Welcome to my May 2009 State of the Rebel Squadrons address!

I'm going to begin by offering apologies for the tardiness of this e-mail -- usually I try to get them out right at the end of the month, but the last few weeks have been kind of a whirlwind for me, and I'm actually writing this at work, so I also apologize if it's a little bit disjointed or seemingly random.

Again, I'm going to eschew a traditional format and take the opportunity here to sort of write out exactly what I'm feeling about how things in the RS are going, where we're headed from here, and what sort of things your leadership team has been working on.

First, on the subject of leadership -- I would like to welcome General Lamin Zykara to the RS High Command as an alderman. Lamin had the honor of being the Rebel Squadrons' first Chief of Staff when that was an active executive staff position and has a long history of service in the Renegade Fleet and Aurora Force. I'm excited to see the ideas that he will bring to High Command.

That being said -- the next month or so is going to be a period of dramatic reorganization within the Rebel Squadrons. Over the last 2-3 months, it has become readily apparent to me, that despite the efforts of everyone involved, the organizational structure of the Rebel Squadrons as it currently stands is no longer realistically sustainable. We are at a point in RS history where the system of bureaucracy we have been using is hampering rather than helping the club, and is no longer supportable by our membership. In simpler terms -- we're no longer the huge club we used to be, and the structure we have in place is no longer feasible.

In conversations with High Command and other members of the RS, I've come to a decision that changes my mindset about the sort of mission statement and "role" of the RS. I think former two time FC Dave Trebonius-Astoris put it best when he said that the RS now exists as sort of a "niche" organization within the greater population of Star Wars fans -- the things we offer are specialized and aren't as prevalent in other organizations. However, as a result of that, there are also less people interested in those things due to their sort of "niche" status. We do have several great strengths though in being a niche type organization -- we offer custom missions and have an entire database of them, technical support for running old LucasArts games that we support, a stable and organized computer support system (i.e., our roster database, forums, and the new server) and experiences like Zealot and the ABG that other clubs similar to us do not offer.

In this reorganization process, we will be looking at paring down the executive staff of the RS while maintaining resources like mission building, our planets database, wiki and training procedures as well as moving from the mindset of being a huge club to one that is more personal and interactive for our members. Nothing is set in stone or finalized yet, by any means, but I'll make sure to keep you posted as things progress.

(brief) Unit/Division News --

PSG -- Castor is progressing with his tour and based on his HC e-mails, working hard on it.
VSG -- HeavyD has created missions in a ladder type structure for an upcoming VSG competition. I've had the opportunity to look at his outline for these missions and talk with him a little bit about it, and it looks like a whole lot of fun.
ABG -- the ABG continues to thrive in terms of activities with sims and Charsims going on pretty regularly, sometimes on a daily basis. A new "Arena" competition has been announced and I'm pretty excited for that -- in addition, congratulations to ABG SO Vason Semnic on beginning his Jedi Knight trials.
Zealot -- ...I owe Cody a Zealot post. Zealot is active again.

Recognition --
I'd like to take the time to recognize the achievements of a few of our members. I'd like to personally congratulate CPT James Stargazer and LCM Rhuryc, respectively, on their recent promotions.

In addition, I would like to make a recommendation to all unit COs, whether they're at the Squad, Wing or Division level to review everyone under their command and see who's deserving of recognition either in the form of a promotion or a medal -- I haven't been seeing nearly enough medals nominations lately, so try to keep me busy, eh? :-)

Finally, another short note about a few things -- there are many things to do in the RS to keep busy. Heavy's been doing a lot of Wiki work, especially on the PBF (PSG) tour chronology that looks really cool -- if you're interested in helping, I know he's been having people go through the historical missions. If you're looking for something to do to get more involved, talk with your Unit CO and see what's out there. Branch into something else if you have the time, and give a new unit a shot for a while. As far as new members go, well, the RS isn't growing at a huge rate nowadays by any means, and though we do have a recruiting office that does good work getting our name out there, I'd like to encourage everyone to keep recruiting in the back of their head somewhere. Maybe you've got a co-worker who's a huge Star Wars fan, or someone you play an MMO with, or something like that. As I mentioned earlier, the RS offers a lot of unique activities that can't be found anywhere else, and it's always good to share the fun.

With that, I'm going to wrap that up -- thanks for reading this long, and as usual, if there's any questions, my virtual door is always open. E-mail's the best way to get in touch with me: sconnrs@gmail.com.

Yours truly,

-Rear Admiral Sienn "Morningstar" Sconn
Rebel Squadrons Fleet Commander