HA Astatine Interview

 

You have had a long and rather interesting career. Could you please summarise that for the readers?

Joined in February 1998.  Got Dean a few months later.  Annoyed lots of people.  Got TO.  Annoyed even more people.  Still TO and Dean.

 

Right now (and possible forever more), you are the Training Officer. What does the job involve doing? Is it enjoyable? Hard? Boring?

The main core of the job is marking tests, keeping an eye on the other courses, approving competitions and answering email.  Usually, there’s at least one major project also running.  At the moment this includes the EH Encyclopaedia and the EH Ladder.  There are aspects of the job that are enjoyable, like when someone like the current IO (AbsoluteK) says he learned HTML from the IIC courses.  Sometimes it’s very hard, and sometimes it is boring.

 

Why is there a Training Office? What is the point of a one, and how big an influence do you think it is on the fleet?

From memory, the TO position was made to assist the FO in ensuring the new members met the requirements laid out.  Over time, the true purpose of the TO kind of lost it’s way and fell more into the lap of the IWATS Dean.  The point is to provide training services to members.  I think the influence is very important as the TO is the training person for the entire EH, as opposed to subgroup academy people, who tend to be like their subgroups – very isolated.

 

Why did you become TO?

The job was offered to me and I took it.

 

Do you have any TO projects running now? (If so, please explain them)

The big one at the moment is the EH Encyclopaedia.  This will probably be the biggest step in EH reference works since original Training Manual.  There’s also the re-coding of the EH Ladder.  I’m toying with various ideas on a new fleet-wide competition.

 

How can members of the EH get involved in your projects?

Read reports, postings on the TIE Corps news page and on the Training Office/IWATS site (www.imperialacademy.org)

 

How is the EH Encyclopaedia project going? How close are you to completion?

The database currently has about 240 records in it.  These are mostly static, things like ranks medals, positions, etc.  At the moment, historical research is ongoing for things like the subgroups, CO positions and the like.  This will be added next.  Then checking of the validity of the data and all the cross-linking.  It’s probably about 30% done.

 

Are you going to be creating a new EH ladder soon? If so, how will it be set up and when will it start?

The ladder will probably be using a static points awarding.  This is opposed to the system where the points were determined by position.  It’s stalled a bit at the moment because I’ve been working on the Encyclopaedia but it should be up soon hopefully.

 

What other staff do you have in the Training Office? Who are they and what do they do? (like Attachés, Assistants, Professors, etc)

COL Mell is my assistant and his sole duty at this point is to update TC.org profiles.  The rest of the staff are Professors and include VA Ari, CM Flelm, MAJ Fondor, ELT Ian Jackson, CPT Aylius Khan, LCM Alex Foley, COL Scoser and LC Guthwulf.  There’s also a head of the XvT/XWA Academy position but I’m still working out whom to appoint for that.

 

How do you believe the Training Office will change in the future? Will it be improved or downsized in anyway under your influence…and will you still want to be TO in the more distant future?

Hopefully, it will improve and perhaps (dare I say it) work closer with the subgroup academies.  The main fear I have with the Training office when I leave is the next person won’t be able to handle the job.  They’ll split up TO and Dean again, farm out all the courses to other people and generally allow the possibility of cracks to creep in from more directions.  As for being TO for longer, I’d really like to get 10,000 graduates and according to an Excel projection, that’ll happen around May next year.

 

 

As well as being the Training Officer, you are also Dean of IWATS. How do you think that the IWATS courses are fairing these days?

IWATS has always had a history (for me at least) of multiple problems coming up at the same time.  The most recent problem is the fact that I had eight open positions, most of them IWATS.  I think a lot of the other courses (i.e. Ones I don’t run) suffer from a lack of publicity and promotional exposure.  Hopefully, this will be fixed soon.

 

Do you have any new IWATS courses in the pipeline?

I personally have started on mIRC/3.  Completion date is not set yet.  I’ve also thought a lot about the idea of an IIC/4 course, but had trouble coming up with enough material for it.  There’s talk of another computer-related course as well.

 

You currently have a shortage of IWATS professors, so many of the courses can’t be run. How are you planning on solving that problem, and when will people be able to do all the courses again?

Most of the positions have been filled and a few courses are waiting on things like me to finish re-coding the course site, adding the test questions to the new online format by HA Kawolski.  Other courses just seem to be suffering from a lack of interest and thus, I’ve gotten few applications.  TIE Tactics, TIE Mission Design and VBS all have new staff.  The rest will be sorted out soon.

