Apologies to Shteve0, the previous statement that was posted was a preliminary version, not the full version. Here is the full version, and find the Q&A on the forum.
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Hi all! I’m Steve Arthurs (aka Shteve0), a 31 year old project manager/business analyst based in Wellington, New Zealand. As well as the commissioner of our local league here in Wellington, I’m the TO of the Capital Shield (a local annual NAF tournament); you may have heard me on the 3DB podcast, seen my artscow doormat pitch designs, played a game or two of our local version of BB7s or come into contact with the kiwi block dice I produced for the Capital Shield two years ago; or you may have heard about or visited the website I run on behalf of the NZ Blood Bowl community at www.nzbbn.com.
NZBBN is both the New Zealand blood bowl forum and a free league hosting service I’ve been making available to all active leagues in the country for the last two years. Each league that takes up the service is offered a customised obblm site reskinned in their league colours, plus a forum section both to assist in organising games (if they wish to use it) and to help new coaches looking for fellow BBers in the country to locate a league in their area. nzbbn.com is now the top search result when you google ‘blood bowl NZ’ and has a membership of over 100 NZ-based coaches across the league sites and the forum.
While we’re still a small community compared to some out there, my view is that it’s a very scalable arrangement and serves as a solid example of what NAF league support might offer on a much larger scale in that the way we’re organised allows local commissioners (LCs) to support gaming in their area with some great tools without needing a huge amount of technical know-how to get started, at a pace and timing that suits them.
My platform as a candidate for the League Director role is based on leveraging those same principles to increase the utility of the tools we can offer and support local enthusiasts in building more sustainable leagues in their respective communities. It’s my firmly held view that the best people to decide on what rules are applied in a local league are the commissioners and coaches that will be playing in that league week in, week out. They know better than I ever could whether or not they have time to play overtime, whether fixed or open schedule works better with their real life commitments, whether they favour chosen or random MVP, reset or perpetual environments, or cash bounties, or free special play cards, or extra cash for rookie teams, or street bowl games in the middle of a season, or any number of other variables that make playing in a league work for a playgroup’s specific set of circumstances. The value of what I (on behalf of the NAF) want to offer them is more a one stop shop for new and existing LCs to make the running of their league easier for themselves and, hopefully, more enjoyable for its membership. The less daunting we can make it to start and run a league, the more we’ll not only be seen to add value to our membership with diminishing marginal effort but also we’ll be helping to support more sustainable league communities and gain automatic access to a a broader potential membership base and a wealth of league performance data.
A vote for me as your League Director (and sorry this has taken so long to get to, if you’re still reading, thank you!) will support delivery of the following:
[*] a website for any league that wants one with relevant links to resources new and existing coaches will need
[*] a forum section for any league that wants one
[*] free, GW store legal posters that can be printed out by LCs and put up around their town or city to advertise their league
[*] access to the wealth of commissioner experience out there in the shape of a support group forum section, for example, for seeking and offering league management advice
[*] wherever possible, a thenaf.net web address for every league with an online presence, in addition to any existing affiliations, linked through to the league locator, and other methods of increasing the NAF’s visbility to league coaches in non-intrusive ways
[*] research into what can be done to support LCs getting the hardware they need to support a new or growing league: pitches, dice, dugouts, special play cards and so on
So far, so tangible. As important though, my aim would be to set up a volunteer support team for a new NAF fork of the obblm software. Anyone would be free to contribute ideas, code, image files etc to the cause. My focus for this group would be to implement:
[*] improvements to user experience, such as in team creation and when interacting with league tables
[*] a more intuitive commissioner experience, bringing regular maintenance tasks to the front end and eliminating the need to edit php files and manage databases directly
[*] a more intuitive, customisable and externally facing menu structure with up to date resource links
[*] easily admin-swappable skins and a simplified way to upload a league logo to the site
[*] testing and integrating as many of the user modules out in the community as can be made to work
[*] a semi-automated newsletter module (credit to Sann for this one) that pulls in recent match reports, records being surpassed, obituaries, up to date league tables and any team news
[*] implementing conferences as standard functionality
[*] active support to the obblm wiki (or a NAF fork version thereof)
[*] and/or any other ideas and contributions that increase the functionality of the service.
Obviously there are already a great many talented people out there contributing in fantastic ways to their own regions and leagues, with all manner of web and print resources being developed and shared on a small scale. I want to be careful not only to make sure all that creativity and work isn’t trampled, but that we have a framework in place to harness the enthusiasm and provide it access to a much wider audience *without* interfering with their ability to run their local league in a way that works for their corner of the community.
If this sounds like something you can stand behind, then I appreciate your support 🙂