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Hi guys
As Nate mentioned in the other thread, I share the reservations raised here about the prospect of any new, electable committee role ending uncontested without the candidate’s principles and vision first being heard by the membership. With that in mind I approached Dave in his role as VP to work out what could be done to balance my wish to establish at least an outline of what mandate I would seek to draw on (to mitigate the possibility of an uncontested election) while being equally careful not to steal a march on any other potential candidates yet to emerge. Dave’s agreed that I’m able to share a couple of ideas here in order to set some expectations for what I’ll offer as a candidate in this election, something I’m very pleased to be able to do.
In the spirit of that agreement I’ll aim keep things here at quite high level and save a more in-depth introduction and exploration of the ideas for the full Q&A thread next week. I’ll also try and stick to ideas and messages I’ve posted elsewhere in the past.
In my view, there’s no one size fits all approach to running or supporting leagues, even for two leagues in the same city (two of the best I’ve seen might share a common ruleset, but couldn’t differ more in the way they’re structured and managed by their commissioners). There are a great many leagues that have been established for years and have gradually built up processes, tools and resources that allow them the fluidity and control they need to ensure their coaches keep coming back, week after week, season after season. I’m passionate about how we can adapt and refine the hard-won experiences, tools and resources of those leagues into an evolving league toolkit, and about how we can make this tool kit accessible (ie not just available, but also intuitive) to the countless other enthusiastic individuals that dedicate energy to initiating, enhancing or promoting league play in their local community. That toolkit might include posters you can put up in your GW store or FLGS; a place to seek out advice on common issues and decisions you run into as a commish; a customisable, branded web presence and league tracking support; help with setting up or hosting a forum (either here or on an established site in your area); perhaps even helping to get good deals on boards, crib sheets and dice.
I personally feel really fortunate that, when I took over as the local commish, I’d already witnessed first hand what great leagues elsewhere were doing with resources they’d dedicated masses of time and energy developing, in the shape of forum sections, obblm sites, weekly round-up emails, posters – and who knows, if I hadn’t seen those tools at work, I doubt I would have had the confidence to bring in many of the changes and innovations I did. Even so, creating and deploying the tools I felt we needed took research, a lot of trial and error, and more than anything else a hell of a lot of time and energy on my part. I’m certain that the more of that sort of thing we can save each other from going forward, the more accessible we can make the brilliant user-created tools at our disposal, the more of the experience of the issues and challenges commissioners face that we can share, the stronger we are as a broader community. That, at least, is what I try to do over on nzbbn, and ultimately that’s what I’d like the opportunity to work towards on a larger scale on behalf of the NAF.
The bottom line is that I believe we can combine and refine many of the tools we already make and use locally, and share them across the community to support local communities in creating stronger, more visible and more sustainable leagues; and then to feed those achievements and any new tools they create back into the wider pool. My vision is that if someone is passionate enough to want to promote the hobby in their area, they’re able to do so without needing an array of technical skills – they can rock up to the NAF and pick out their NAF branded website, a forum on a NAF partner site, print out some NAF posters for putting up in their local stores or customise and send out NAF branded newsletters to their leaguemates.
Thanks for reading – hopefully that provides an insight into what I’m about 
– Shteve0
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