Just before the holidays, I was approached by Bart Carroll from wizards.com. He wanted to do an email interview about rpgbloggers.com and my involvement in the site.

This was a surreal experience for me. Surreal enough that I thought he had contacted me by mistake.

The interview is posted and can be read here

I’d like to thank Bart and wizards.com for the opportunity. It was a cool experience.

I will be cross-posting this information to the RPGBN Google Group but wanted to post this here as I know some people who follow this are not in the google group.

I would like to get the RPGBN Advisory Panel in place by the end of the week, so that I can move forward on the outstanding RPGBN work (of which there is a great deal).

I previously mentioned that I would be forming a 4 member Advisory Panel for the RPGBN. I want to provide a few details regarding this panel now, and ask that the RPGBN community select one person to serve on this panel. In order to do so, I need to explain what this means.

1. You don’t get paid. It’s a volunteer gig. But if you can somehow make a dollar by telling people you serve on the panel, you can keep the dollar.
2. People will know you serve on the panel, and you will be expected to gather community suggestions and bring them to the table. That isn’t to say that I won’t take suggestions from anyone else, it’s just that one purpose of this role is to gather the proverbial lupins into a bunch.
3. This position is filled by community selection, and the person serving on the panel is expected to serve the interests of the community.
4. Participating in panel discussions will mean occasional flurries of email discussion during which you will be expected to be an active participant. There will be a lot of discussion in the beginning, but once there is a roadmap, things will die down considerably. I anticipate it requiring a time commitment of something like an hour a day total in the beginning, and maybe an hour a week down the line.
5. This is an advisory panel, not a board of governance. This means the purpose of the panel is to give non-binding advice on important decisions. Nobody should get their feelings hurt if I don’t follow a suggestion.
6. Panel members will be expected to be considerate of each other and should likewise expect consideration. I have no tolerance or time for drama.
7. Panel discussions will be private, but not secret. If you serve on the panel and someone asks you a question about what’s being discussed, you are encouraged to answer their questions provided you do so an honest and respectful fashion.
8. Any panel member can walk away at any time for any reason. I may dismiss a panel member if I believe the relationship is no longer productive. Should the community selected representative step down or be dismissed from the panel, I will ask the community to select a new representative. If the community representative is ever dismissed, I will provide my justification for the dismissal to the community. (I hope never to have to do that.)
9. I will listen to every suggestion that the panel brings to the table.

If this still sounds like something you want to do, and you want to throw your hat into the ring to be the community selected representative, I request that you send an email to the rpgbloggers google group with a 50 word summary of why the community should select you as the representative. If you are not part of the google group, you will need to join the group. Comments here and personal emails are not valid substitutes.

Tomorrow night, I will post details on how to vote, and votes will be counted on Friday.