 

If someone had a new idea for an IWATS course how would they go about approaching you? How much involvement do you have will the opening of new courses? Do you help write them at all, or mark the exams for any?

Generally the first step is to mail me with “Hey, I’ve got this idea”.  Next I usually ask for an outline of what they’ll have in the course.  If it’s good enough, I give them the green light.  After that, my involvement is pretty minimal since I don’t believe in micromanaging IWATS.  When the course is finished, I check the course notes, tell the person to get some people to check it.  If they want, I’ll do the HTML for the course site and host it, then add the test to the online system and that’s it.

 

Do you believe that the IWATS Core test helps a lot of the new EH members? It does seem to be mainly focused upon medals and promotions, rather than the activities and general routines a member has to do once in the club. Have you ever considered following the IWATS Core test with something like this?

Strangely enough I can’t find any reference to medals and promotions. :P  The IWATS Core tries to teach new members the basic layout of the TIE Corps and EH and how they fix into it, what their job is and what the job is of all the other people in it.  You have to strike a balance between providing information and providing it effectively.  I think the IWATS Core is just the right length and if anyone has questions relating to activities and routines they can always email me.

 

What courses do you think should be put into IWATS, which aren’t already there yet?

Right now I’m trying to focus on courses that can help give members skills and knowledge they can use outside the EH.

 

 

Why do all TC competitions have to be approved by you? What punishment is there for those who don’t go through the right channels?

You know, I still haven’t figured that one out myself.  I think the issue rose when the former TO tried overseeing (or “taking control of” depending on who you ask) the Sovereign League because it was a fleet competition originally.  Over time, when I got TO, this evolved into “TO oversees all competitions”.  Originally, I couldn’t do much if a person’s competition was denied, but now, if it is, they can’t award medals for it.  There’s also some reference to them not being able to publicise it on the TIE Corps news.

 

How do you get a competition approved by you? How long does it take for the competition to be approved?

Go to http://www.imperialacademy.org/form.asp, fill in the form and that’s it.  I go through the listings 2-3 times a week on average.

 

Do you think that the new Iron Star system for competitions is a good idea? How hard has it been to implement the changes in the competition approval system?

I think that it’s tackling what is still an unproven problem.  We never actually proved that the lower-level medals were being devalued.  It may simply be a case of the TIE Corps being more active than in the past.  The IS system was also supposed to have a flow-on effect in stopping Lieutenants making GOE recommendations.  I have my doubts in how effective that’ll be.  The changes are mainly the pain of having to learn a new system that I’m not 100% with yet and having to police it.

 

Is there going to be any new TO competitions in the future? If so, will it be another epic competition like TO Comp #5, or will it be more plain and simple like the early ones?

I’d like to run more TO competitions and I’d like them to be epic.  I think the concept of a plot-driven competition strikes at the core of what the EH is all about and why games like TIE Fighter was such a success.  TIE wasn’t the prettiest game out there (Wing Commander 3 spanked it silly in the graphics department) but the plot immersed the player deeply in the Imperial machine.  Note to game designers: plot is good :P

 

Would you say that the TO Comp #5 was a success? On paper it was a great idea, but interest seemed to drop towards the end. Would you stand by the formula, or would you have changed it in anyway?

The delayed release of the missions, which did serve the plot, isn’t a really good way to run the show.  I was trying to recreate the entire gaming model of TIE Fighter via the Internet and the one-mission-at-a-time execution wasn’t really the best.  Unfortunately, by releasing the entire battle in one hit, you can’t really force people to read the plot elements or mission briefings that were released with each mission.  There were also delays in the missions, which affected that.  I think if people knew a new mission was coming out every so many weeks, the backlash would’ve been less.  I stand by the formula of a plot-driven competition, but I’m not sure if I’d release the missions the same way.

 

 

Do you still get the time to do the things other EH members do, such as flying, IRC, fiction writing, etc?

I don’t fly because I run Windows 2000.  I’m on IRC a lot, although I really shouldn’t be.  I’ve started doing “contract” HTML/ASP work for people in the EH.  Most of the time I couldn’t be bothered doing things like flying or fiction.

 

You’ve been in the EH for roughly 3 years now. What has made you stay as a member for this long? What do you think the “secret” is for the club?

