State of the Org — December 2017
Writer’s Note: From this month forward, the intros will be skipped when it comes to transcribing, and in place of that introduction, the person(s) speaking will be written at the head of each article.
Those present in this month’s State of the Org:
Evan Hirsh, President
Ron Dodge, Production Manager
Jerseys
Ron: Last time you heard about them, they were in a design phase, and they had been all semester. That was not because we were still iterating designs, it was just because we had a rough time getting through administration and getting connections set up with a bunch of different creators of these professional esports jerseys. I’ll let you all know now that it is confirmed that we have now gone into the process with MetaThreads and we are currently working back and forth, making small nitpicky iterations of the jersey to get them done in the next week or two, so soon. January release date, expect it.
Evan: That’s awesome, I remember [2017] I was at PAX East and I saw a MetaThreads booth and the first thing I thought was “How awesome would it be if we make jerseys with these guys?” so I’m really thrilled that this is actually happening. It’s something that everybody’s wanted for a while and we actually have a concrete release month. It’s awesome.
Ron: It took us all semester. We only started emailing MetaThreads last August (/s)
Evan: Yup, it’s been a long and arduous process, that we’ve had to wait a while to get on their list and then we’ve had to work with Golisano in order to make sure we have the right funding to MetaThreads to get everything good to go, but now everything’s good and set. I’m real excited about that.
Crowdfunding/Fundraiser
Evan: We’ve been working with campus departments on the fundraiser, we’ve been given a tutorial of how the fundraising system works, I’m going to try to work with Zach, our treasurer, on it in the near future, and we’re going to put more time into this fundraiser, let it gestate a little bit. Right now the main thing that’s putting our fundraiser on hold is the lack of a video, which in order to use the fundraising system that we would need to use, we actually need a video, so we’d rather wait, make sure we’re putting out a good video, [so] we’re starting this fundraiser off on the right foot. Another thing, I had a meeting with the fundraising department at RIT, and I learned a bit about how the system works. Everyone in our club should basically register for it and get their own fundraising page. They get to customize that page with what they want and that page is shared by the individual person. It’s not just as easy as clicking a retweet, but it allows a lot for us. It allows us to tell where donations are coming from, what teams are helping our fundraiser, etc. which in turn helps us decide where to allocate funding. If a team isn’t just gonna share the fundraiser and isn’t really gonna participate in it, then that’s that. This isn’t really a punishment or anything like that, but it’s just more or less participation means that we’re going to kinda help your team in the future. So that’s a big effort and it’s going to be hopefully launched sometime in the spring semester.
Fall Semester Recap
Bad:
Evan on the topic of President on Co-Op; hard to manage the org, not a great setup for President, couldn’t make meetings with our higher-ups (ex. Chad)
Ron on the topic of Management Structure/Support Teams; Didn’t hit that “professional standard” this semester, problem arose from oversight and didn’t quite get fixed due to full schedules for most of management, support teams were easy to join, was good for opportunities for others, not good to get things done. Hard to find that medium ground to have an open environment & get work done at the same time. Community/Tech team never took off. Restructuring of support teams in spring semester, will be talked about in management as well as in the support teams. Poor communication often within teams as well as between the teams and management. Google Calendar created to allow for easier communication. Games can be listed there, support team presence can be requested with the aid of the calendar.
Good:
Evan on the topic of Promotion; Promotion was extremely effective, built really strong teams in existing esports and added new teams for Hearthstone, Smash, Smite, PUBG. Created heavy awareness of our presence on campus, 600 Discord members. More events, such as Fireside Gatherings, which were huge successes.
Evan on the topic of Streams; More streaming coming, Rocket League Open last semester, Spring open this coming semester, Overwatch tournament. Decently well done streams for what we had. League of RIT as well as many CS:GO streams, casting personalities developing. Players from some teams casting. Created in-org apparatus to cast and produce games. Will be much smoother with more communication. Filled gaps in community team.
Evan on the topic of Medium; Added last semester, can find under “News” tab on our site, want to get more people to write such as players and people in the organization, if interested in writing on Medium for RIT Esports, talk to Evan, Ron, or William, the community manager.
