Organizational visibility
This has been raised before but I thought it was worth bringing up again in light of the apparent desire of the Serious Games Institute to start an organization of their own (httxt). After @dislekcia raised concerns about this leading to another community split, @bensonance clarified that it does look like the direction this is headed now is to a SIG within MGSA.
Part of the problem here appears to be SGI's lack of awareness of the significant work MGSA has already put into positioning itself as a government and industry recognized body- i.e. organizational work as opposed to community work. There's no doubt that mgsa's primary focus (at least publicly/visibly) has been around the community, and the website's positioning of the forum and social content as primary reflects that. That community first focus is awesome, and absolutely what has been needed up to this point, and is still needed.
However it seems to me that we do need to give at least some attention and prominence to the organizational side of things. The "Association News" tag was a good start, but there is still some stuff that (IMO anyway) belongs in a more static location that won't drift down with news and to put it plainly isn't part of the forum. This would include:
As for the actual mechanism, I know there was talk of some kind of CRM at one stage, but really in the interim static pages or even the return of the wiki (editable only by committee members) would do just fine.
If this is already being prioritized, awesome! If not, pretty please can it get some focus :)
Part of the problem here appears to be SGI's lack of awareness of the significant work MGSA has already put into positioning itself as a government and industry recognized body- i.e. organizational work as opposed to community work. There's no doubt that mgsa's primary focus (at least publicly/visibly) has been around the community, and the website's positioning of the forum and social content as primary reflects that. That community first focus is awesome, and absolutely what has been needed up to this point, and is still needed.
However it seems to me that we do need to give at least some attention and prominence to the organizational side of things. The "Association News" tag was a good start, but there is still some stuff that (IMO anyway) belongs in a more static location that won't drift down with news and to put it plainly isn't part of the forum. This would include:
- List of current committee members, their responsibilities/portfolios and brief bio of credentials/achievements (yes people outside of the community care about that stuff) and contact details for at least a press liaison and professional query liaison
- List of established and under development association roles and affiliations (we're the official body for game developers, but what does that mean, who do we actually represent and what makes it official)
- List of association's goals/roles
- Links to the constitution and other docs that should be public ally available to non-members
- Links to data collected such as the recent studio stats and the "what members did" stuff that seems to be becoming an annual thing (yay)
As for the actual mechanism, I know there was talk of some kind of CRM at one stage, but really in the interim static pages or even the return of the wiki (editable only by committee members) would do just fine.
If this is already being prioritized, awesome! If not, pretty please can it get some focus :)
Comments
Caveat: this is a personal statement, and not one representing the thoughts of the MGSA committe, we have a committee meeting in the next few days, and this will be on the agenda - just didn't want to leave this thread unreplied to :).
Firstly, some semantics: I think the title of this thread should be "Organisational Visibility" rather that "Organizational transparency/clarity again". The latter tends to imply something is being hid, while in actual fact most of the information is out there, it's just not, as you point out, in one central place :). Visibility of this kind is definitely something we need to improve on.
Also, some history: the SGI and those pushing for a Serious Games Association have had extensive contact with MGSA. Nick even sat down with one of the main proponents of the move, to discuss the decision. As such, I do find it very hard to believe that the SGI had any doubts to the extents of what MGSA has achieved outside of community work alone.
However, both the above two paragraphs are just fluff, because your main point does hold true that we do need more prominence of the organisation side, I agree completely.
I would love to see an "About the Association" link added to the toolbar at the top that has all the things you're talking about. We'll definitely discuss this all at the next committee meeting :).