IC: Mud and Mountaintops

She meanders on a mossy stone path that curves gently to follow the perimeter wall of the combination warehouse and office space. Her fingertips brush a wall of live foliage to her right. Her eyes gaze across pristine mountain vistas displayed on the curving video wall to her left. A small fountain gurgles somewhere behind her. She is lost in thought, meditating on all the matters under her purview. As those matters relate to herself, they are dead simple. Magnified through the lens of 700 pilots, they become much more complex. Somewhere between the two extremes is a manageable balance. If only she can find it.

The door chimes. "Johnny Splunk", informs the room AI. "OK", she says.

Exiting the path, she crosses to a comfortable lounge area where Johnny is already seated and unpacking something that smells delicious.

"Hey, what's all this?!" she asks in surprise.

"Dinner! You have to eat, you know!" he says, smiling. Always smiling, this one, she thinks and can't help but smile herself. He jumps up to give her a friendly hug before sitting back down to continue setting out food on the low table between the sofas. She sits across from him.

"Smells and looks great! Yeah, um...I think I forgot to eat today. Thanks!" she says. Her stomach is rumbling with hunger, she realizes. When did she last eat?

They tuck into creamy fish curry, fruit and cheese, fresh-baked (!) bread, and a crisply sweet Gallente white. "Gallente wine, best wine," she declares after the first sip. "Agreed...and I admit I conned the corp AI a little bit to find out which one you favor at the moment," Johnny says. They both laugh. If anyone could con an AI, it was Johnny Splunk.

"So, want to talk about the wars, the spies, or the wormhole search services thing first?" he asks.

"Oh gods, let's save the war talk for last. Whatcha got for me on the spies?" she says, and so they launch into a wide-ranging discussion on fresh intel, observed activities, reports from members and actions being taken. The discussion moves onto corp program changes, tools to support the ever-increasing number of wormhole search requests, EvE-Scout service coverage, corp financials, member initiatives, staff positions needing filled, personnel matters, recent fleet ops, Helios Anduath's latest update from his brief sojourn planetside, and finally the current wars and how to best help new pilots cope with them.

"I just have to stop getting so mired in the day-to-day worry about the ones who insist on flying in high sec during the wars and lose ships because they don't know what they're doing yet," she admits.

"Right...look at it like this: we provide the information they need, they can choose to use it for their own benefit or not. Either way, they get the experience of learning about war firsthand. Trial by fire for some of them. It's their choice. And if they keep making the same mistakes, they're probably not going to stay anyway. So why worry? It'll sort itself out." Johnny shrugs melodramatically and signs their inside joke #freeshrugs by crossing the first two fingers on each hand across each other. They laugh in recognition that they are both prone to worrying and obsessing overmuch about corp things.

"Ok, lady, one last thing before I go get ready for the Vulfpeck fleet." He narrows his eyes at her. "When's the last time you undocked just for the joy of wandering through space to see the sights?"

"Errr...", she mutters.

"Mynxee, you need to go...and I got you something to take with you to help keep things in perspective!" He grins, handing over a small wrapped package.

"Uh oh," she says as she begins to unwrap it. And then she bursts into laughter seeing what is inside.

"Okay, okay, I get the message. It's all about the fun! I'll get the Astero prepped and head out for a few days," she says, still laughing. "You nut!"

"You know it!" says Johnny and with that, he's out the door. Vulfpeck business is serious business.

Smiling, she sends a prep order to her Hangar Chief, gives the bobblehead a tap, and closes every spreadsheet, every email, every Galnet post, and every comms channel before heading to bed with a good book and one last glass of wine.

Effort...Why Bother? Because It Matters.

Celebratory Hugs Fleet roams have become a thing in Signal Cartel for notable membership milestones. As we approached 500 members earlier in July, Johnny Splunk (EvE-Scout co-founder and a founding partner of Signal Cartel) decided to plan something special. While he worked on his secret plans, I planned the "Dangerous Places" Treasure Hunt to commence immediately after the roam.

