Now that we’re past Christmas and heading into the new year, it’s time to review what we’ve done this past year, and where we’re going. 2014 was certainly an interesting year, and below are a few things that occurred.
The democracy experiment
The corp entered 2014 as a democracy that began in 2013, allowing shareholders the right to vote on any corp activity. Early in 2014, however, it ended. The experiment didn’t result in anything positive happening for the corp, so I returned it to the benevolent dictatorship that works so well with so many corps in Eve.
A new blog
Along with a new year came a new blog. Prior to the Touring New Eden blog being created, I was providing updates on my own personal blog, and it was decided to focus all writing into this blog instead. It would be for Black Claw (main) and Alexia Morgan (alt) to write their adventures, as well as to provide information for the corp.
The Eve Online community
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed is promoting the other bloggers within the Eve community. To that end, I created what you see in the sidebar to the left: Latest from other Eve blogs. Every time an Eve blog is updated with a new post it’s listed there. Of course, I have to manually add new blogs to it, so if your Eve blog isn’t there, let me know and I’ll add it.
New career experiments
In my spare time (when I’m not doing corp or alliance administration) I’ve done a lot of travelling around, and a lot of sitting around. None of that made me any money, so I thought I’d try a few experiments to see if anything else I could do would be profitable as a career choice. At first I tried to be a Strategic Advisor, offering services to corps and alliances as a strategic advisor, but that didn’t work out very well. Then I tried offering tours through nullsec, but no one was interested in that either.
So I explored another option providing bookmarking services. That one became very popular! I ended up having a backlog of clients waiting for me to get to them on the list so I could do bookmarks for them. Unfortunately, life got in the way, as it often does, and I had to discontinue it because I just didn’t have the time to dedicate to it. But if/when I do have the time again, that could certainly be a very lucrative career choice.
When we won a war
As a pacifist corp in a pacifist alliance, whenever we’re wardec’d it’s usually by highsec wardec griefers looking for easy kills. There’s nothing easier than PVE pacifists that won’t fight back, that’s for sure, so we get our fair share of wardecs. For the first time ever, however, we actually won a war because of our pacifism. Ongoing communication over a few days with the enemy CEO ended up with him feeling guilty and surrendering. That doesn’t happen too often, but it was a rewarding time. The enemy CEO became a friend. Pacifism can work – occasionally.
Approaching the end of 2014
As we near the end of 2014 I look back on this year and think that so much happened, and yet so little happened! I spent a great deal of it distracted by my life. I was trying to find a new job for a long time, and moved cities (from Canberra to Melbourne) and looked for work there too, but failed. I ended up getting a new job mid year back in Canberra so my wife and I ended up moving back here again. For most of the year it was somewhat chaotic, all over the place, and often with no stable internet access.
But it’s settling down again now, and I’m looking to where the corp is going next.
What to look forward to in 2015
Guest authors for this blog
Back in 2013 I experimented with a new Eve blogging community, but it didn’t go very far. There was a lot of resistance to my attempts to bring the Eve blogging community together via a single portal website. Most Eve bloggers wanted to maintain their separate blogs, independent of each other, so my attempts failed. So moving into 2015, I have a new idea.
The Touring New Eden website is going to be a home for any Touring New Eden corp members to be guest authors and writing about their experiences, thoughts or observations. It’ll be for those who don’t want their own blog, but still have something they want to say.
If it becomes popular enough, I’ll open it up to the alliance, and I’ll turn this website into a magazine style website that splits content into sections based on topic or author. I think that could be pretty cool – a website for the alliance.
And if THAT becomes popular, then I’ll open it up to all Eve Online players to become guest authors if they want to.
But it has to gather momentum and be something that people are writing for, and that other people are visiting. If it never gains traction, then it’ll stay as it is.
200 corp members
I had a goal during 2014 to reach 200 members. The highest we got to in 2013 was just over 150 members, so I know it’s possible. I just didn’t have the focus this year that was needed. I’d like to change that for 2015, and focus on a recruitment campaign to get more people involved. 200 members is the goal for 2015.
Corp activities
The corp mantra and membership philosophy is ‘do your own thing, in your own way, in your own time. Just don’t PVP.’ As a result, the corp is filled with members who enjoy solo PVE activities – their own thing, in their own time. It’s what I enjoy doing too, which is why I made a corp for it.
But there’s also a few people that enjoy catching up with others and engaging in fleet activities for mining and missions. I’m going to provide more opportunities for corp and alliance members to get together and form fleets.
Wartime Operations Training
Touring New Eden provides training material for members to travel safely through nullsec. We also provide a policies and tips manual for all the alliance members to become familiar with, to help them continue their operations safely even when at war. Well, as safe as any operations are in New Eden…
In 2015 I’m going to start creating more of a formal structure around the wartime operations manual, and turn it into a training guide, similar to what we do with nullsec survival training. Providing some kind of reward at the end of the training would help create incentive for pilots to participate and learn.
Currently we provide medals for corp members who ‘graduate’ from the nullsec survival training. I’m thinking of doing something similar for wartime operations training, but I have to work out how to apply similar incentives to those who aren’t actually members of the corp. I’ll ponder that.
Happy New Year
Despite my plans and thoughts about 2014 and moving into 2015, I want to wish you all a very happy new year. Just like we’re all playing Eve Online, we’re all heading into 2015 together. We all have our own stories, and our own goals (maybe you can share yours in the comments below). I hope that 2014 has been a good year for you, and I wish you all the very best for 2015.
