[Steppes] last one!

[Karen Calhoun via Steppes]

This is the last set of responses from our Baronial candidates.

Honour & Rosamund
1.       What is your vision for Steppes?We remember the best times in the society as times that felt like being with family. Times where both work and play blended seamlessly into something that fueled our dream and made us love the SCA, our Barony, Kingdom and friends. As stated in our Letter of Intent (LOI), our mission is to make the Barony of the Steppes feel like a household to all its members, helping the Barony and its populace grow in fellowship as a group and in the dream as individuals. We want to help people find their dream and achieve it, whether that means mentoring, offering classes, or helping folks connect with like-minded individuals throughout the Kingdom and known world.
2.       What "positives" do you currently see in the barony?We have a lot of new energy and faces in the Barony, from newcomers to transplants from other groups. At this time, we also have a very good relationship with Elfsea that we can rely on, building each other up while making our own identity stronger. We have a really dynamic duo of an excellent Seneschal and Exchequer. We have older guilds coming back online with new guilds forming, such as our music/vocal group, scribal, brewers, etc. We have a large youth program and a strong core of people that are supportive, the best we have ever seen in the Steppes. We have some Kingdom players that also participate in our Barony and we are beginning to see our populace travel more and be willing to participate in new adventures and try new things. There is an energy in the Steppes that is exciting to see and we hope to be a part of that energy and growth, whether we are chosen as Landed Nobles or not.
3.      Because of the size of the Dallas area, the Steppes has huge potential for increased membership. However, our current active membership is quite small even though it makes all efforts to be welcoming to newcomers. Do you have the management skills or experience to manage a currently diverse geographically spread-out barony?Both of our mundane jobs are in management dealing with a wide demographic of people, personalities, needs, circumstances and regulations. Honour's job is a daily task of balancing a tough management structure above and challenging employees below. While working in this environment, she has found success and has gained promotions and the loyalty of her peers and colleagues. Rosamund has managed large groups of employees as far afield as India, and has been a project manager as well as a process improvement analyst for many years. In our LOI, we stated that we have served in offices from local (both excellent Seneschals of the Steppes), Regional, Kingdom, and Inter-Kingdom offices. We have both served has Heads of Entourage for the Royal Family and have traveled extensively throughout the Kingdom and Known World. We have seen how various groups handle the distance in rural areas and have suggestions to improve our issues with the large area we have to deal with. One idea we have is to make sure we do not have too many meetings, but combine them so that people do not have to travel as much on weeknights. We also need to make sure we move around and visit various areas to make sure people do not feel left out. All of these experiences help us understand the impact that geography has on a group and also the kind of activities that will inspire someone to drive for an hour on aTuesday night.
4.      Do you have the experience and skillset necessary to create a plan and assist current members who are interested in growing the Steppes? If so, explain some of your ideas on growing the barony.As mentioned in our LOI, we have plans that we hope to put in place that will help grow our numbers and retain existing people. For a deeper discussion we would love to discuss this with folks in person, but in summary, we are here to helps support and grow each member of Steppes and her cantons, in the directions. they wish to go.  Combined, we have done most everything in the games ourselves, and if we do not have direct experience, we know many peers and lions that we can call on to help supplement our knowledge and experience. In fact, we never mind saying we don't know or don't have an answer and reaching out to get the best ideas and answers from our populace and community. We believe that by listening to our officers and getting feedback (even unpleasant feedback) from our members, we will be better able to help focus our officers to create success, fulfilling the Kingdom requirements, but also gaining experience and helping newcomers learn and grow into experienced SCAers. From the interests of our youth and their participation all the way up to our multi-peered/ royal family we want the members of our group to experience the SCA in its fullest and make sure opportunities are available to grow. We would like to have classes at each Populace in the Park and have quarterly Steppes Enhancement/ Enchantment Parties where we make things that beautify our Barony and improve the personal SCA kits of her members. We hope to help our members with camping proficiency and we want to have a good-sized camp at Gulf War.
