The First Minister's One Month Progress Report

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[color=gold][b][size=350]Iota's FM Progress Report[/size]
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Hi, TCB! We're at the one-month mark of the term. I've been thinking about where we've been, where we are right now, and where I want us to go, and I wanted to share my thoughts with you.

I'm by no means a long-time or particularly experienced NS player, but there are absolutely active and engaged members of the Bloc right now who have been around for significantly less time than me, so I want to take a second to talk about what the Bloc was like just a few months or a year ago.

As probably literally everyone knows, I'm the successor First Minister to Ant, who was in power for many very successful terms in a row. I believe I joined the Bloc a bit before she first took office, but joined the Discord some time into her run. Around the time I first joined the Bloc, we had about 600 members, and 200 endorsements on Micha maximum. The Discord was significantly less active when I joined it. Volunteer programs were essentially dead. The region wasn't necessarily [i]bad,[/i] but it was absolutely less accomplished. We were less active, less relevant, less populated, less effective.

Ant changed a lot of that during her terms. Under their leadership, the Bloc stopped stagnating. She actively made changes to give us opportunities to gain relevance and grow in population. She brought us into the Crabs of the Apocalypse on N-Day. She signed The Laika Accords with TWP and TLA. Despite opposition, she pushed to revive our regional military. During hard times where she was essentially the only active Minister in the entire council, she kept things running. I know I'm praising my predecessor a lot for an address that's supposed to be about [i]my[/i] term, but it's important for my point here that everyone understands this: TCB was a lot more stagnant before Ant took office, and she made an incredible amount of improvements. Over the course of her term, we went from 600 members to 2000. We over [i]tripled[/i] the amount of endorsements on Micha.

When Ant left office, she left us in a spot of opportunity. She'd given us a ton of chances to seriously improve, but we hadn't solidified any of the changes into something consistent yet. We had 2000 members, but the WFE still hadn't been changed since before we had 1500. We had a military, but it wasn't quite trained up yet. We had people interested in volunteering, but no programs to support them.

My plan for this term, then, is to make use of every single opportunity the Bloc has right now. I don't want our success to be temporary; I want to lock us into this new position. That's something we've been doing so far, and it's something we'll aim to continue this term. I'm writing this at 6 AM after a night of no sleep, and my memory isn't great in general, so the chances are that I'm going to forget some of the things we've already done this term and under-credit myself and the Minister team here, but I'll try to give a brief progress report:

- PRAF has already expanded and trained exponentially. We've gained experience, gained members, successfully contributed to various important operations, and are now looking forward to becoming a legitimately threatening force capable of planning and executing complex operations of our own. Also, if I may toot my own horn here, my record-keeping and mission reports are excellent. The reserve program was an excellent idea on my behalf, as well. (Now I just need custom reservist flags for each rank...)

- A lot of our region's information and graphics have been severely outdated for quite some time. We're rewriting dispatches, updating coding, and making the WFE more useful. My editing skills are nice for this one. Most recently, I updated the REP dispatch.

- Hell Yeah, Active News. It's very refreshing to see regular, engaging, and reasonably professional/relevant news being released.

- I've restarted the card factory! Between my farming and the Bloc's generous donations, we have legendaries for all.

- Hell Yeah, Active Ministries In General. The MoDA has a ton of members, an incredible change from when I was the sole volunteer processing applications! The MoI gets regular article submissions to the news. MoWAA has its own little vote squad now. MoC events are Actually Happening. MoFA is running an effective team of ambassadors. The volunteer hubs and info I've set up are making everything so much more visible and active. The Bloc puts in the work if given the opportunity! (And shoutout specifically to the excellent minister team and our volunteers, we wouldn't be here without you.)

- I'm putting time and effort into relations with the regions that we can have mutually enjoyable and productive relationships with--it's time for our influence and interactions to expand beyond just NSLeft.

So, uh, that's what my plan is for this term, and that's how I'm currently executing it. We've got a good shot at stepping onto the main stage as one of the biggest and most influential/powerful/insert-preferred-adjective-here regions in the game. Now it's just time to keep making QoL improvements that will allow us to achieve that. (Note to self before I forget again: Next up on the table is making an official avenue for card factory volunteering.)

Thank you all for sticking with the Bloc :) I aim to continue serving you well this term, and I appreciate everyone who's contributed to keeping the Bloc a fun and active region, whether that's by joining government, volunteering, or even just hanging out and chatting.[/size][/box]