Thoughts on working with the NEG?

[Kaipurrr]

Hello all!

So I am good friends with the New England Garrison's CO and he is really into getting everyone working together in the region. He has worked at integrating the 501^st, Rebel Legion and the Mandalorian Mercs into one big group working together to share the responsibilities and events. We were chatting and he is open to thoughts on integrating the CTG into the NEG. I wasn???t in the group at the time, but he explained the split happened mostly because of some bad blood(?) and would like to put that behind us and move forward now that we have so many new members. The NEG includes the Lil Rhody Squad and the Green Mountain Squad, that are their own little clans but have the added benefit of being part of the main group.

So basically the benefits would be, a bigger events team to be able to find and sign up for more events. Also more members in the New England area would be aware of the troops in Connecticut and would volunteer more. People are willing to travel to many of the other states, so I bet you would see more willing to troop down here. PR would be bigger, budgets would be bigger, etc.

However, it would mean changes to CTG staffing and merch???.so there is that.

??I know recently it has been happening more often and we would really like to reach out more to open the boundaries and help each other out to get more people interested in troops down here.

So yeah, long story short, just passing on the message of the thoughts we were bouncing around the other day, and we were interested in what you guys might think ??

Not here to start drama, or feel like they are trying to make a hostile takeover, lol, just wanted to send out feelers and see what people were thinking.

Edited September 24, 2019 by Kaipurrr

[Alay]

It's something we've discussed with various levels of seriousness on command staff the past couple years.?? I remember getting a temperature check from Brian last year on the idea of remerging as a squad.

There's huge benefits to working as a single unit, like easier organization and more cross promotion.

There's also several explicit drawbacks though.?? Loss of 2 council votes being the first; because each Garrison gets 2 votes regardless of size, the CTG has some of the most powerful votes by representative size in the legion.?? Additionally the many additional merchandise slots would be gone.?? Branding would also all need to change if we're no longer a Garrison.?? Though ironically we used the Conn Squad name for many years while never even really being a squad.

The tradeoffs are numerous and shouldn't be overlooked.?? In the current, cross promoting events has been helping.?? The Rhode island squad posts many major events here and vice versa.?? We also have been operating under effectively "all welcome open invitation" since start of 2018, so members wanting to sign up to CTG events from other groups are welcome.

There's also a sense of identity with being in your own stand alone Garrison, and many like that.????

Not shooting down the idea please understand; I'm personally in favor of a remerge especially if our numbers end up dwindling.?? Many times last year I wondered why we even continued to exist as a solo entity.?? But there's benefits to both and it would be a process we definitely need to think through and weigh the feelings of many with

[Chewy]

Thank you for your post, @Kaipurrr.This is something Sarah and I have spoken about this a few times of the course of the last year or so.

Here are the pros and cons for merging as I see them.

Pros:

• Greater available pool of resources, both human (as potential staff members and prop-makers) and physical resources (props, table displays, printed materials, etc). Having experienced hands around (that want to get involved) getting people trained and enthusiastic about supporting the Legion is important.??
• Better social integration between groups. I know when I started with the CTG I wasn't really made aware that there existed a group in the rest of New England, and certainly wasn't encouraged to socialise outside of the Garrison. This is especially the case with regards to the Rebel Legion and the Mandalorian Mercenaries Costuming Club.
• A wider range of interesting events for CTG members to be aware of and get involved in, especially in southern MA and in RI.??

Cons:

• Our branding (what we have of it), name, and organisation would change drastically. We'd obviously be using NEG branding, would have to change our name to reflect a downgrade in status, and we'd lose much of our autonomy to staff our own operations and produce merchandise.
• Reverting to a squad means we lose 2 voting seats on the Legion Council. Right now the CTG is ridiculously over-represented for our relatively small size - Andy and I are full voting members, and Sarah (as a non-voting representative of the First Imperial Stormtrooper Detachment) is also present. We effectively have more eyes on the discussions right now than most Garrisons many times our member-count.
• We'd also be dealing with the associated politics and drama of another group that we're mostly unfamiliar with. I'm good enough friends with plenty of NEG people to suspect we'd be welcomed, but there's still some uncertainty there.