5.      How do you plan to integrate the two cantons and still maintain core strength?We believe that supporting our Cantons is part of what will make our core strong.  We feel that it is essential for our 3 groups (Steppes/Glaslyn/Kyngescreke) to support each other, since we are all part of a whole and need to act as such.  By helping each other with events and activities, we help ease the burden on a single group.  That energy saved can then be focused on increasing all of our group's base and ease any burnout that in the end tends to push people away from playing. We have found that encouraging the Cantons and Barony to work at each other's events helps the groups get to know one another and also relieves some of the burdens we face when working events. For example, when we autocratted Warlord together, we offered to run gate for Glaslyn in return for Glaslyn running our security. We would encourage this type of cooperation and support.
6.      Are you pleased with the current status quo?  Why or why not?There are so many awesome and amazing things and people in our current groups.  We are humbled by the amount of talent and how folks give their time, energy and hearts to the Barony. We also still hold some of the greatest events in our kingdom.  There is always room for improvement and a group needs to always strive to improve conditions and remove obstacles and unnecessary drama wherever we can.  This can only be done with active support and encouragement from the Landed Nobles of the group working closely with the officers and service orders of the Barony.
7.      Describe your view of the B&B in relation to the Seneschal and Officers of the barony.The job of the Landed Noble is to provide the inspiration and example for the Barony to bring the current Middle Ages into focus as a real thing, a living thing. The Seneschal and Officers of the Barony are here to provide the elbow grease (in their areas) to make sure that we achieve what we have to do, per Kingdom and society law, and also want to do to play and have fun in our chosen hobby. The Landed Nobles are here to guide, encourage, and perhaps discipline where necessary to support the Seneschal in getting these requirements met. Beyond that, we want to ensure that we have a personal relationship with each officer, that we understand the responsibilities of their mundane lives so that we can make sure they have the support they need and deputies where possible so that they can do the work without getting burned out. We are here to offer ideas, aid, and stand with them during their tenure. We want to also ensure that they have the recognition they deserve, celebrating their successes both unofficially with word fame and also with official awards as they move into a deeper service within the SCA. We want the Barony of the Steppes to succeed and we believe that can only be achieved by working closely with our officers.
8.      Many people think that there is a malaise in Steppes. Do agree?  If so, how would you correct it?Malaise, in general terms, means a feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify. We agree that by that definition, it is hard to pinpoint and tackle. Each person in our group has their own opinions and ideas about what they feel is going wrong or right with the Barony.  When discussing this with members of the populace, we keep hearing that there is a lack of cohesiveness and a feeling of being left out or seeing cliques.  We want to remedy that through discussion and support.  We are both very transparent people and will work with anyone and listen to all suggestions.  We strive for unity, and like we mentioned in our LOI, our vision is to make each member of Steppes and her cantons feel like they are important and a part of something great, part of a family and a household. We hope to encourage folks from the Steppes to attend non-Steppes events together and sit and enjoy each other's company to encourage people to get to know one another and realize that they are welcome to join in the fun.
9.      How would you motivate others to serve joyously?One of the things that inspired us to run together is the fact that we work so well together and have fun serving.  We would like people to experience what we have when we had so much fun running Warlord that we signed up to do it again and brought more people with us the next time, or enjoyed our offices so much that we kept bidding on other offices.  Part of this is creating a standard for how events and offices are performed, and providing a support group for that.  People tend to burnout and have the joy removed due to having to reinvent the wheel every time or some duties from the ground up.  We want to streamline items, make them more transparent and lead by example. We want to lean on our corporate process improvement experiences to document some of these roles and responsibilities to take the "unknown" element out of it and make people more easy with serving as guild leaders, event stewards and gate workers.
10. What are your plans to bolster teaching and learning?Honour is a Laurel and a Pelican and teaching and encouragement are in her blood. We have both played the game for a long time and know many people and the talents they have.  We would ask people to volunteer to teach but also personally arrange classes, not only at events but outside of that too.  We want first-time teachers and old hats.  We will have monthly and quarterly classes.  We will teach too, again lead by example, we will encourage travel to learn from others and teach in various places.
