DISC Councilor's Report, July 4, 2005

Council deliberations are confidential, but what I am doing as your representative is not.

If you've been wondering what the holdup has been with the Council, I'm it.

You should know that I have been at the center of what I now consider to have been an unnecessary distraction for the Council that has slowed it to a crawl for the first three weeks of its existence.

While I don't apologize for expressing my opinions, I do apologize for going down the wrong track in Council and wasting a lot of people's time, including that of my fellow Councilors, their assistants and the senior staff, as well.

The short, short version is that I felt a formal infrastructure was necessary for the Council to function effectively as a group, and pushed hard for one -- too hard.

I also had some gross misconceptions about my role as a Councilor, particularly with regard to DISC, and those have resulted in some false starts and unnecessary wheel-spinning.

I'm learning as I go, and so far, I have been an unusually slow learner. The slowest kid in class, in fact.

That said, I want to report to you what is going on in my areas of responsibility.

DISC

I have asked Mirthful Me to take a leading role in DISC on behalf of the DISC Councilor team, which is something he already does by virtue of his contributions there. While specific DISC issues are confidential, I thought you should know that MM will be focusing on DISC, and is the “go-to monkey” for DISC-related issues.

Debate Forum

Debates are back in business, and I have asked BlackJackal to work with Amorymeltzer and Nygdan, the Debate Forum moderators, on the future of debates and how they will be handled.

I don't expect the current rounds of debates to be affected, but it's not too early to start working on the next phase.

Collaborative Fiction

I'm soliciting member input on CF, and plan to distill that input into a first proposal for presentation to the senior staff. The details can be found in this thread:

Discusion: The Future Of The Collaborative Fiction Forum

Guest Speaker Events

I'm leaving this alone for now, until I have a clearer understanding of what goes on behind the guest speaker curtain and have some experience presenting proposals to the senior staff under my belt.

Once that happens, I will be sure to consult with you, my fellow members, about how we can liven up guest speaker events and get the most out of them.

Summary

That's basically it for now. “Councilor training” has been interesting, but frankly about the only thing I've learned from it is that I need to spend more time talking to members and less time talking to Councilors.

As always, I welcome your questions or comments on anything I've covered -- or overlooked -- here.

Sincerely yours,

Majic
ATS DISC Councilor