Speaking as our Commanding Officer, if there was a desire to integrate in the future, I would be open to exploring it. There are some aspects of our current operation that I feel are not sustainable and we would benefit from the additional resources integration would bring. Preserving our identity would be foremost on my mind, however.

??

I'd like to think that we live in a different time now than we did when Connecticut split many years ago.

[Jimbo]

I think the CT501st is fine as we are ,??where we are and with who we are. I see no need to change this.

I would leave the garrison if we become one large entity.

Just my 2 cents...

Edited September 13, 2019 by Jimbo

[Kaipurrr]

Thanks for breaking it all down, it all makes complete sense and we very much appreciate your thoughts! Again it was mainly just a question out of curiosity and they just wanted to let you know you are still considered a good ally?? And if there is anything moving forward that you guys want to collaborate with or even just pass on troop offers, they are more than welcome!! Thank you again!

[Alay]

What we certainly should do either way is make it easier and more intuitive to have cross-garrison events/signups.?? One thing I've been trying to get the Legion web masters to consider is OAuth between multiple IPS forums.?? Since the NEG and the CTG use the same software, we can probably set it up to use the same credentials.?? Maybe even have an "ambassador" on each board that can post events directly... I'll reach out the NEG web team and see what we can do

[jimsprenkle]

6 hours ago, Jimbo said:

I think the CT501st is fine as we are ,??where we are and with who we are. I see no need to change this.

I would leave the garrison if we become one large entity.

Just my 2 cents...

Same here

[Depeche25]

I like both options one I like that the neg would have more events to go to and with my schedule it's hard to do events. But on the other hand I like the small group that we are?? we have our own identify.??

[jimsprenkle]

There is nothing wrong with cross posting and getting more troopers from up there to come down and having us go up there. That???s a great idea but if the command decides to merge and become one group I???m done. I know why we split up and if we rejoin it takes basically a slap in the founding fathers of the CTG.??

Just saying I???m good in the small group and I mean no offense to anyone with what I say just voicing my opinion about it

[Halfrek]

If someone in the CTG wants to be in the NEG why not just transfer? If someone from the NEG wants to troop with the CTG awesome! It???s very easy to request forum access and sign up to events. I don???t think anyone here has a problem sharing our sandbox. If you want access to more events you can do the same thing with the NEG or any??garrison in the legion.??I just trooped with Garrison Carida and had a blast. The CTG has been around for 15 years now and some of us have pride in the fact that we have our own identity. I think we can work with all garrisons in surrounding regions not just the NEG without losing OUR Garrison in the process.??

[Alay]

Some good news, the NEG Webmaster is on board with playing around and trying to get cross garrison sign on functionality.?? That means new folks don't need to register on the other's boards; just click the "Sign In with CTG / NEG" button, log in to the OTHER corresponding portal, and voila!

I'll update once we get it a-rolling

[Backpacks Got Jets]

21 hours ago, Alay said:

Some good news, the NEG Webmaster is on board with playing around and trying to get cross garrison sign on functionality.?? That means new folks don't need to register on the other's boards; just click the "Sign In with CTG / NEG" button, log in to the OTHER corresponding portal, and voila!

I'll update once we get it a-rolling

Well that's a nifty trick

[Swiftcloud]

I wonder, would the number of NEG troops count towards our home garrison troops?

[Alay]

1 hour ago, Swiftcloud said:

I wonder, would the number of NEG troops count towards our home garrison troops?

Not without code changes and handshakes.?? Currently we only track RSVP-able events that have been archived.

[macloed316]

Technically if you wanted a troop that we are hosting in NEG to show up on your tracker here all you have to do is just created an event on your calendar for the same day and heading and then just rsvp to it. It???s what we have done for troops we???ve been a part of down with you all

[Wildcardz]

On 9/18/2019 at 3:59 PM, Alay said:

Some good news, the NEG Webmaster is on board with playing around and trying to get cross garrison sign on functionality.?? That means new folks don't need to register on the other's boards; just click the "Sign In with CTG / NEG" button, log in to the OTHER corresponding portal, and voila!

