RT2304- CINCSF Report

CINCSF's REPORT

Dear Delegates,

The last six months have seen the consolidation of the USS YORKTOWN as a unit, with a complex story line and rich and detailed characters and situations. We expect great things from the YORKTOWN, which will join DEEP SPACE 451 (SB SERENITY) when this maiden mission is over, in their mission to investigate the Void and the dangers to the Federation that lurk over there. Here goes my deepest appreciation for the command and players' commitment to the unit.

Overall, we have three solid units and a Free Thread (Task Force Neptune) with a strong core of writing players and then more reluctant or busy players who mainly participate in the story with short posts or, mainly, via Joint Posts.

As in years past, the main problem is that those strong core writers are long time veterans (or returning ones!), some of them even writing on more than one unit, while we have little new blood to make an effective generational hand-over. What's more, RANGER and SERENITY have been relying on Joint Posts more and more, which is a sign of a possible burn-out, as players seek more frequent feedback and support from their fellow players than simple posting would. JPs are wonderful and a great creative and team-building tool, but it's hard to keep a steady posting flow just with JPs, and sending a regular post while doing a JP might be complicated, unless you have several characters or plots or voices going on.

Pace has fallen since the new year holidays and the number of active players, while enough to keep the units going, does nothing to entice others to join in, be current players or new ones. It is more than clear that a constant dropping of posts, even shorter ones, with regularity, is very important to keep momentum. 

I would encourage all COs and XOs to try and post more often, as the Units' Books should address: their example will inspire others. JPs are amazing to bring up to pace other, less active players, but tag-along posts are usually faster in time, and the increased activity will inspire others as well.

I'll also recommend that command teams and admirals revisit the roster of the units: maybe the less active players will find more motivation with a different station on a different unit. I think it is better for a player to move to another unit, if they are going to be more active, rather than to stay and be barely motivated to write. Changing is as good as resting and we should encourage that.

As for the club itself, in the last year, we have increased our presence in Twitter and Facebook, although not very effectively: either the strategy is not sound, or unpaid promotion works considerably bad. Granted, we have tried not to be aggressive, just letting our work out there, but the amount of noise-to-ratio in our favour is quite bad, to be honest, and more forceful promotion in known Star Trek writing or fan clubs might prove more effective.

In this endeavour, the post summary to facilitate social networking has been very much appreciated.

In any case, our Twitter account has a couple more subscriptors and some posts have been retweeted by accounts with thousands of followers. If this trend continues, one can only hope that our club will tick all the checks, right? As for Facebook, we have well over 500 followers, but interaction with our posts has been overall quite disappointing. The posts with images are the ones that usually attract more attention, which leads me to believe that Instagram and Tiktok and other visually centered social networks might bear better fruits in the future. Facebook posts should also have the associated image, like Twitter's, even when Facebook makes the link to the post more prominent if there's no image.

David will post more unit images to Facebook (or provide them to other posters) so they can pick from a wider pool of pictures when posting summaries of other types of messages. More images will be created, as it's time consuming but very rewarding, and if it's useful, the merrier.

Even so, we have seen the return of a long time veteran and two new players. It's a small victory, but I will take it with gratitude.

For the future, trying to set a sensible, constant stream of posts from the command teams will surely help the rest of the players to find inspiration and join in. Tag-along and JPs are still very much welcomed, but especially COs should strive to have that additional, guaranteed post every week.

Finally, the podcast and other ideas are still waiting for the right time. Maybe this year if I find a couple of volunteers. This year will hopefully see season 2 of Prodigy, season 4 of Lower Decks and news of the new series, Star Trek: Academy; we have many comic-books like the God Killer miniseries that's seen Sisko's return, and we will have the final season for Discovery, that has been pushed to 2024. With Star Trek: Picard ending in less than a month, I think it's still a Star Trek year, and I think there's momentum behind it, let's try and find a way to use it.

We have been working on updating our technologies and there's a small funnel of ideas to be worked on with SFE. We will probably be introducing some of the changes that we have been seeing in Star Trek: Picard, third season, which is the closest to our timeframe, that don't contradict our own technologies or are too disruptive to storytelling (most are visual stunts, to be honest, but some things have substance that can be interesting).

So, overall, a small growth and some ideas to try and get to a wider audience.

Respectfully submitted,
David S. de Lis
ADM P'Nerow, Commander-in-Chief, Star Fleet

P.S.- My apologies for the length, it was going to be a short one (!).