I wanted to take time to make a report to the monarchs of Amtgard after approximately half the time between our annual meetings at Gathering of the Clans. Several items from last year were left in the hands of the Executive Committee to handle and I really owed all of you updates on these items before this but life for me (like all of you) got busy. I apologize. The good news is that much of the important activity is still going on even though I didn’t keep you as updated as I should have.
The three items that got carried out of Clan for action were:
ORK 3.0
Amtgard Web Updgrade
Kingdom Downgrade proposal
The ORK three project was demonstrated and we predicted that it would be complete by the end of the year. We will miss this date. The ORK3.0 went into final testing in late November but the QA team has identified enough things that require fixing that Megiddo, the ORK3.0 PM, now tells me it will be in the first quarter of 2013. I know this is disappointing to many PMs who are excited about having some improvements in their tool but as usual it’s more important to have it right than just to have it quickly.
The web upgrade project is on track although much still remains to be done to achieve the goal of having it ready to go by Clan 2013. Rakhir and his team have already worked with Roger and his to move the Wiki hosting to the new web space. Also, thanks to Ivar, we now have the domains
http://www.amtgard.com,
http://www.amtgard.net and
http://www.amtgard.inc pointing at the new web project. Of course, since its still not ready they are pointing at unavailable material just this second. I haven’t asked the kingdoms for the money that most of you offered to put up yet because there is a tax advantage to the people doing the work to take the payments in a single calendar year. I will be hitting up the kingdoms after the first of the year.
Finally the Kingdom Downgrade Proposal died on the vine. This is partially my fault. I definitely noted that at the CoM meeting the monarchs weren’t very excited about this proposal. The individual who proposed it didn’t want to put too much more definition into it. I probably should have stepped in and found someone else to flesh out the proposal as we agreed at the CoM meeting and then pushed this body to discuss and vote in this forum. I didn’t. For that I am sorry. If anyone one wants to flesh out this proposal, I will push to get this body to discuss and vote on it. If not, we can leave the possible demotion of kingdoms in the hands of the BoD of Amtgard Inc.