Eventsbus: "event lead" succession and delegation
Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2021 3:05 am
someone requested some information from me about succeeding and events forward so I thought I would make a thread about what I actually do (not in admin forums since there's a lot of event staff that aren't admins)
I'll preface this and say that I understand that there's a bit of a vacuum left over from the fact that I'm not gonna help with eventsbus anymore (other than maybe streaming)
First off: Ultimately eventsbus is just normal admin events that have a month or so worth of work behind them (to those who don't know), effectively my informal-job has been to make sure that the work gets done in a timely manner so that it's done ready for the event. I try to play triage between each one of the events and maintain order in eventsbus (in discord) by giving everyone a job and making sure the coders, mappers, and (sometimes) spriters have some work to do. It's overall maintaining direction and keeping the drive going for creative people to make something interesting.
Honestly, I don't think my position is very important since I don't do the meat of the coding/mapping/spriting and I mostly serve as the cleanup and organizer of all the shit on the repo for git so that we can get it prepared for each event. I usually clear merge conflicts, bring the repo up to date with master, test it on the server with testmerges, and I bring the server up and down depending on it. Though, I suppose it's definitely a high trust job that people can only do if they're allowed to be a keyholder (and probably an admin.)
I do map every so often but the main thing that I've served as is a timeskeeper, boss, and (recently) vision person that tries to see the end product and how to get there. Perhaps there is some use for it but I've never particularly considered my job that important since I had no formal role or anything: I just thought that I was giving people the right idea on what needed to be done where and when. Though I'm starting to think that's not exactly the case anymore.
In any event, we missed the winter ball sadly since I was busy with work and I was ultimately losing my motivation to do things at the time. Toolbox tournament is, unfortunately, a massive endavour that takes up a ton of my time since I need to set up the charities, get a google doc out for all the competitors, set up the backend depending on the competitors, get the announcers/twitch stuff squared away, maintain the repo, and ensure that the map templates are done. I'm not doing too much of the actual mapping or coding but it's very tiresome and it takes up a ton of my time which is why I usually do it a month beforehand. This recent event was somewhat similar but I didn't do the charity part since that's another dimension of stuff that I needed to set up. The Summer and Winter Ball are a lot easier since all we need to do is create the map, polish it, test it, and make sure that we have event code on there. It just takes mapping knowledge and having a bunch of admins to look over it since the day gets a ton of admin tickets.
Sorry if that's a bit rambly, but that's effectively the extent of what I do and the topic has come up in adminbus recently about centralized leadership for the events squad (I guess if you can call it centralized as is). If I had to put a list of relevant qualifications about what it takes to be an "events lead" or "events master:"
Mandatory:
I'm not gonna answer any questions about a particular thread (athath) going on atm btw and I'll just delete messages about them.
Sorry if this sounds a little bit too focused on me. I don't know if this will particularly do anything but I thought for a second that I really want to see events start up again so I thought I'd put some effort into potentially giving people an idea of what I do since people have been asking. It would be great to see the Balls and Toolbox tournament still get organized even after I'm done with the position. I know eventbus has been concerned about this recently so I can only hope that this helps people understand what I did after I stop running events. I know Nameless has talked about taking over though so I do wish them luck, though I don't think this is something that just they can do.
I'll preface this and say that I understand that there's a bit of a vacuum left over from the fact that I'm not gonna help with eventsbus anymore (other than maybe streaming)
First off: Ultimately eventsbus is just normal admin events that have a month or so worth of work behind them (to those who don't know), effectively my informal-job has been to make sure that the work gets done in a timely manner so that it's done ready for the event. I try to play triage between each one of the events and maintain order in eventsbus (in discord) by giving everyone a job and making sure the coders, mappers, and (sometimes) spriters have some work to do. It's overall maintaining direction and keeping the drive going for creative people to make something interesting.