There is always a fair bit of work involved in a celebratory Hugs Fleet. We try to go somewhere special, we give stuff away, we aim to include an educational component. Because of Johnny's special plans and my treasure hunt, this one was particularly time-consuming. All told, I spent about 20 hours on it and Johnny spent 10 to 12 hours. Prep consumed the majority of that time. In the week preceding the op, my main tasks were to:

• Track prize donations and send thank you notes to donators
• Help coordinate schedules and support
• Work out treasure hunt process and prizes
• Draft a comprehensive instructions and tracking post for the treasure hunt (which ended up being almost 7k words!)
• Anchor a test container at a location off-grid from a celestial and work with Johnny to ensure it could be reached using only d-scan
• Anchor a total of 20 password-protected secure containers in low sec systems across as many regions as possible

In addition to helping me with the treasure hunt test, Johnny:

• Staged and fitted 100 Hugs Fleet doctrine ships in Thera (which a failed Iteron delivery did not deter!)
• Coordinated schedules and worked out plans with key players
• Moved a cyno alt into place
• Did route planning and last minute re-routing
• Managed fleet day prep and festivities in space prior to fleet departure

During the fleet, Johnny FC'd (and continued to co-FC after he met with unfortunate circumstances mid-roam). After the fleet op concluded, I oversaw the treasure hunt, purchased treasure hunt prize items, and ensured that the 60-odd prizes from the roam giveaways and treasure hunt found their way into the hands of the winners.

Yes, it was a lot of work. But when everything comes together according to plan and people have fun, it is totally worth it. Why? As Johnny says: "First of all, it's fun to plan an event that I know will be enjoyable for our members. Second, it's fun to participate in fleets like this. Finally, it's entertaining when plans don't work out precisely and the whole fleet just takes everything--including ship and pod loss--in stride. Seeing everyone's maturity, good humor, and the credo in action at those times is fulfilling." I feel the same way. Our members are extremely generous in helping each other and particularly new players. Organizing these special Hugs Fleet roams is our way of returning the favor and hopefully inspiring others to organize their own fun events.

So did all this effort pay off? You betcha! Prep and plans were all wrapped up an hour or two before start time. The fleet went up and we had somewhere between 35 and 40 members join. A few of us sat in station to hand out ships while excitement began to build due to Johnny's hints of what was to come.

"Why are we getting an Infomorph Psychology book with the ship?" asked one new member.

"You'll see. Just inject it and train it to at least Level 1." replied Johnny. He likes to play his cards close to his chest in order to give our newbros fun learning surprises on fleet ops. Our more experienced players smiled at the implications.

As an incentive to join fleets early so that ops can leave on time, we usually have a fun little treasure hunt in Thera before departure. Everyone undocks and gets to random safes, then Johnny dumps a set of bookmarks into a Corp bookmarks folder and pulls the trigger. There's a mad dash to be first to grab loot from the cans at the bookmarks. Loot typically consists of collectible trinkets, Sisters gear, implants, and other items useful to explorers. This tends to get everyone excited and hearts pumping, which is the best state in which to begin a Hugs Fleet roam!

With everyone chomping at the bit, our FC--who may well be the calmest, politest, most instructive FC I've ever seen--called the op start. Member Captain Ace Rico produced a video of the roam which does a better job than I ever could of showing the fun we had. Go watch it.

How awesome was that? Our most heartfelt thanks to Phoebe Freeport Republic for their freeports with jump clone installation capabilities and to Otto Bismarck of Pandemic Legion for providing us the opportunity for a memorable experience with the greatest of all ships in EVE.

Hugging Phoebe Freeport Republic--thanks for the jump clones! (Image by Stikkem Innagibblies)

OMG it's a Titan! (Image by Stikkem Innagibblies) 

Once the remnants of our fleet bridged through to Doril, I announced the "Dangerous Places" Treasure Hunt, posted instructions, and gave fleet members a 10-minute head start before sending a corp email about it to everyone. It seemed our intrepid explorers still had energy to burn as they raced across New Eden to the far-flung low sec systems where I had hidden containers with prize vouchers in them. Along the way, they used their Google-fu to figure out container passwords using the clues provided. Once in the target systems, explorers had to use their d-scan skills to narrow down the off-grid location of each container and manually fly to it. It was great fun on comms listening to the excitement, frustration, and determination to find these cans.

Their effort was well-rewarded. The vouchers were good for things like Asteros, sets of 6% scanning implants, Stratioses (Stratii?), Sisters gear, ISK and collectibles, one of Rixx Javix' battlecruiser posters, and a character portrait by yours truly. Any idea I had of this event lasting a day or more was obliterated by the competitive nature of our members. Most of the containers were discovered within an hour and all had been looted within about two hours. Remarkably, only one can was MIA and I think that happened because I forgot to anchor it and it got junked at DT.

