CSM Update

I confess to being a bit remiss in writing this update, but in addition to being quite busy on CSM business, I spent two weeks after FanFest fighting a nasty case of the Viking Death Flu, followed by a secondary infection and a less-than-pleasant reaction to the antibiotics intended to treat that.

I had a wonderful time at FanFest, despite having to manfully endure numerous devs coming up to me and making cryptic comments intended to mislead me about the election results. I would like to particularly commend CCP Explorer for his highly refined sadism.

Regarding the elections, as you know I have long championed election reform, and I could not be more pleased with the results. The change to STV and the modification to the method of choosing Summit delegates had exactly the effect I was hoping for -- it attracted a bunch of well-qualified candidates, and elected a diverse and (so far) hard-working set of delegates. The uneven distribution of the workload in previous CSMs (with 5-7 people doing most of the work) has been a pet-peeve of mine, but I expect that the CSM8 crew will be able to contribute at least 50% more man-hours than CSM7.

I greatly enjoyed the politics of the election this year, and the change to STV meant that I could devote more of my electoral resources to helping other good candidates. My "Evil CSM Cabal of Evil" group had 11 candidates in it, of which 8 were elected -- more than I expected.

Getting elected Chairman was the icing on the cake. It is a great honor to be entrusted with the position by my colleagues, and I will do my best to be their "fleet booster" during the CSM8 term, using what I've learned over the past 3 CSMs to help them be more effective.

As to what CSM is up to right now, we're focusing on helping CCP process all the Odyssey feedback, handling the CSM7/CSM8 transition, and starting our planning for the first summit (expect some public threads about that as soon as we have a date). We're also continuing our biweekly Skype conferences as a team Stakeholder.

PS: To those who so vocally opposed my candidacy for CSM8, allow me to express my undying gratitude. I couldn't have done it without you!