Sann0638 – 6 weeks in

It’s been about a month since the last blog, so let’s have a look at what has happened since then. First up, we have appointed a new Vice-President and Membership Director. The MD post has changed hands a couple of times in the last 6 months, as Valdric stepped down in Autumn after many years of service, and his replacement was not able to continue for personal reasons. Manuel Garcia Martinez (Lordillo) has now taken up the post, and will hopefully be around for a while! Lordillo has responsibility for dealing with the sign up process and despatch of gifts, via the network of NAF Co-ordinators, and looking after any membership queries.

The post of Vice-President was also difficult to find the right person for, as Dave had been doing the job for nine years! It is an interesting position as on a day-to-day basis there are no specific responsibilities, so if someone were to come to the NAF and say “I want help with this, who should I speak to”, the answer will very seldom be the VP (apart from at election time…). The VP does however, similarly to the President, need to be in touch with all the different projects going on with the NAF, and in regular contact with Committee and members. He will also deal with special projects, and so Torsten Blatter (Tojurub) should be a good fit as he has been involved with the NAF for a long time, including standing for Treasurer, and has been dealing with setting up the Tournament Series.

Finally on the staffing side, Lucas Lebielle (Elyoukey) has been appointed Webmaster, and there have been various rearrangements of NAF Co-ordinators around the world. It would be nice to say that the staff will now be stable for a while, but with two more elections looming this isn’t necessarily the case!

In addition to dealing with NAF staff, I have also been getting to grips with the different processes that the NAF has in place, including how payments and signups are managed, how the gifts are produced and sent out and looking again at producing replacement tournament software. This is all part of the NAF Review that I am carrying out into how the NAF works and how it should work, which will incorporate all the different threads that we have had over the past few years, as well as fresh feedback from those involved in NAF business.

I also have regular contact with Cyanide and GW, including us providing sponsorship to Cyanide’s BB World Cup, and making offers of help to GW for their upcoming tournament at Warhammer World.  I’ve also been working with the staff of the NAF Championship to ensure that the flagship tournament is once again as good as it can be (including the Duel competition, for which I’ve done another entry, entitled “A Fezglitch in the Matrix”).

For the moment however, I am now looking forward to Bubba Bowl, my first tournament of the year and my first as President – in a warm up game against my 9 nine year old son he leapt in with a gutter runner, casualtied my skink ball carrier, scooped up the ball and dodged out to score, so I don’t have particularly high hopes of success. Should be fun though!

Mike (sann0638)