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Hark! Icrontic's first Board of Trustees
As part of ongoing preparations for the Helium Wars, we've taken steps to ensure the continuity of our command structure. Please stand by for—
ahem. What I meant to say—
We've been working on a transition plan for moving the community from a private-ownership structure to a board-led structure. It's not about making big changes to the community, it's about creating a more predictable power structure & accountability that doesn't rest on one person's shoulders. We were all set to nominate our Board when I realized we had a chicken-and-egg problem. If we're trying to move to a less owner-centric model, isn't a bit weird to hand-pick the entire board without more input? On the other hand, we haven't even defined "membership" yet, and auditable elections would be an administrative nightmare on top of that.
Our solution? Form a minimum "first" Board to select the rest of the Board.
I am pleased to announce that as of last night (20 Mar 2024) around 8PM ET that Icrontic is no longer a privately-owned endeavor and, in fact, has a Board of Trustees. The inaugural members are myself (Lincoln Russell), @primesuspect (Brian Ambrozy), and @Sazbean (Sarah Worsham). We'll be choosing at least 2 additional Board members to be officially seated at the start of the annual term (per the bylaws), 1 August.
We met at La Palma in Detroit and signed the official paperwork. A bonus unimpressed @Pink is also included.
To do this bit of legal gymnastics, we added an Article 8 to the charter, establishing how we made the transition.
As there's still no legal club entity this is all symbolic, but I think it's an important one. Icrontic no longer has co-owners, it has a Board of Trustees. May it provide another 25 years of fun and shenanigans. Cheers!
Re: Dune - What am I missing?
Its not for you.? I have never been able to read Dune because it was too dry for me but I do really enjoy those types of universes, BattleTech and 40k, even if I don't actively participate in them.
For me I enjoyed the movie over all because it felt like they totally nailed the universe. A feudal galaxy that can move slowly and grind the population of an entire planet up for power and control because people are just another resource to exploit but on a planetary scale. The story of Dune is one where multiple factions that have been planning for something over 1,000s of years are getting dunked on hard. I don't feel like I am gonna sell you on it but its the kind of high level aspects that really interest me regarding the long plot. Like 40k where a planet decides to not pay tribute and they think their freedom is true but in reality the paper work hasn't gotten high enough up in reports to warrant a space marine squad or inquisitor to show up and murder the entire ruling class and replace them. The grander scale of a galactic empires that have funky quirks in how they would operate due to scale and time is my interest.
I hate Blade Runner, original movie, but the book really pulled me in.
Re: A path to an Icrontic Board of Trustees
Hello friends, I'm back with an update.
The transition team was appointed and began its work on 26 Feb. I really appreciated the amount of interest we got; we only ended up selecting less than half the folks who put their name in the hat so we could keep the group small and focused. Our transition team included, in addition to Brian and I: @GnomeQueen @BobbyDigi @Sazbean @Garg @Annes and @Winfrey.
I'm excited to announce we concluded our work in late August, having produced an initial charter for the establishment of a Board of Trustees.
The goal of the charter is to create a basic framework for oversight and serve as a legal tool for governance. It's purposefully vague on a number of things, like how things will be managed day-to-day. That's up to the future board to decide!
In the end, we chose a Social Club (a legal definition under the IRS) as the best way to organize formally. If you choose to examine the charter, you'll notice there are references to defining membership and membership dues. These are legal necessities; it's not foreshadowing that we're going to start charging money to be on the Discord server, or anything like that.
We paid a special amount of attention to defining what this community represents, so we could define that to the best of our ability in the charter. This is what we came up with:
Icrontic curates experiences in gaming, hobbies, self-care, and mutual support. Icrontic values being an inclusive and welcoming community.
It's very difficult to retroactively define a 20-year old community, and I'm proud of the effort and care the transition team put into succinctly defining it while being neither overly broad nor needlessly exclusive.
Beyond governing itself, one of the most important sections of the charter is the establishment of committees. Icrontic already has a few standing committees: Admins, Moderation, and Expo Planning. Eventually, these will be formally set by the board, and the board will govern (or delegate) their membership. Building processes around this will make it clearer how to participate in a committee, what the rules are, and how to make changes.
The initial board will be set by Brian and I, and will be self-sustaining thereafter, choosing its own replacements. There are no term limits in the charter, but we do specify 2-year terms to create a logical time for folks to retire. And of course, the board is free to change this process at any point in the future by amending the charter, which is also defined in the document.
I’m happy to answer any question you have about the charter publicly or privately. I do ask that you take a moment to read the entire document first and consider it; it’s a bit more complex than it initially seems.
