Committee Meeting, BNSR 13, 7/6/19

18:58 – Meeting Start

1-on-1 Meetings rundown

Members of the Committee expressed a need for better publicity.

• Committee members stated that this could be improved via better planning

Publicity & Event planning

Need to focus more on centralizing the social media: Twitter, Instagram, the Facebook group and Reddit.

• Discussed having more of a focus on describing each event’s schedule through social media instead of simply stating that an event is coming up.
• Committee feedback states that posters aren’t as effective at raising awareness of the Society as possible.
  • Posters have been agreed on being effective at the beginning of the academic year during Freshers Week.
  • Facebook seems to be an alternative to posters, instead creating a short highlight reel.
    • Would need permission from all parties that would be in the highlight reel.
  • In terms of physical media, the Committee discussed having highlights of a stream/social on the many screens around campus.
  • One suggestion from a Committee member was to see if an Arts student would be interested in filming one of the highlight reels.
  • Also discussed the possibility and effectiveness of having an ad on Bailrigg FM.

• Committee feedback has stated that “planning hasn’t been great”.
  • To rectify this, the concept of a planning committee was suggested.
    • This planning committee would be made up of current Committee members as well as representatives for certain games based on the event that needs planning.
    • Believed that it was a good idea to always have at least one, where applicable, of the following Committee members on the planning committee:
      • President (Brent Oates, potentially Vice President Ben Cowling also)
      • Esports Co-ordinator (Karen Cheung/Ryan Tracey)
      • Engagement Officer (James Bulman/Katie Stevenson)
      • Community Officer, with a representative in their stead, should the Community Officer not be able to attend
  • Adding more variety to the socials has also been stated as a plausible method of improving member engagement.
  • The planning committee could also be a means to entice people to join the society and/or become more active in the community.
  • The issue of how to communicate with the representatives on the hypothetical planning committee was brought up, with Discord being a possible solution to this issue.
  • In terms of deciding what representatives would be needed, randomly assigning representatives was mentioned as a possible solution.
  • Decided that the number of representatives on the proposed planning committee would be two.

Discord Server

Considering having a Freshers Discord server as it has been reported to have worked well for Freshers this year.

Decided that the Society is in need of a more member-oriented Discord server, similar to the Manga and Anime Society Discord server.

• The idea of checking to see if a person is a member before allowing them to join the Discord was an idea proposed by the Committee.

The idea of having a separate Discord server exclusively for esports was proposed.

• This server would be more esports news focused than the main Discord server, with emphasis on communicating with the various esports teams.
• This server also would not be exclusive only to members of esports teams.

Friends Funding

Considering using Friends Funding to finance the acquisition of new equipment such as laptops.

• We would require at least five to six laptops, which would cost approximately £6000.

County Socials

Considered bringing back quizzes and having something on the small screen.

Considered having a theme to each social to make planning easier.

• Could poll the members to see what they would be interested in.
• Would also announce the themes to use them as a selling point to attract new members.

Decided that we need more of a presence on social media, such as Twitter, with an emphasis on gaming news as opposed to only having pictures from events.

Member retention is also an issue that the Committee has decided to try and solve.

The idea of having County Socials be competitive or casual was also brought into discussion.

• Could potentially organize County Socials in both of these ways, having a tournament type event.
• Themes would also help identify who would be best suited to be on the planning for a particular social.
• Having competitive and casual County Socials be separate was also brought up.
• Decided that the prize for winning a competitive County Social event or tournament would be something inexpensive, such as a free pint at the bar.

Alton Towers

The Committee was informed that the Alton Towers tickets had now been paid for

19:45 – Meeting End