I'll update once we get it a-rolling

??

Wow, you can do that?? Must be some kind of magic trick with the masters of webs.

??

[Madxena]

I keep track of my troops. I know I have done 18 for CTG (even though it says 15 have to figure out why) and 3 for NEG. So I don???t see why they would have to all total up on one forum. I think if we can do the Web thing it will open up so much more for us as a garrison. I like our garrison. I would not want to see a merge. We can ???merge??? on our own by signing up and doing more cross troops.??

??

[Swiftcloud]

17 hours ago, Madxena said:

I keep track of my troops. I know I have done 18 for CTG (even though it says 15 have to figure out why) and 3 for NEG. So I don???t see why they would have to all total up on one forum. I think if we can do the Web thing it will open up so much more for us as a garrison. I like our garrison. I would not want to see a merge. We can ???merge??? on our own by signing up and doing more cross troops.??

??

I???m at 14 troops, with 4??being from NEG. But my profile here only says 8 troops. Should say 10. ??Somehow 2 from CTG are not accounted for.

http://thebhg.net/forum/index.php?/topic/5399-swiftcloud-bh-57766-tales-of-the-hunt/&tab=comments#comment-62578

But merging the websites would be a nightmare. Sarah has done some amazing things for our site. And I don???t like the way the NEG site is set up. Difficult to navigate through the forums.

??I like the idea of collaborating with more NEG events, but we shouldn???t give up our identity as the CTG. -my opinion.

[Alay]

20 hours ago, Madxena said:

I know I have done 18 for CTG (even though it says 15 have to figure out why)

??

3 hours ago, Swiftcloud said:

I???m at 14 troops, with 4??being from NEG. But my profile here only says 8 troops. Should say 10. ??Somehow 2 from CTG are not accounted for.

??

I explained a bit on how it works here:??

Simply put, an event needs to be validated by Event Coordination team, then moved to the Archive, before the nightly processing picks up and updates the count.?? I'm working on a GUI to do it, but the process (which I think I've done 99% of if not all of) is to go into the Confirmed Event and remove/update any RSVP list to the folks that actually attended, then move it to the Archive.

tl;dr if an event is still in the Confirmed calendar and not the Archive, it isn't counted yet ?? But it will be.

??

[Swiftcloud]

14 hours ago, Alay said:

??

tl;dr if an event is still in the Confirmed calendar and not the Archive, it isn't counted yet ?? But it will be.

??

So, is that done automatically after a certain amount of time? Or does someone in the Event Coordinator Team ??have to manually archive the event? Maybe they just forget to finish up the process?

??For example, the Terrificon (from 8/9/19 over a month and a half)??event is still in the confirmed events and not archived. Is that because it hasn???t been long enough time since the event has ended? Or is it just waiting for someone to hit the archive button?

??Just curious. It???s not really super important that the troop tracker amount is currently accurate. It???s just that when I see the number growing higher, it gives me a better sense of accomplishment. It???s a pride thing, I guess. Especially for us that are newer to the Legion.

[Alay]

Right now there's three steps to the process (it's mostly manual):

1. Update the RSVP listing to the folks that attended in the correct spots for the system to pick up (501st costumes go to "Going", RL/Merc/Wranglers/Etc go to the "maybe" column, and people that didn't attend get dropped from signups.)
2. Event is then moved to the archive forum.
3. Nightly at like 2am or whenever I scheduled the azure web job it hits and end point on the API, which starts nomming up the data from the IPS and figures out what's different, then updates member Troops flag on their profiles with any deltas.

2 and 3 are simple/automated, but 1 is kind of a pain with the IPS UI.?? I've been mostly manually and periodically doing it myself as part of upkeep.?? But soon??? there'll be a smooth ez web page to make the step 1 a breeze.?? Now that my work disaster is over I'll see if I can crank out the rest of that tonight

[Madxena]

Thanks for explaining it Sarah. Now I understand. Yes Pride thing for me too. Trooper Pride.??

[Alay]

As mentioned in the facebook chat; I got the audit tool working today (being sick and stuck inside leads to being productive I guess) so expect better turnaround on that stat being updated