The Gods Smile Upon the CSM

As I stepped out of the Nora Bar with CCP Dolan, having just said my farewells to my fellow CSMs and various CCP devs, we were treated to a spectacular display of the Northern Lights above Reykjavik. The word quickly spread and the bar emptied.

Truly a fitting end for the most satisfying CSM summit of my career -- and it explained the problems we were having with the teleconferencing equipment all during the summit, which was clicking like a geiger counter. Clearly someone at CCP had modified it to be a coronal mass ejection detector.

I won't spend a lot of time recapping summit sessions -- for that, Ripard Teg's series of blog posts. This is just a quick summary before I head off to the airport.

This summit was the smoothest one ever. The hard work of previous CSMs has resulted in a smooth working relationship between CSM and CCP, and CSM8 is reaping the rewards of that foundational work.

We got completely briefed on the plans for Winter and how they tie into the long-term vision for the game CCP Seagull presented at FanFest. We had productive meetings with all the feature teams working on the next expansion, and look forward to providing them with more feedback in the coming months.We also had a ton of meetings with teams working on projects like language support that were very interesting.

As soon as we get back to the US, we'll start work on the minutes. The plan this time is to stream them out in small chunks as individual sessions are completed, and I personally hope you'll see the first set of them in about 2 weeks.

I'll close this short note with some thank-yous:

• To my fellow CSMs, both those in Iceland and those who Lync'd in (we usually had 10 CSMs in  the meetings). You done good.
• To the CPM, several of whom joined us for most sessions as observers, and provided us with a lot of support and insight behind the scenes.
• To CCP Dolan, who clearly did a ton of work preparing for the summit.
• And to CCP, for being gracious and attentive hosts.