Honestly, I don't think my position is very important since I don't do the meat of the coding/mapping/spriting and I mostly serve as the cleanup and organizer of all the shit on the repo for git so that we can get it prepared for each event. I usually clear merge conflicts, bring the repo up to date with master, test it on the server with testmerges, and I bring the server up and down depending on it. Though, I suppose it's definitely a high trust job that people can only do if they're allowed to be a keyholder (and probably an admin.)
I do map every so often but the main thing that I've served as is a timeskeeper, boss, and (recently) vision person that tries to see the end product and how to get there. Perhaps there is some use for it but I've never particularly considered my job that important since I had no formal role or anything: I just thought that I was giving people the right idea on what needed to be done where and when. Though I'm starting to think that's not exactly the case anymore.
In any event, we missed the winter ball sadly since I was busy with work and I was ultimately losing my motivation to do things at the time. Toolbox tournament is, unfortunately, a massive endavour that takes up a ton of my time since I need to set up the charities, get a google doc out for all the competitors, set up the backend depending on the competitors, get the announcers/twitch stuff squared away, maintain the repo, and ensure that the map templates are done. I'm not doing too much of the actual mapping or coding but it's very tiresome and it takes up a ton of my time which is why I usually do it a month beforehand. This recent event was somewhat similar but I didn't do the charity part since that's another dimension of stuff that I needed to set up. The Summer and Winter Ball are a lot easier since all we need to do is create the map, polish it, test it, and make sure that we have event code on there. It just takes mapping knowledge and having a bunch of admins to look over it since the day gets a ton of admin tickets.
Sorry if that's a bit rambly, but that's effectively the extent of what I do and the topic has come up in adminbus recently about centralized leadership for the events squad (I guess if you can call it centralized as is). If I had to put a list of relevant qualifications about what it takes to be an "events lead" or "events master:"
Mandatory:
- A lot of experience with using Git and managing a repo (be ready to clear merge conflicts)
- Acceptable knowledge of mapping to make the map for the events and to manage them.
- Working knowledge of coding in DM and the tgstation codebase (for eventcode, ensuring that stuff compiles, and just making sure that the shit people code works)
- Ability to manage people and get people together to map/code. Be ready to have people bail on you (this happens a lot)
- Knowing how to manage google docs and spend a lot of time making forms on various websites (whole lot of paperwork and documents before toolbox tournament)
- Be ready to learn a lot if you're planning to do something interesting. (Gameshow was very very different than before and required new framework)
- Be a keyholder or be able to be trusted with being a keyholder
- Be willing to teach people things about Byond/DM
- Be ready to spend 10 hours per week for each week before the event and 30+ hours on the week of big events to do testing (other than balls)
- Be able to delegate tasks efficiently and be able to adequately express what needs to be done. (there's a ton of people involved in each event doing things like admining, mapping, and coding. You can't do all of it)
- Probably a good idea to be an admin or maintainer (though not necessary!)
- Good social skills and being able to write (ALOT) for the threads/rules/ and other random crap.
- Deal well with working under pressure from deadlines which may or may not be your fault
- Be able to take a lot of criticism (maybe not something I've done the best...)
- Knowledge of being an admin so you can delegate admining the specific events and give direction for the admins during the event
- Knowledge about eventcode and optimizations in place to ensure that the server runs smoothly
- Experience with working with events in any capacity.
- Being able to create design documents helps
I'm not gonna answer any questions about a particular thread (athath) going on atm btw and I'll just delete messages about them.
Sorry if this sounds a little bit too focused on me. I don't know if this will particularly do anything but I thought for a second that I really want to see events start up again so I thought I'd put some effort into potentially giving people an idea of what I do since people have been asking. It would be great to see the Balls and Toolbox tournament still get organized even after I'm done with the position. I know eventbus has been concerned about this recently so I can only hope that this helps people understand what I did after I stop running events. I know Nameless has talked about taking over though so I do wish them luck, though I don't think this is something that just they can do.