My hope is to open nominations for the board soon and have a board seated by Expo and ready to begin their inaugural term on 1 August. We’ll share a form for you to nominate yourself or another Icrontian (with their consent, please) and then we’ll conduct brief interviews before selecting a final slate and announcing it to the community.
Thanks for your patience as we worked through this process, your daily support in making this community a desirable place to be, and especially to the transition team to their months of effort earlier this year. As we look forward to our 20th Expo, we’re as strong as we’ve ever been. I hope this charter gives us the tools to grow even further.
Re: _K's krazy krash kourse of KATastrophe
Stray (5.4 hours): Alright I got outside but I want to go back in. Probably about a 3/7 for me, expecting a bit more. Very basic platforming since its on rails plus you just run around every where looking for stuff. The only hard parts are finding everything since some memories or soda machines are stuck sort of not where you would expect but the fact you can just spam X/A in a lot of places to see where you can go doesn't make it that difficult. Also the plot seems a bit weird for getting the cat out of the city when it was living with its family in the city like did I play a game where a cat got caught up in a political revolution and it is one of the unintended causalities?
Games Completed: 200
Time: 15 weeks 95.4 hours
Re: _K's krazy krash kourse of KATastrophe
Maneater(10.6 hours) - 100% on this game for the base version. Game looked fun when I heard about it but I didn't buy it on launch and then within a month it was free on Epic...sweeeeeet. Started playing the game right before and during EXPO which was fun and I did enjoy it though it felt hard to play more than an hour or two straight since you are a shark doing missions and there is very little variance; go here kill these or swim around and find POIs.
The game is a mocumentary style TV show following a shark hunter and shark as they battle it out in the swap lands. Everything is over the top but it really adds to the feel of the game since there are times you have to hop around on land to eat people and munch on a sign post. There are different classes of missions to perform in each region of the map and completing things helps unlock other missions which eventually give you enough resources to evolve/upgrade or unlock new mutations for the shark.
Since you are a shark and the game is not a pure skill based game as you go through you can modify or upgrade the mods on your shark either making you really tough, drop poison around you, or electrocute things. Do enough and you can unlock the entire set for an added bonus. This is useful and also a by-product if you normally work on completing all the missions and this is really needed to complete the final boss fight along with some of the toughest animals like a mad orca or a white sperm whale. The map for sure understands its meta needs and plays to it but a narrator talks the entire time and quickly runs out of lines to cover the very generic actions you do.
The game was a lot of fun expect for the initial grinding needed to get up to lvl 10, max lvl 30. You do get free play after beating the boss and they do a short lead into their DLC for a new side campaign but it didn't feel very compelling plus it raises the lvl cap to 40 so eh for a free game.
Games Completed: 183
Time: 12 weeks 110.6 hours
Re: _K's krazy krash kourse of KATastrophe
bitburner(1778.6 hours) - text based idle hacking game that uses js. Beat about 1/3 of all of the nodes but really just getting bored since the mechanics never really change. Kind of interesting game to understand how it works and find the better scripts for auto playing plus the strats to make your time between resets less futile.
Games Completed: 182
Time: 12 weeks 100 hours
Re: _K's krazy krash kourse of KATastrophe
Raft(17.5 hours): Calling this done as we have completed all of the story line. Pretty fun adventure, crafting survival game. You make a raft from trash you find floating in the open ocean and things you find on the occasional island you run across. There is an aggressive shark that continual attacks your boat ever X minutes. The story is very lose because it amounts to something horrible happened in the world where everything flooded and you are one of the couple of survivors. You need to build and research tools to navigate the ocean and find out what happened.
Games Completed: 181
Time: 12 weeks 95.92 hours
Re: _K's krazy krash kourse of KATastrophe
Grouned(60 hours): Played with @Massalinie and EmpireRoman through most of the game and Shaun dropped in for the last few weeks. This was all part of our normal Wednesday night gaming we do as a group. Grounded is honestly a fun exploration game because the map is sooo big that you can play the entire game while skipping or not finding whole areas of the backyard. Also the same strat doesn't carry through in all areas of the map because you have to deal with infected insects, underwater parts, burning hot areas, high DPS aggressive bugs, and the list keeps going on. The only draw back we really decided on was that the building mechanic was a little rough when compared to RAFT. Having to collect so many resources and transport them long distances is a massive time sink especially when some areas you have to build something specific to access it which requires chopping huge amounts of grass and then transporting it. Still a great fun game to play with others while slowly becoming the most dangerous life form in the backyard.
Games Completed: 188
Time: 13 weeks 162.35 hours