August 28, 2014

Back in the Saddle

Despite having sporadic internet, I was able to really get reinvigorated this week and accomplished quite a lot in the last few days. I could feel the desire to get stuff done starting a few weeks ago when a well known contact and friend talked to me about Noir. Academy and his organization working together. At the time I wasn't affiliated with Noir. Academy in any way other than historically, but to him I was the person to go to. This type of thing has happened - usually on lower scale though - for months now. I started to realize that I really did miss being the CEO; it's something I'm good at and enjoyed the interactions with students. Admittedly there were times during my tenure that I was pretty much MIA due to work related issues, but I was able to get a lot done from an administrative point of view, and I wanted that again. You can see the birth of those feelings in some of my earlier posts. Well, a few days ago another VIP contacted me with the thinking that I was still very much in a leadership position at Noir. Academy, so I figured I may as well throw my hat back in as an instructor.

It wasn't too long - like, seriously not long at all - of doing that before I sent a message to Isabela Valentine, a Noir. Director who took NA. over after Horok (the guy I tapped to take my place) had to leave the game due to work reasons, and asked for his thought on sending CEO back to me. He was completely open to the idea (NA. is not an easy or glorious job, folks!) and so here I am, once again the CEO of Noir. Academy. It's good to be home.

Isabela did a lot of great work as the CEO, but if I had to pick one thing that was better than the rest, it was his last big achievement of kicking Noir. Academy out of the alliance. No, I'm serious! One of my top priorities as CEO during my entire first term was working on getting them to a point where they could operate outside of Noir. Mercenary Group for quite a few reasons, all of them beneficial to the recruits, but it was a very tricky situation. Isabela managed to work out a deal with our long time friends Of Sound Mind so that Noir. Academy will be joining their alliance. This is great for our recruits as it gives them more day to day content without feeling like they can't mess up while learning (a common fear for Noir. Academy students). It gives them more content they can be a part of; many students can't fly high SP ships yet. It also helps SOUND by giving them more warm bodies.

As instructors, we'll continue running classes to teach our students and we'll continue to facilitate Noir. Academy just as we normally do. Nothing really changes from our perspective. Except now we have more students! SOUND will be invited and welcome in all our classes and/or training operations, and we're super happy to have them learn from us while we learn from them. This is seriously an awesome situation for us.

BRAVE Dojo

I also was able to teach a class to BRAVE about BLOPs yesterday in the BRAVE Dojo Advanced Class, and it seemed to go over really well. I think there were about 40 people that joined for the lecture part of the class, and nearly the same for the practical portion. Within about 10 minutes of the fleet getting set up, one of our Hunter/Killers had found us a target and his pod. The excitement in the fleet right after that was great. Some of the guys had never done this type of fleet before, and you could hear it in their voice as they talked about how cool that was. I left soon after to go handle Marmite not showing up to reinforce our POCOs again, but the fleet did continue and managed to nab this and this. Awesome job, BRAVE. Thanks for having me out, and I hope to teach such an eager group again soon!