The 'Shroom talk:Issue 128/Awards Director Election

Awards Committee Director Campaigns

Here is where you can post your campaign! Have fun.

Anton / Turb
Hey guys, Turb and I decided to run again this year because the 2016 season went amazingly well. There’s usually lots of bumps along the way but just something about our constant refinement of the ceremony and planning made it so smooth and stress-free without sacrificing the fun people had.

To briefly introduce us if you aren’t too familiar, both Turb and I are two people who have been members of this community since 2008/2009 and have been involved in in many aspects of this community, most relevant to this being having been Awards Directors in the past, including our partnership last year. Outside of Awards, we are both active in IRC are members as well as admins, which is where you will likely find us at any given moment of every day.

Our plans for next year don’t stray too far from last year’s, with the changes we planned on implementing last year meeting success, so we intend on maintaining that. The biggest changes in 2016 included the shift from having both User and ‘Shroom Awards ceremonies into having a combined Community Awards, which helped to modernize our shifting community, as well as a reworking of the token system we use for prizes supplementing game tournaments. You can read more details below.

Our goal for this year is to maintain the tone and strength we’ve helped develop in the last couple of years, all while keeping both staff and the community interested and active without requiring an oppressive amount of attention and work, and instead prioritizing the focus on fun and creativity. We are looking forward to your support if you wish to give us that chance.

Both of us have years of experience directly involved in running the Awards Committee and ceremony events, but below you'll find a more expanded list of our qualifications, kept brief to what's relevant to the position, as well as a basic outline of some thoughts and plans for the upcoming year.

Relevant Experience
Anton (Director):
 * Current Director of the MarioWiki Anniversary Awards Committee (Mario Awards X - 2016), Co-Director (Mario Awards IX - 2015)
 * Awards Committee member (2011 – 2016 (Mario Awards VI – X)).
 * Current #mwchat Founder (June 2014 – Present) and Admin (3 November, 2010 – Present)
 * Current Userpedia Steward (18 November, 2012 – Present); Sysop (2 March, 2012 – Present), Bureaucrat (18 Nov, 2012 – Present)
 * UP Awards Host (2014, 2015)
 * Current 'Shroom Critic Corner Director (Issue 112 – Present); 'Shroom Contributor (Issue LXXXVII – Present)

Turb (Sub-Director):
 * Current Sub-Director of the MarioWiki Anniversary Awards Committee (Mario Awards X - 2016); Former Director (2012 – 2014)
 * Current Fail Awards Host (2016)
 * Current Sysop (19 March, 2014 – Present) and former MarioWiki Patroller (30 April, 2013 – 19 March, 2014)
 * Former ‘Shroom Sub-Director (October 2013–January 2015)
 * Current #mwchat Admin (5 July 2010 – Present)

Plans
Major changes we made last year and intend to continue included:
 * Creating an Awards Committee application system to help create a more focused and responsive group, which we found to be successful with plenty of applicants who were willing, motivated, and active.
 * Reworking the Tokens system, helping to curb rising inflation of prize prices and to work towards a more fair allotment of prizes relative to player participation.
 * Forming the Community Awards, which not only brought some archaic parts of our Anniversary into the current time, but helps open the door for a wider range of awards and acknowledgments, which was met with higher polling participation than the individual User and ‘Shroom polls
 * A formal partnership with the Poll Committee to balance Main Page space and rotation for our Mario and Fail Awards Polls to guarantee a high amount of exposure to keep up our consistently high polling numbers as of the last few years

There are some improvements and changes that could be made, of course, which we plan to work with the AC to develop and implement:
 * Prizes:
 * A financially sustainable prize list must soon be generated, complicated further by updates in Steam regulations. While other websites, such as Humble Bundle, offer alleviation, gift cards are increasingly the most popular and easiest option to select as they are generalized and can function outside of most region-locks, which comes with the downside of them being objectively more expensive and thus a burden on the prize donors.  Different plans for prize distribution procedures, such as larger prizes being available only to winners and top placements in awards to ease the financial burden, must also find a way to include everyone else in some shape or form, and such plans will be actively sought and discussed.
 * Rework the Biggest Missed Opportunity award, which has been routinely inconsistent, along with going over veteran awards that have had unchanging results for years to see if it’s worth maintaining a spot for them, potentially making way for the next bullet point should it come to it.
 * Evaluate an appropriate amount of coverage for Super Mario Odyssey, a very expansive game that will certainly require many other awards, such as Favorite 3D Level, and potentially inspire new categories.
 * Ensure that there is a 3 week work period (2 weeks normal, 1 after soft deadline) for presentations, as shifting calendars can create situations like in 2016 where, while our general schedule of events doesn't change, the allotted time for creating presentations ended up being only 2 weeks.
 * While we plan on continuing to work alongside experienced Awards Committee members Edo and 2257 to provide technical support and advice, there are further plans in the works to create a new titled position for someone to be charged with helping maintain consistency, accuracy, and quality of information and documents. We currently have a candidate in mind, but would like to propose this idea to the Awards Committee first.

If this sounds good to you and you trust us with the handling of the Mario Awards XII, we will be delighted to have your vote!

Thank you very much, and here’s to another successful awards celebration in 2018!