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Obligatory penguin video #8

1) Why are you running for this position?
I have been Dispatches Thane for over a year and a half now. In this time, we have revitalized and redesigned the Orendi, upped its quality, and kept up a consistent (albeit slower than ideal) update schedule. I want to keep this trend continuing.

2) What do you aim to accomplish as thane? As part of this, you must include at least one thing that you promise to do beyond the minimum listed duties of the position during your term. It should be measurable, so that it's black and white whether you fulfilled this mandate at the end of the term if you are elected.

Orendi XXII will be released mid-December. Probably after final exams for me, so if all things go well we can see a Winter Solstice Special.

If we all make the push then we can ideally see Orendi XXIII by late January/early February. And thus, hopefully, a March release for Orendi XXIV (hopefully an early-mid March release; we can target for an Equinox Edition).

2a) If you are an incumbent running for re-election, did you fulfill your mandate from the September election? If not, why didn't you?

Yes. My InDesign skills have grown as I continue to do Orendi work. Orendi XXII took around the same time or even longer than Orendi XXI to do layout for, but I believe the quality in the details has significantly improved. Much of this is probably something a non-editor would never notice, but I am definitely much more proud of the results in the latest issue. I absolutely must thank Hydra for building the original design, teaching me the ropes, and working with me on the design of recent issues.

However, there is still much room for improvement. Thus, I will continue this mandate: I will keep improving my Adobe CC skills to do better work as Thane of Foreign Releases.

Puzzles and other various fun releases are also a possibility but not necessarily the goal. This work also overlaps with the realm of the Regional Outreach Thane, which is now occupied and presumably will continue to be. If Emoticonius has any plans I am definitely glad to work with him on those as well.

3) What qualifications or experience do you have in the area that you are running in?
Blatantly copied from my last campaign post:

Earlier experience:

• Wrote a few articles for Aura Hyperia and Wintreath in 2014/2015]
• Put together New Hyperion Update #1 as Lord of Propaganda

Accomplishments as Dispatches Thane over past seven terms:

• Put together 8 Orendis, currently putting together 9th
• Working closely with Hydra on redesigning and formatting 7 Orendis in newspaper/magazine PDF format, including formatting three mostly myself with Hydra's help
• Wrote ~18 articles for said 8 Orendis
• Created 2 puzzles
• Successfully bugged ambassadors to post dispatches

I also got an engineering position at my local student-run newspaper this spring. The tech division is quite large, so what I'm doing is pure web development, and here in the Orendi we're doing PDFs, so there isn't much of an overlap here, at least in our current design. In the long term a web-based Orendi might be worth looking into though.

4) How do you plan to have the time to fulfill the duties of the position until the next election in March?

I believe my activity speaks for itself; this month, for instance, I have had the second most non-spam posts after Wintermoot. This activity has certainly dropped (in line with an overall drop in activity by pretty much every except Wintermoot), but I am still consistently active. I am significantly less active on Discord, especially on non-government channels, but that generally has not and will not impact my presence and work in our forum community. I am busy, but I have been busy for a long time (pretty much the entire four years I've been in Wintreath) and I am still fine.

5) Are you currently a part of any other NationStates regional or organizational government? If so, please include those regions and positions.

I am co-founder, Lord of Propaganda, and WACom Delegate of New Hyperion, the Wintreath vassal region.

Welcome to the campaign!

What do you think are the best things and the worst things about the Orendi at the moment?

Pluses: I think the best thing about the Orendi currently is our consistent quality. It already started rather high when Hydra spearheaded the transition to a PDF format. And now we're at a point where it's improved even more in the current design, which always seems to impress foreign embassy visitors and has already been (attempted to be) copied by certain other regions.

Deltas: We currently have a high reliance on a small number of individuals to do the majority of the work for the Orendi. This is especially true for the final layout design, where it's pretty much just me and Hydra combined with the software and knowledge to use it. (There's not really much I can do about this issue, which is one reason why it is the worst thing, perhaps. You would need someone who is not only able to acquire the software, but also have the ability and willingness to learn the software and design skills to a level of familiarity with which to produce content to our current high standard of quality. And even if we somehow found someone willing to do that, teaching it is quite difficult as well.) The main effect this has is cutting into release times, which is mostly okay since we have compensated in terms of quality, depth, and length of our Orendis as well. However, if we work to stick on a tighter schedule, then there is still realistic room for improvement here as well, though we also need to be careful not to sacrifice our standards in the process.