Day 307: Diamond in the rough

I voted in the CSM elections, did you? If you didn't then why not? You've effectively lost your right to complain about anything to do with CCP not listening to the player base. Well you will have in about six hours.

With fourteen voting slots available I had to do some more research than I would have thought I'd be doing but it was made easy with the forum posts and the community projects. The community projects in particular were eye openers. I used Vote Match and vote0matic and the excellent series of interviews over at Crossing Zebras. Sadly I missed out on other podcasts where there were some free ranging discussions between candidates as I simply didn't have time.

Being a Noob I voted for the new player experience, general eve knowledge, small scale pvp, and even a nod towards the future and specialised expertise with a vote for a couple of null sec bloc candidates though it was lower down my list. I'd have endorsed for Ripard Teg and Marc Scaurus but the latter pulled out and I endorsed Mangala Solaris instead (even if he does primary bloggers every time....). The big discovery though was Ali Aras. I hadn't heard of her before in any way beforehand and then all of  a sudden we have a null sec living, new player friendly, eloquent, enthusiasic, EVE player appearing out of no where.

http://themittani.com/features/creation-carebears-risk-and-new-players

and the interview at

http://crossingzebras.com/2013/03/27/csm8-election-interviews-ali-aras/

Her forum post in Jita Park

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=213048

Now ideally I'd have jumped in and tried some lobby blogging before the point was moot. Three things stopped me. Firstly my lack of time recently to even play EVE, let alone blog. Secondly, I'm a Noob and a mainly hi-sec one at that. This isn't a bad thing but I'd like a little more experience and to have seen the entire CSM process before I start lobbying for a particular candidate. Third, I have no idea what direction I'll take in the next year but I'm considering breaking free of hi-sec once Odyssey arrives.

If you haven't already voted then go vote. You have about six hours left. EVE University has a good summary of articles and voting tools

http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?t=65812&p=578050

My tip : if you have a small screen then use the zoom feature of your browser to get all the candidates on screen then you can drag/drop easily without scrolling around.

EVE Track of the Day

Fight For Your Right - Beastie Boys