Participants had a great time with this Treasure Hunt and provided useful feedback to inform the next one--which will be a lot harder! I was really thrilled by one member who said she didn't know how to use d-scan before the treasure hunt and got so good at it thanks to the "just in time" practice that she ended up helping someone else learn to d-scan! That, friends, is op success.

So the festivities for our 500 Member Celebratory Hugs Fleet concluded with a bunch of tired, happy explorers. We had a lot of laughs on comms, corp camaraderie, and fun times but also--and maybe more importantly--gave a few very new players a great introduction to EVE Online. One that I hope sucks them in and makes the game and its potential irresistible. I beat this drum a lot but the message is important. How we treat new players matters. It has a very real impact on our corp culture, on the wider community, and (I believe) on the sustainability of the game itself. Our goal in Signal Cartel is to give new players a solid start, fun experiences, and peeks here and there into the bigger game outside our corporation. They may stay with us or ultimately move on but either way, we do the best we can to prepare them for whatever path they choose and hopefully both the community and the game ultimately benefit from that.

For that alone, the effort is worth it. It matters.

#####

Shout-outs to a few individuals who provided donations or special support to this event:

• robertbobo Orlenard, Breysyth Asythe, Gaston Cartier, Foolproof Kado, Edohatrem Inur, and Helios Anduath for random drawing prize donations
• Johnny Splunk, Hugs Fleet FC darling
• k98sniper, Hugs Fleet Hero FC
• Edohatrem Inur, Sentosa Erata, and Selvien Mieyli for scouting
• Dorian Reu for handling the random drawings for prizes during the fleet op
• Everyone who helped newbros in fleet with private mentoring convos
• luobote kong, former and forever honorary Signal Cartel member, for joining us
• Captain Ace Rico for superb videography
• Otto Bismarck for arranging Titan love for us and talking with members afterwards to provide eye-opening insights on what it's like to be a big league player in New Eden

Curating a Corp Culture

It is an interesting thing to establish a vision for a "counter-culture" corp, lay the groundwork, and watch it manifest the way it has been doing in Signal Cartel.

As we continue to grow at the surprisingly consistent rate of about 100 new members per month, the central pillar of our corp culture--the Credo--is subject to interpretation by more people every day. More questions are raised about meaning, intent, and scope. More guidance is sought regarding practical applications in specific circumstances. More boundaries are tested and more debate is generated. This has led to some heated discussions as different interpretations of the Credo and different temperaments or outlooks collide. While sometimes challenging to moderate in a way that fosters free expression yet maintains civility, all such discussions are welcomed and encouraged by leadership.

In an effort to better understand what parts of the Credo our pilots struggle with and how they personally embrace its tenets, I recently put out a call to our membership for Credo feedback. To give you some idea of just how strongly our pilots feel about the matter, I got back about 10,000 words of opinions, suggestions, and questions within a couple of days. In addition to which, there have been extended conversations about it in our Alliance chat and on comms. In all these communications, I find myself constantly amazed at the intelligence, maturity, wisdom, and insightfulness of our members. The really neat thing is hearing from so many how much it means to them to be a part of the vision for Signal Cartel. It is a humbling responsibility to curate a corp culture that has such high value to such a large number of people.

And so Signal Cartel leadership (myself, Johnny Splunk, G8keeper, and Helios Anduath) is currently reviewing all of the feedback received and considering how best to answer questions and provide guidance to our members. As our Credo-inspired culture becomes ever more deeply entrenched, we are less interested in being "Credo Cops" than in sharing our vision of Credo intent and "best practices" application in ways that encourage others to internalize those things and let their actions and decisions be informed appropriately. It is particularly challenging to find the right balance between policing Credo compliance and evolving a self-policing culture but that is an organic thing which can only happen over time and we are beginning to see desirable trends in that regard. As someone who finds the social interaction in New Eden to be its most compelling aspect, I am fascinated by how far things have come already and how Credo challenges play out among our members.

