Users browsing this thread:

South Pacific Independent News Network · 10-10-2020, 12:23 PM

Year 18 | 09 October 2020

OCTOBER 2020 CABINET ELECTION
MINISTER OF ENGAGEMENT INTERVIEW
Moderator: James D. Halpert | Participant: Vietnam

WELCOME TO THE OCTOBER 2020 MINISTER OF ENGAGEMENT INTERVIEW

I am James Halpert and I will be the host of this interview with Vietnam, candidate for Minister of Engagement. This interview is sponsored by the South Pacific Independent News Network.

The format of this interview will consist of a single section:

• The only section will feature questions on the candidate’s qualifications, intended policies and their vision for the coming term.

The candidate is asked to clearly mark the end of their answers so that I may know when to move on to the next question and to answer no later than 3 minutes after a question has been asked.
Opening Statement

[Vietnam] I don't think I can make any fancier opening than saying I will try to answer questions in as much details as possible :stuck_out_tongue: We can begin the question now.

Q&A

This is the first ever election for Minister of Engagement, which means that many precedents will be set if you are elected. Even though you are the sole candidate and your election is quite likely, why do you believe that you are particularly qualified to lead this new ministry?

[Vietnam] I believe I am qualified to lead this new ministry as all of my experience in leading large-scale projects came from those related to integration. SWAN and the upcoming dispatch project are big examples. OWL is not related to integration here but I think it is a fine addition. I believe leading MoE is basically me just doing those jobs again except with multiple of them in parallel. I believe my skills in planning ahead, selectively copying other succeeded projects, clearly communicating my intention to other people, and applying technology will help creating a successful MoE term.

You have said in your campaign that the immediate success of the Ministry of Engagement should not be determined by the ability to generate activity. How would you determine the immediate success of the ministry?

[Vietnam] I answered this question in my campaign already. The immediate success of a MoE term will be marked by having an up-to-date, well-designed, easy-to-understand system of dispatches that guide newcomers, smarter strategy of sending recruitment telegrams, and consistency on presentation standards and graphics across our region's governmental institutions. These goals are within reach, specific, and easy to verify. "Generating activity" is a long term goal that can only be assessed in at least 1 year in the future since there is no way to assure the new members you pick up this term will stick for a long time. This is the same case as SWAN. SWAN's success in getting endorsement numbers up could only be proven around 1 year after its creation and this is with detailed statistical tracking.

Focusing for a moment on the issue of involvement, what steps do you think should be taken, beyond sending telegrams, to encourage nations to deepen their involvement in the region?

[Vietnam] I think this goal is something all government bodies should try to reach to. You can only increase involvement of new members by providing them with things to do and carefully and enthusiastically guiding them. Phoenix's approach to this in SPSF is probably a shiny example of how all other government bodies should do regarding increasing involvement in the region. People only get further involved when they enjoy the game. One can only enjoy the game if there are things to do, those things are fun, and they know how to do it. Lack of proactive activity generation from the government and confusion on the new members are the biggest roadblocks to getting involved in anything.

I believe MoE's effort at increasing involvement in the region stops at providing direction for newbies (via telegram and dispatch) so they don't get lost in our insanely complicated system of government and activities as typical of a GCR. The rewarding via cards is probably the furthest thing MoE can do that I can think of to promote further involvement. The rest depends on each government body's leaders and their wills to guide newcomers and provide them with enjoyable activities.

Could you explain what Phoenix does in the Special Forces for voters who might not be aware?

[Vietnam] What Phoenix does is not very fancy from a strategy and plan angles, it is the attitude and commitment that I found very impressive. She simply doesn't scare new members away and always try to make them understand something as much as possible. While I am not involved in a live SPSF training as of lately, I have heard opinions from others that getting trained under her during VC is a hard-to-forget experience. NS is a scary game in term of things you have to learn, it is not only the amount of initial knowledge you need to digest but also the psychological state of confusion, of daunting, of being obfuscated in term of information. These need someone with a good personality to help newcomers overcome (along side an expansive and up-to-date set of guides and reference materials). This is as true IRL as it is true in this game and is one of the reasons why I think NS is one of the most realistic multiplayer game out there in term of player experience.

The projects that you have outlined in your campaign require a certain number of fellows. How do you plan to ensure that you have an adequate level of staffing and that those who do apply actually contribute to the ministry?

