state of the Cards Guild subservient to MoCa is currently under question, we will need to work hard in order to address the issues that have stemmed from the absence of one of our most talented workers within the TNP cards community.

Thank you to all for reading, and this concludes the monthly report on MoCa’s progress.

• DGES, Minister of Cards of The North Pacific