"But spaceships, what about those?!" Oh yeah...well, we don't just sit around ship-spinning, drinking fine Gallente wine, and droning on about corp culture all day. We *are* out there in space all the time, everywhere, doing things:

From crazy-ass Party Probers fleets to in-space research to wormhole ops to getting lost on expeditions to impromptu mentoring roams, we are fearless about undocking and embracing the unknown. We encourage and provide lots of resources to aid in savvy piloting but losing ships is simply the price we sometimes pay for going in search of enlightenment and valuable loot in dangerous places. I sometimes joke that we are solely responsible for keeping the Astero market afloat. The truth is that killboard ISK efficiency is of very little interest to me. What I care about is that Signaleers accept losses gracefully, show opponents respect regardless of circumstances, and undock their next ship with the same enthusiasm as they did the previous ones. We do this amazingly consistently, thanks to the mindset fostered by the Credo and the generosity of our members with each other both in sharing expertise and helping each other with more tangible support. The lack of tears and whinging due to losses might well be one of the most delightful things about our corp culture. We know how to laugh at ourselves, have fun, and roll with the punches.

And so we go, and so we grow. It is indeed a fine thing to behold. You can be part of it, if you're so inclined. We welcome everyone with whom our corp culture resonates. If you'd like to learn more about our culture or about joining, drop by the EvE-Scout public channel in-game and listen to our recent interviews on The Neocom and Hydrostatic podcasts.

Musings on the Explorer's Way

Opening the doors to Signal Cartel on January 30 was more like opening a small floodgate. Every day, I log in to find new applications and new faces in Corp chat. We are 85 already! Who knew there were so many pilots out there--both old and new--infected by wanderlust and compelled by the idea of finding something interesting out there among the stars?

Exploration tends to be a solo journey. Many who have joined us are in the habit of flying alone and continue to do so. Others enjoy self-organizing into ad-hoc groups to pursue shared objectives. Everyone seems happy to be able to chat with other like-minded souls in the Alliance channel. And many are stepping up in extraordinary ways to support our rookie explorers and help them hit the ground running. It is a lovely thing to see both rookies and veterans alike sharing ideas and inspiring each other with their adventures and discoveries both large and small.

Listening to our members talk about their activities, I am struck by how--just like any other career in New Eden--exploration is as nuanced as the individuals who embrace it. Some are content to wander the stars unfettered by an agenda. Others are intent on earning ISK through exploration sites or finding items of value abandoned by other players. Still others are interested in mapping the universe or otherwise wandering for personal reasons or profit. And at least a few are seeking empirical evidence related to Caroline's Star, the Circadian Sleepers, Thera, and other lore-related mysteries. Despite these various nuances, dedicated explorers seem to share two things: a rugged sense of independence and delight in discovery.

Exploration has given me the time and opportunity to notice and appreciate a New Eden filled with interesting stories, intriguing mysteries, and beautiful things just waiting for me to discover them. When I was a pirate, my focus was solely on the hunt for "targets of opportunity". All my attention was centered on ship fittings, logistics to replace lost ships, combat tactics, and the output of a constantly spammed directional scanner. It was a predator's tunnel-vision perspective from which I rarely looked up to wonder about a nebula, a landmark, or New Eden backstories. I rarely sought out the unknown path just because it was there. Now, I look up. I wonder. And I seek.

Violent Wormhole in Thera

My approach to exploration is relatively stress-free and uncomplicated. When not attending to corp duties or helping rookies find their feet, I wander randomly from Thera in search of low sec, null sec, and C1/C2 hacking sites. I often take side trips to landmarks or simply to see what this system or that looks like or see what others are doing there. Although the discovery angle of exploration is a reward in itself, ISK opportunities tend to be modest (although there have been one or two rather significant finds). That's okay by me as I have few assets to maintain: probably fewer than 10 ships, all frigates, perhaps 5 of which are fitted. Although I explore in more dangerous areas of space, I aim to "fly clever" (as we explorers like to say). Maintaining situational awareness is a big part of that and I can thank my time as a low sec pirate for honing those skills such that my ships are not much at risk and thus rarely need replacing.

Exploration is not the play-style for everyone. Many pilots will prefer a faster pace of life, more profitable pursuits, PvP-oriented activities, or grander objectives. New Eden is a more interesting place because of them. But explorers are on a different, more personal journey. We are the lone wolves among the stars, thinking for ourselves, charting our own course, marching to the beat of our own drum. We find our adventures, friends, and riches where we find them. As New Eden evolves around us, so will opportunities also continue to evolve for our kind to seek, discover, and profit on our own terms.

#cantstopthesignal
Want to know more about Signal Cartel? Click here.