2015 Committee Nominations [Closed - Check for Updated Candidates]
Hi Guys!
We're starting the committee nominations process for 2015. This year there are just 3 positions up for grabs:
1. Chair
2. Treasurer
3. Community Liaison (CPT or JHB)
Some of the committee members can probably better explain in this thread what each position involves, but essentially (as I understand it), chair is what Nick currently does and treasurer involves managing the money. I'm presuming the community liaison will be the person who communicates from Nick to the forums for JHB and CPT respectively etc.
Nominate here: Google Form
You can nominate yourself.
You can nominate as many people as you like.
You can nominate one person for multiple positions (you will need to fill in the form multiple times).
You do not need to be a forum member to nominate.
You will need to be a paying member of the society to vote (not sure if you need to be a paying member to nominate, but will confirm this later). I think the details for payment will be made available soon.
Read this thread for more about the MGSA community going forward: http://makegamessa.com/discussion/3177/mgsa-going-forward
The person nominated will need to receive a second nomination and then will also need to accept the nomination. I will contact them directly in this regard before posting the short list.
Voting will happen at the AGM.
Positions:
Chairmain - Nominal leader of the committee. Answering emails to the association and meeting business and government to grow the association
Treasurer - In charge of bank account (both chairman and treasurer are signatories on the account). Paying invoices for events, charities & merchandise. Collecting bank statements for tax filing
CPT Community Liaison - Manage CPT meetups (organise venues etc) and liaise with Chair
JHB Community Liaison - Manage JHB meetups (organise venues etc) and liaise with Chair
Current Nominations
These are the individuals who have been nominated, seconded and accepted to run for that particular position. You do not need to nominate them again.
- Nicholas Hall, Chair
- Dave Russell, Chair
- Dave Russell, Treasurer
- Leon van Niekerk, Treasurer
- Julian Pritchard, Treasuer
- Luke Lamothe, JHB Community Liaison
- Paul Potgeiter, JHB Community Liaison
- Megan Hughes, CPT Community Liaison
Declined Nominations
These are the individuals who have been nominated, seconded and declined to run for that particular position. You do not need to nominate them again.
- Andre Odendaal (Fengol) - Treasurer
- Matt Benic - Various
- Shaz Strauss (Shazfaeryl) - Treasurer
- Ben Myres - Various
- Steven Tu, JHB Community Liaison
- Gavin Hayler, CPT Community Liaison
- Peter Cardwell-Gardner, CPT Community Liaison
- Cukia Kimani, JHB Community Liaison
- Julian Pritchard, JHB Community Liaison
- Francois van Niekerk, CPT Community Liaison
We're starting the committee nominations process for 2015. This year there are just 3 positions up for grabs:
1. Chair
2. Treasurer
3. Community Liaison (CPT or JHB)
Some of the committee members can probably better explain in this thread what each position involves, but essentially (as I understand it), chair is what Nick currently does and treasurer involves managing the money. I'm presuming the community liaison will be the person who communicates from Nick to the forums for JHB and CPT respectively etc.
Nominate here: Google Form
You can nominate yourself.
You can nominate as many people as you like.
You can nominate one person for multiple positions (you will need to fill in the form multiple times).
You do not need to be a forum member to nominate.
You will need to be a paying member of the society to vote (not sure if you need to be a paying member to nominate, but will confirm this later). I think the details for payment will be made available soon.
Read this thread for more about the MGSA community going forward: http://makegamessa.com/discussion/3177/mgsa-going-forward
The person nominated will need to receive a second nomination and then will also need to accept the nomination. I will contact them directly in this regard before posting the short list.
Voting will happen at the AGM.
Positions:
Chairmain - Nominal leader of the committee. Answering emails to the association and meeting business and government to grow the association
Treasurer - In charge of bank account (both chairman and treasurer are signatories on the account). Paying invoices for events, charities & merchandise. Collecting bank statements for tax filing
CPT Community Liaison - Manage CPT meetups (organise venues etc) and liaise with Chair
JHB Community Liaison - Manage JHB meetups (organise venues etc) and liaise with Chair
Current Nominations
These are the individuals who have been nominated, seconded and accepted to run for that particular position. You do not need to nominate them again.
- Nicholas Hall, Chair
- Dave Russell, Chair
- Dave Russell, Treasurer
- Leon van Niekerk, Treasurer
- Julian Pritchard, Treasuer
- Luke Lamothe, JHB Community Liaison
- Paul Potgeiter, JHB Community Liaison
- Megan Hughes, CPT Community Liaison
Declined Nominations
These are the individuals who have been nominated, seconded and declined to run for that particular position. You do not need to nominate them again.
- Andre Odendaal (Fengol) - Treasurer
- Matt Benic - Various
- Shaz Strauss (Shazfaeryl) - Treasurer
- Ben Myres - Various
- Steven Tu, JHB Community Liaison
- Gavin Hayler, CPT Community Liaison
- Peter Cardwell-Gardner, CPT Community Liaison
- Cukia Kimani, JHB Community Liaison
- Julian Pritchard, JHB Community Liaison
- Francois van Niekerk, CPT Community Liaison
Comments
It's been hard and rewarding work being MGSA's treasurer since the community's inception and I'm sure greater people will lead the association forward.
Seeing 1 person nominate 10 different people for a committee of only 4 people total seems like a sign of massive confusion or simply throwing all the names in the jar and seeing which one comes out tops. That's not an ideal way to elect the best committee for the community.
