Officer Stuff

A loose collection of things

Webmaster = whoever is doing it. Traditionally, the Secretary and the President juggle this duty.

Warp Forwarding

We forward all e-mail for warp to the officers. If you need to change who gets the mail, just go to http://www.mail.rice.edu/ click on "Forward your mail", and update the string listing the addresses. Yes, this will duplicate the generic spam you receive from Rice, but a healthy mail filter can resolve that.

 

Elections

These are important and you should be thinking about them well before they happen. The greatest responsibility you have as an officer is to insure the long term survival of the club by recruiting reliable folk to take your place.

  • Preparation - long before the election day, you should have some candidates lined up. I cannot stress the importance of doing this in advance. Even the perfect candidate may either a) not think of running or b) not feel confident/comfortable with it. You have to help them understand the rewards of service and ease their fears. No one wants a nebulous responsibility, so spell it out for them and help them understand that it's not that big of a deal after all.
  • What day? OwlCon occurs around the 10th or so of February. It will probably take at least two weeks for people to recover, if not more. So, it's probably best to shoot for the gameday gathering four weeks after OwlCon. That gets the new officers in place in early March and provides plenty of time to train them.
  • What time? Around 1:00 PM is good. This way, you can provide food and increase attendance by getting people there for lunch.
  • What else? Planning something cool the same day would not hurt. Showing The Gamers, or perhaps a classic flick like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Shoot for wide appeal, maybe take a poll? Whatever the current membership prefers.

 

Safely Updating Web Pages

Your secrets to web page happiness are as follows:

  1. Whenever you go to update the web pages, synchronize first to make sure you have the most up-to-date site.
  2. Whenever you make an updates, send a quick simple e-mail to the others that maintain the page. Put "FW Web Page" in the subject and simply list the file names of the modified files in the body of the message, e.g. "index.htm, Gamedays.htm" If you modify the template, be sure to mention that too. This way, you decrease the likelihood of people overwriting each others' work.
  3. The absolute safest approach is to have a single person handle all updates to the web pages, but alas, that can be problematic. The more realistic approach is to have one person be the main webmaster at any given time.

 

Bi-weekly Gameday-related Stuff

  • (-7 days, or earlier) [Webmaster] Gameday schedule web page update - update the page for the upcoming events
  • (-6 days, Monday before Gameday) [President] Solicit any events/changes for the Gameday schedule, promote any big stuff coming up at the next gameday.
  • (-4 days, Wednesday) [President & Webmaster] E-mail Webmaster with updates, updates made to schedule.
  • (-2 days, Friday) [President] E-mail reminder to list about gameday, include a link to the Gamedays page.
  • After the gameday, e-mail a reminder/query about events for upcoming events.
  • (+3 days, Wednesday) [President, Webmaster] Photo Album - if you have some pics, put them in the album!

Why do we worry about the age of participants at Fast Warp?

Because Rice makes us worry. Generally, a college student is good to go regardless, but otherwise we try to insure that a sub-adult will have a guardian accompanying them. Here's the info from the officers that were here when it happened:

  • A minor (17 yrs old) did "steal" his parents car, which is to say, he took it without permission after he had been grounded. but it was not to go to owlcon, if i remember correctly. it was to attend a warp-sponsored vampire larp game. i think this was 1995, maybe '94. that's when rice university first denied the larpers the use of sewall. it took jonathan stein almost a year of schmoozing (or more) to get its use back, when he ran his game there.
  • "I think I remember this incident as well, and yes, it was the original Rice VLARP - and I think I know where the confusion comes from, because I think it happenned the LARP right before Owlcon. If memory serves me correctly, it happenned in 1995, and Rice dithered for a few months (basically until the end of the school year) before refusing to let WARP register the Masquerade again." - Jennifer Boggess Ramon
  • "There was also an incident at Owlcon of a minor leaving Owlcon with some other con-goers and not telling his parents, who proceeded to show up at 2 am and chew out the Owlcon registration desk (i.e., me and Noah) for letting him leave. Rice basically told her to chill. I can easily see someone conflating the two events . . ." - Jennifer Boggess Ramon