11. Regarding leadership: How does your persona approach it?  What are your mundane thoughts on it?Both of us are the same in and out of the game.  We have personas and historic eras that are our favorites, but we are very diverse in our interest and likes, so persona does not play into our leadership skills.  Award-wise we are both Court Baronesses and Honour is a Laurel and Pelican, too.  These were only obtained through the leadership and encouragement of others.  We feel the best way to lead is by example and personal experience.  We are always re-evaluating ourselves and asking how can we improve and what things we did right or what we need to change.  We will also never ask something of our groups that we would not do ourselves.  We believe leadership is walking side by side with those who are a part of our group, we will be playing a persona (if chosen) of a Landed Noble, whereby lands held in fief of the Crown, but such a persona means nothing without the populace of the Barony and her Cantons. It is this populace that inspires us and makes our dream.
12. Historically, the two DFW baronies are rarely in sync prosperity-wise.  One is usually thriving while one wanes a bit. What are your ideas on sharing local prosperity?    How would you increase Steppes interest/participation/activities without siphoning from Elfsea?Because of our wide-geographic area, the two baronies have always had cross-play.  This a good thing and is something that you will not see change.  What we need to do is support each other while still maintaining our individuality.  People tend of play with one group or the other due to two factors:
*         Logistics- both groups cover large areas and due to traffic issues, one's groups activities may be easier to get to then others.  For example, folks who live in Carrollton might make a mid-cities practice with Elfsea, while someone in Mesquite cannot get to an Elfsea event during the week. We can help this by having activities in different areas of our barony, but this can only be done if people in each area volunteer to serve and support this.  If there is interest, we will do everything we can to get an activity near each area of the Barony and some regional weekend events as well.
*         Factions- some people float back and forth depending on where they feel accepted we need to help dissolve cliques and forge ties for an overall unity of purpose and spirit.
13. How do you plan to convince a greater number of ducal and high-end fighters to return to Steppes' Sunday practice?The drop in temperatures will help that.  But also we hope to personally ask them to come out and teach.  Duke Hrafn is moving back to the Steppes, and both Honour and Rosamund have close relationships with various Counts and Dukes and feel comfortable asking them to come teach a class or help work on armor.  Without an obligation or focus, many people feel they can miss this weekend or that practice.  We would like to structure our practices more so that you know who will be there to teach and still have the general picks ups too. We want to encourage quarterly activities and regional practices to build a great fighting unit from the Central Region for Gulf War. Also we would like to have classes for the non-fighters in the group on fighter support, teaching them what it means to help fighters on the field and even work Entourage shifts for the King and Steppes fighters during Gulf War.
14. If running as a pair/couple, are your combined interests varied enough to make each sub community (heralds, C&I, rapier, chivalric, youth, etc.,) feel it is appreciated and cared for?The short answer is yes.  Between the two of us we have participated in almost every aspect of the SCA.  For those activities that we have not, we still wish to promote and support those who follow those pursuits.  We have a plan of who will attend what, and the times would rotate during our tenure (if selected), so each group sees that we are vested in them both and not just one of us.  We understand each person's dream is different and we want to help them obtain their dreams.
15. If you are applying as a sole/single rule, what is your plan to keep active in all areas without becoming overwhelmed or burning out?Although not running as a sole/single, we do know that being overwhelmed or burning out is a factor for anyone in the landed post.  We both have acknowledged the amount of work that goes into running a Barony and supporting its Cantons. We are organized people and schedule addicts which comes in handy in dealing with many responsibilities. We will also be dividing activities from time to time to help alleviate time constraints as well as rotating these divided activities so that each group knows and actively sees both of our support for their interests.  The increased travel need is extremely minor due to our current activity level in the SCA, traveling with crowns gets you used to a more travel-heavy schedule and it is something we have kept in mind when applying for this role.  We will have a schedule that will allow us to post our "progress" and we will have all events, meetings, etc listed so the populace can see where we will be and what we will be doing. For most activities we will be together because we just work really well together and have a very honest and upfront friendship.  Our joy of working together over the past years and building a strong friendship during that time is actually a large factor as to why we decided to do this.