Awards Ceremony 2017 begins now!

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

We now begin our most joyous tradition: Recognizing our fellow members for all the hard work they've put in over the course of the year, now only in writing their characters – although we have two sets of awards especially for recognizing achievements on that front (General Awards and Duty Post Awards) – but also for helping us build an intentional, heart-filled, international community. 

If this is your first ceremony: Welcome! We hope you'll join us for many more following. If you're an old pro at this: Thanks for sticking with us all these years. Your commitment, dedication, and creativity makes this game worth playing, and makes this community the amazing place it is.

Our group was founded in 1994, but we've been holding awards ceremonies since 1996. For many years, it was an In Character presentation of just about a dozen awards, and we'd have the entire cast of characters travel to one place to watch as we presented awards. Over the years, as we added more Out Of Character items, we transitioned entirely to an OOC ceremony, to ensure that the reason someone was being awarded was not obfuscated by trying to make their award sound like something In Character. 

And last year, we moved our ceremony from December to June, to coincide with our yearly anniversary, making this month a celebration of our history and our members. 

Over the next few days we'll present to the fleet the winners in five categories of awards: 

• General: Honoring the members who’ve won this year’s General, or ship-based awards
• Staff: Honoring the work of our fleet’s staff members
• Duty Post: Honoring the best simmer from each duty post
• Special: Honoring specific aspects of simming or OOC work
• Length of Service: Honoring members who have been with us for a year, all the way up to 10 years and more

We'll post each of these in a thread here on the forums with an announcement on our Community News, so be sure to come back each day for these presentations! 

Now I'd like to introduce you to our reigning Awards Facilitator, who for the second year in a row has put together an amazing ceremony: Rear Admiral Renos! 

The job of the Awards Facilitator is one that involves an incredible amount of work, from helping to pull together an Awards Committee (which reviews all the Duty Post, and Special nominees and selects the winners), to compiling all of the nominations and making sure they get to the right people, and then helping to manage all of the materials and assets required to make this ceremony a success! It's hard to imagine just how much copying, pasting, and collating is involved until you've got the mantle on your shoulders

Once again, Renos (OOC: James) has been utterly tireless, managing all the things required to get this show off the ground. I can't think him enough for all of his hard work!

 

Now I hope you've all donned your fanciest outfits! It's time to get started!

[Renos]

Hey everyone!

Thanks Jordan for that excellent introduction. It's always nice to consider the history of our ceremony and what to expect in the next few days, both for the benefit of new players and a reminder for the rest of us.

I absolutely love this time of year - it's all about you and recognising the many awesome ways you make this community such a fun place to be. I love the role of awards facilitator and being able to bring all of this together so it's an honor and privilege to get to do this for the second year in a row. This year, the response to our call for nominations was absolutely phenominal and there were over 300 of them! The awards committee, commanding officers and first officers - all those involved in the decision making had incredibly tough choices to make as there's so much excellence all around, but we wouldn't want it any other way.

I hope you're all as excited as me and that you'll all join me in showing your appreciation for the worthy awards recipients over the coming days.