Bromo asked the following question: "We've been talking about getting a new sim since it seems like our vacancy rate is rather low. Do you feel we are ready for a new sim? What do you see as the risks and rewards? DO you have any ideas on how you will work with CDS to determine the theme? How do you see the RA and Chancellor working together towards this goal if you feel a new sim should be done?"
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In my campaign statement, I wrote the following:
Cadence Theas wrote:Sim development. What does expansion mean? I would love to see more sims, but not at the huge social cost that the LA sim reform has caused. Adding sims just to fill them up, or to bring in additional monies is never the answer unless, we first manage to come together as a community. We are an organic community going through a rather difficult moment, not simply a list of people who pay tier every month. If the LA reform produced such acrimony, accusations, and character assassinations in the forum and in IM after two years of discussion and argument, what would a new sim produce right now? I am all for new sims, but only if we can approach it in a mature manner recognizing that we all need to give and take in what has to be a CDS-wide consultation process. I will insist in a popular consultation process, and the negotiation of final results in any sim development initiative.
There seems to be an informal consensus to develop specifically NSF West. But there is not much discussion yet regarding the development of property there and the relationship between the public and private areas. For us to be ready to develop a new sim, we must be committed to the idea of NOT repeating the LA experience. The only way to ensure that this does not happen is to include a binding consultation process in the proposal for NSF West.
I don’t think the issue is the chancellor and RA working together; their role is to promote the development of the sim, to approve the design after the consultation process, and to make sure it gets done. Their role is not to build the sim, there are many qualified people in CDS who have the experience and talent to bring the dream forward. Having said that, a new sim does offer a unique collaborative process and a new chance for wider participation with the following proposal:
I suggest that the New Guild use the new sim as a type of field school for those CDS members who want to learn how to build, or to refine the building skills they already have. If we have a little bit of patience in this final stage of the sim development process to offer the field school, we can say at the end that we have a sim built in a truly collaborative manner.