I'm mostly wondering who'll do the whole Twitter, Facebook, etc?
I will not be accepting any nominations to the committee. As such, I will be stepping down from the committee and all roles at MGSA (social media; running meetups etc.).
This does leave a question of whether anyone would be able to step up to run the social media accounts for MGSA (it's a fairly big responsibility and also incredibly important for MGSA - but Ben can tell you more about that) and the JHB meetups?
Thanks for all the excellent work you did :3
I'm now quite upset that I'll no longer be able to giggle at spelling mistakes, or wrong months, at the community meetups :<
@dammit: the current format of the JHB meetup is: grab food at MS and do some socializing before the meet. Start meet at 7 with intros, and news. Have a talk by our monthly guest speaker(s), playtesters come to the front and pitch their games, go off and play test games.
As a committee member I attend the Skype meetings we have (about once a quarter) which are normally about an up-coming event and I volunteer my time/money/soul to get something done for that.
It's not part of my treasurer duties, but I also am the web admin. I used to patch the forum theme and upgrade the framework from time-to-time and I had started a separate site to plan the new changes. The development has been passed to the capable @Nitrogen and any volunteer can take over that job. The next important change is moving the domain to a local ISP.
In terms of time commitment, I've been able to do everything after hours and only on occasion (like once or twice around rAge) popped out from work to do MGSA for an hour or 2.
If you want to list the kind of things involved in running the meetup - this might include mentioning something like setting up the thread each month, confirming venues, creating the slides if necessary, collating recent industry news/announcements, getting people to be in and out of the venue as appropriate for the venue itself (if you have a time you need to be out by), ensuring speakers stay within their time limits and so on :)
Though I spoke to Ben last night, and he's answer was basically: what he does right now won't be the responsibility of whoever becomes the JHB Liaison, which I think highlights that we lack a definitive answer on what the duties for the liaison will be.
With regards to my own nominations: I love the people in the JHB community, and I really want to do what I can to help them grow, but I also love this community and organization as a whole. I believe that I should do whatever I can to help it grow.
With that in mind I would like to decline the nomination for JHB Liaison since I could do more work as Treasurer if elected.
1. We currently lack a formal definition of what the Liaisons will be doing. I know that positions on MGSA are malleable and people often fill many roles, but a kind of base expectations would be good so that it can help people understand what they would be voting for.
2. It is currently stated in the OP that you need to me a paying member of the association/society in order to vote, but there is currently no way to pay, or a method of verifying students so they can pay at their appropriate fee. I believe this needs to be addressed quite urgently as the elections are within two weeks.
3. We currently do not have a definitive date for the AGM. Judging that it is currently stated as being the last week of June I am guessing that it is going to happen during the CT meetup, but even if that is the case we still need to organize a venue for the JHB community, and other places to connect into and see what's going on. Time to prepare is needed.
4. This is a bit of a mix of 2&3 but if the meet is run during the CT meetup and votes are done as they were last time, how are we to account for members voting from outside JHB and CT?
We can have an AGM and an online thing to count votes, or blind ballots, or whatever. But what it was was... Not a fair voting system.
Not that I have had any qualms about the outcomes, but if we're trying to formalise, we better formalise properly.
So either the person has only been nominated only by you, which is insufficient, or they have been nominated and are still deciding if they wish to run, and won't be shown as such until they have replied.
Going by my experience here as a nominee @dammit has been super on the ball with all my interactions with the process, so I'm rather certain it's one of the two events I outlined above.
@Tuism, yeah that as well. Raised that after the last election, and kinda felt like it was covered by point 4 where I was saying it makes it so that only places on video chat can vote, which is rather derp. Guess I should have been a bit more explicit with that point.
I have to agree that I would like more definitions on roles here too. I would also like to possibly understand more about why the decision was made to make the committee so much smaller. Personally, I believe we need a larger committee for the various roles that need to be handled and I don't think that the forums should be somehow separated from the community/committee.
I have no idea what's going on with payments etc for the committee. I have just volunteered to get this process going. I will probably also volunteer to handle the voting system, which I agree should be anonymous and (personally) I think it should be digital so that everyone can vote. There is no reason to have it location based.
In terms of committee numbers, I suspect the idea is that the committee does not actually do all the work itself, but is a fairly stable group of experienced people that helps delegate and manage tasks, perhaps through sub-commmittees.
If I had to take an educated guess what a community liaison's responsibilities would be:
- Organising the local meetups
- Running the local meetups
- Organising less frequent events like GGJ
- Meeting with interested parties if the Chair is unable to
- Potentially run or help run the social media side of things
- Other stuff all committee members do, like attending regular meetings
-Attending committee meetings to voice input and vote on issues / directions that MGSA takes
-Bring up issues / concerns / ideas that your local community raises with the committee
-Represent MGSA at meetings in your city / area with governmental / industry / educational representatives to advance game development in South Africa when necessary
-Help organise MGSA participation at local industry events (ie. rAge / EGE / etc.)
Additionally, possibly outside of the committee election itself, we should talk about the other roles that could be met by other volunteers. Web admin, social media and meet up organization ( if it ends up not falling within community liason duties now) are the ones that this discussion have already highlighted. How do we structure this accountability?
On a note, I'm still waiting for feedback from Nick and so there's a chance that other positions or a change of information is going to be had. In which case I will reopen the nominations etc.
As to what's happening with the AGM, payments and voting, we're still waiting on the current committee to get that going and give us a heads up. @Bensonance - you're closer to the committee than I am, so you might have more insight?