Things we can’t do much/anything about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯:
Evan on the topic of Golisano; Busy people, have to get things approved, remind Golisano of things a lot.
Evan on the topic of December; Finals, academics before club lead to less productivity, hard to get many things done during break because people don’t want to work on stuff.
What We’re Doing Spring Semester
Evan: So first off, we’re doing a big support team push. We’re advertising the community team in Saunders, we’re advertising for Production team in Booth and other arts buildings, and we’re advertising for the Tech team in Golisano. The base idea is we’re going to reach out to people whose majors and passions would be perfect for our teams, and try to pull them into our teams. We’re gonna try to find more of a balance, we’re gonna be less of a class, more of a team of people who are interested in learning and developing, as Ron said earlier, but also have existing skillsets that they want to grow and existing portfolios. I’m hoping that we could get this stuff done around the time we get back, pretty close to it. Hopefully, once we build those teams, we can actually get stuff done, because support teams are generally a pretty big part of how we do things as an organization, such as team photos with jerseys, a new website that’s easier for managers to update and change teams so that Ron and I aren’t the only two people doing it. That’s the idea, we kinda wanted to branch out responsibilities to a lot of managers so that they have the ability to update their teams so that team pages don’t get left in the dust. Also, defining manager roles is something we’re gonna do, specifically how they interface with our support teams in the constitution to make sure managers are getting their games either streamed on our Twitch channel, or promoting where they already are being streamed by a third party. We don’t really care whether or not the game is on our Twitch channel or someone else’s as long as it’s being streamed. We’re also going to get that fundraiser done and make sure that fundraiser is happening. C A S H M O N E Y. That’s something else we’re going to be doing, so, excited to finally get some solid funding for the org. This is more of a stretch goal, but merchandising with Meta and getting our store up and running. The more people walking around campus with our merch, the better. And, week one I’m running into Chad’s office and getting Twitch Affiliate done so we can make a bit of money off that. More importantly, Ritchie emotes on Twitch.
Ideas
Cancelling streamer program on our Twitch channel; Isn’t what we expected, drastic difference between our actual content and other streamers. Keep follower count high and average views high.
Weekly mandatory manager meetings; Have become much more necessary than previously, all managers, coaches, admins required to attend regularly unless there is a conflict (should probably talk to Evan if this is the case), would then post an admin update.
Podcast; Weekly or Bi-weekly, interviewing players, coaches, managers, talking about the states of collegiate and pro esports
Proposed Changes for support teams will come and will be talked about to teams by managers.
Q & A // Evan Only
Q: Will Ritchie get an update anytime soon?
A: Probably not, unless others know Python. When we build a tech team, maybe they will be able to salvage it.
Q: can I have a puppy?
A: No, No puppies allowed at RIT Esports. Sorry about that.
Q: community gaming things?
A: So, good question. Earlier I talked about events, the events that we did do, community gaming things is something I want to build up, but that’s also kinda the community team’s job. So that’s a possibility in the future, I want to do more community events where our teams have the ability to play with our community, where our teams are showcased more to the community rather than you just seeing them play or chatting with them in Discord. That’ll be real nice.
Q: Why League, why?
A: Esports intramurals are something that we work pretty heavily with, not technically part of RIT Esports, but we more or less pretty heavily run them. Every semester we do a different game and in the Spring semester we are doing League of Legends. The reason we’re doing League of Legends is, well there’s a few reasons. One, League of Legends has a pretty solid turnout. We did it [Spring 2017], we got a pretty solid turnout, it was rather successful. [Fall 2017] we did Overwatch and the turnout wasn’t that great going into the later months of the intramurals, not to mention that Overwatch is not a free game, and the people who play Overwatch, the interest we have for Overwatch, is spread out across multiple platforms where it is not in League. So right now we’re going back to League as a safe bet for an intramural league that‘s going to be successful and popular, and in the fall we’re going to move to Rocket League, I’m pretty sure. So get excited for that one.
Q: are intramural signups available yet?
A: Yes they are! (Site: imleagues.com but it’s also kinda broken)
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