The fact I don’t really have a life.  If I left the EH, I’d get bored very quickly.  I think the secret is the sense of community.  I went through all of primary and high school, trying to find kids with the same interests as me.  In those 12 years, I found maybe one or two people.  In the EH, there are hundreds of people all here for the same reason – we find some part of Star Wars fascinating.  For me, these days, it’s more about people I can talk to about things I like and I’m interested in.

 

You are an Australian. How hard is it for you to go about your EH duties with most of the other members in a very different time zone to you are? Do you think there are enough meetings and online competitions that the Aussies can cope with staying awake for?

If things are done via email, it’s not so bad.  There have been times where just before I go to bed, I fire off a bunch of emails.  When I wake up, I have replies.  The meeting times for Australians (and people in the same time zones, like Japan and South East Asia) are perhaps the worst in the entire EH.  I used to live on the East Coast and the meetings were at 2-3AM, depending on the daylight saving in the US.  Now they’re either at midnight or 1AM for me.  Online competitions aren’t really feasible for Australians.  There’s a telecommunications monopoly here, and the company running it cares more about $2 billion profits than high speed internet access.  On a good day, my ping to the US is 600ms (milliseconds), over half a second.  Compare this with 100-300ms that most US people get for gaming and it seems pretty sad.  I think Australian gamers will be “out in the wilderness” when it comes to reaction-based games like XWA and Quake until this problem of lag is fixed.  Games like Starcraft and Diablo 2 aren’t so bad.

 

I’ve noticed you on IRC just about all the time. Considering I’m British and with 12hrs between us…do you ever sleep???

Yeah, I sleep.

 

How did you get involved in the EH? How did you first hear about it?

It’s a rather convoluted story.  I was a member of the NR and did a /whois on a member who was in a EH channel.  I joined the channel and after a few days, the CA:COMM at the time noticed I was in the NR channel and told me to pick one or the other.  I picked the EH.  As it turned out, a couple months earlier, I stumbled across the web site of some elite division of the Hammer’s Fist.  I didn’t join because I couldn’t really find anymore information.  This just highlights the importance of having contact details on your web site, as well as links on how to join and other major EH sites.

 

If you could choose a position other than TO & IWATS Dean, what would it be? (obviously you can’t pick Fleet Commander, as that borders on treachery and you will be shot)

Dean and TO were a challenge to me and I like the challenge of taking something that isn’t as good as it could be and making it better.  One position that springs to mind is Grand Master.  I was Deputy Grand Master and had a lot of cool ideas I never got to put into action.  XO would be nice, but I realise for various reasons, I’ll never get either of these positions.

 

What is your greatest achievement in the EH?

I think it’d be the multitude of achievements under the broad banner of “Getting where I am today”.  I’ve been promoted and awarded faster than anyone else from memory, even with all those lovely demotions.  The revival of IWATS and the Training Office feature pretty highly as well as getting 5,000 graduates. 

 

You’ve been asking to be interviewed in Battlecry for months now? Why? What could you possibly get out of it but a lack of time due to composing answers? :o)

Exposing people to my rapier wit, Aussie charm and command of the more colourful side of the English language.

 

Do you have a Real Life away from the EH? If so, what do you tend to do as hobbies?

I used to run a computer business with a friend from school.  At the moment, I’m a student at university.  Unfortunately, I’m socially stunted from my exposure from computers, so I have a narrow range of interests.  Hobbies at the moment include getting screwed by government departments, playing PC games and looking at attractive members of the opposite sex.

 

I ask everyone this, but I find this question enjoyable. If you had to pick half a dozen members of the EH for a special mission, who would they be and why? (pick out your best friends and people you most admire in the club)

Well, since I tend to do things myself, I’d pick a random bunch of people to use as decoys and human shields.

 

Do you have anything else that you would like to add to this interview?

People in the EH need to realise that being a CO isn’t the be all and end all.  The higher up you go, the less fun it becomes and the more like a job it becomes.  People need to figure out what their skills are and what they’re happy doing and try to fit that into the structure of the EH.  Some people are good at looking after small groups of people are better suited to being a CMDR than a COM.  In the same token, if you’re happy flying and being just a pilot, stay that way.  My former Command Attaché went back to piloting because that’s what he liked and he found being a CA boring.  You don’t have fun as a CO. :P

 

 

Thank you, sir.