[Vietnam] Actually, I specifically plan it out to use as little fellows as possible, especially in the long term. Automation will be used whenever it can to reduce the time spent on daunting repetitive tasks such as going through dispatches to update them. The dispatch project and telegram system will require little personnel in the long term. In the short term (and this term only), the primary thing that sucks up HR will be the regional factbook as it demands active research but the number of staff required won't be disastrously many since 1-2 expert + 1-3 writer is good enough in my opinion. The Polynesian theme renovation depends entirely on the graphic design team and I can say they are reliable enough for this task given their results in the past. The part that needs people the most though is the government-run farm part of the card program. I plan to recruit people from our region who are interested in the card game, both those wants to get more experience in farming and experienced TSP farmers who are waiting for the government to actually pay attention to them. Of course, optimistically speaking, we can even get people from outside! As many of them really want the card game to expand to more regions, especially big ones like ours.

I will pretty much do the usual strategy for recruiting and training new members here, offering them chance to lead, DM approach,... But many things can be done even with our current staffing.

Organizational work like providing updates to the public can be done by myself or

On the issue of the Polynesian theme, how do you see it being implemented and how would you ensure that what elements are adopted adequately reflect Polynesian culture?

[Vietnam] I pretty much stay with my view that the graphic design team will have 99% control over the theme renovation. I will like to see the renovation applies to motto and symbolism (logos and such) in our region. What I don't want to see happen of course is changing names of government institutions or Discord channels since that will make newcomers confusing. I think the issue of cultural appropriation is significant enough that we need to constantly self-regulate ourselves and regularly take public's opinions to change various decisions. Going alone on these things is a good way to create drama. Fortunately the graphics team is aware enough about it so there shouldn't be any major problem should the project be done.

There have been occasional discussions about the role of offsite institutions vis-à-vis the Local Council. How do you envision your interactions with the Local Council?

[Vietnam] MoE's interaction with the LC will be quite informal in my vision. We set up a Discord channel where I along side some other people can basically discuss with them and tell them things they should do such as "post this dispatch on RMB for newcomers" and "emphasize this point when talking about this stuff". I think it will be pretty much like how I have been asking the LC to promote SWAN. It is easy to work with LC from my experience. They are friendly people if you don't pull off politically charged things like "gameside sucks why should I care". LC of course has full autonomy on what MoE proposes but I don't think we will run into any major disagreements since I see that they care about promoting various activities in our region to newcomers, which pretty much aligns with what MoE does.

Do you feel the best effort was made to make the Integration Department of the Ministry of Regional Affairs succeed? If not, what could have been done better?

[Vietnam] MoRA's current approach to integration is pretty much pet projects as far as I am aware. The wiki project is handled by Rabbitz, I handle the dispatch project, and so on. The Minister has no detailed plans on what they should do regarding this area. It is just people who have time do their works. There has been more coordinated effort like the welcome committee before but it fell apart due to poor planning and misunderstanding in how integration works. What could have been better in my opinion, is to actually have a detailed plan for it. Like what projects you will run, how you will keep them run for years,... Central coordination is very important for a small community of people (yes it is small since it is a niche game) to actually achieve something, each going by themselves simply doesn't work at this small scale. Many MoRA campaigns I have seen simply didn't go enough into the details on integration, they just felt too generic and too ambiguous. Even if they tried, their post would be very long.

Have you tried to lead the Integration Department in the past and address the issues that you have listed?

[Vietnam] I have been serving as Deputy Minister of Integration since the near-end of Seraph's term. Unfortunately I pretty much have been focusing only on my own project since I don't really have a big plan to radically change how the department works at that point plus the appointment happened during one of the most busy time of my life (Asian college entrance exams aren't fun). The sitting between unlimited freedom while still under a minister is somewhat discouraging to enact any major change as this will have to be relayed to the minister who already has dozens of other things to care about. With the creation of a ministry dedicated to integration and a lot of free time to have during these months, I can finally find some actual motivation to come up with a grand plan and not just my own project.

Desserts are a contentious issue in the region. Do you prefer cake or pie?

[Vietnam] Cake of course. Pie sucks.

Closing Statement

[Vietnam] The campaign policies is certainly ambitious and I really do want everyone to lower their expectation as I am a mortal human being and not some 24/7-working AI but our mission here is to build a strong enough base so future leaders can build upon, a reasonable number of policies being done this term alone is a major success. There is no such thing as a too big ambition though provided enough time, commitment, and the will to search for new knowledge and ideas to find the golden path to walk on.

I hope everyone can understand my views and intentions more through this excellent interview! Love with your heart and use your brain for anything else (including voting)! (Will be very happy if someone can get this reference)

This concludes the October 2020 Minister of Engagement Interview. Thank you Vietnam for participating and thank you to our audience for attending. See you at the polls!

The South Pacific Independent News Network (SPINN) is an independent news organisation established in 2003 with the goal of providing good, insightful and timely commentary on regional events for the citizens of the South Pacific. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board. Content is published via pseudonyms. The SPINN is not associated with the Government of the South Pacific.