May 19

Recruiting for Citadel — Some Resources for You

 

 

 

 

 

reetings to one and all. People are the lifeblood of our organization. Without people, we cease to have any meaning or importance, so it stands to reason that more people means more fun, but how do we get more people? Recruiting! Everyone is a recruiter, whether you’re actively or passively recruiting. How do you passively recruit? By simply being you and sharing what you’re doing with your friends, family and co-workers. This can be done through Social Media whether it is Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Periscope or a whole laundry list of other platforms that people use to share their lives with the world. We could talk about how to better use these platforms and in the future, we will, but for now, let us discuss some of the immediate resources available to you as a potential recruiter.

Business Cards

Our new business cards are focused around initiating a conversation not about us as an organization, but about the person to which you’re handing the card. The cards now call people to action, asking them to think about what they would want to be in the Society. Do they see themselves as a warrior in armor or perhaps a prolific artisan? Instead of blasting them with a list of activities that we provide, the strategy is to put the recruiting experience on them and make them the topic of conversation.

The back side of the card contains our contact information and has a QR code that when scanned will refer the individual to a link, which is https://citadel.outlands.org/QR1. This URL will allow us to record how many hits we get being referred from the cards to our Newcomers Portal. It will automatically redirect the user to the page with the Newcomers Portal on it. The front side of the card also has the URL to the Portal directly.

Newcomers Portal

The Newcomers Portal is a page that has a natural flow to it almost like a Checklist. When we are demoing or if someone approaches you in person or on Social Media, it is generally because they have seen something that interests them. The first part of the Portal will have an intro video embedded in it to give a quick visual overview and welcome them to our organization. It has a 1 next to it to help create the checklist feel to ensure that there is a flow from top to bottom of the page. The ideal situation would have you as the experienced SCA member walking them through how to get involved in our Dream.

Step 2 is our Virtual Interest Card. Instead of having to gather up and copy a handful of paper interest cards, we can now automate the process on both sides to capture a potential member’s information. The Virtual Interest Card is a Google Form that acts as a survey to gather only the information necessary to follow up with them via their preferred method of contact, either by phone or by email. On the backend of the Form is a Google Sheet that each officer will be able to generate a mailing list from without getting access to the master list that has more information than they need to make contact about events and programs. This system is set up to ensure that data is not shared outside of warranted officers and only partial information is made available even at that point.

Step 3 consists of showing them our Baronial Calendar. It will help keep the recruiter aware of upcoming events that may interest that individual. It also tells the interested party that they can come back to this page and check in on any changes or add it to their phone, email account or other calendar app to stay on top of events that may interest them.

Step 4 is a list of activities and guides on ‘what to do next’ that can explain how to obtain a name, heraldry, garb, fighter gear or get involved as an officer or volunteer when they are ready to do so.

In the future we may split Step 4 into a Step 5 to make a final section that contains the guides separate from descriptions of the activities or serve as an Introduction to Life in the SCA module.

Follow Up

Following up with a potential member is vital. In this modern age of marketing, social media and deluges of information coming at someone from every direction we need to be able to punch through the noise and be the thing that is on the top of their minds. It is also important not to overwhelm someone or to harass them into playing. If you are interested in serving as a Point of Contact or Mentor for newcomers, please let the Chatelaine know by emailing Chatelaine@southernpass.org. This address will forward your message on to whomever the standing Chatelaine is at the time.

Please take a moment to share the great things we do in the SCA and here in the Barony. Who knows, the next person who sees your post could be our future King or Queen, Peer or an even better friend while you both get to enjoy the Dream.

Apr 18

Citadel Chatelaine

Good Morning Citadel! Her Excellency and I would like to thank Lord Esteban de Leon (Gabe Carrejo) for his service as our Baronial Chatelaine during the last 14 months. We are grateful for your efforts and we wish you the best of luck in your new adventure in service to our nation. We also look forward to your return home for visits.

With the stepping down of Lord Esteban, the Citadel is looking for a gentle who would be willing to step up as our Barony’s Chatelaine. The Chatelaine’s primary job within the SCA is to welcome newcomers to our Current Middle Ages and to help them become familiar with our customs and traditions.

The Chatelaine should be proactive about seeking out new members in the form of coordinating demos, etc. and offer to help them find the information they need to make the SCA an enjoyable experience. The Chatelaine will be able to inform new members about the activities available in the area, introduce them to local members, especially guild heads and officers, and help them borrow or acquire appropriate gear.

If you are interested and would like further information or details, please contact ourselves or our Baronial Seneschal, Lady Aiofe (Debra Carrejo).

Letters of intent to hold this office should he sent to coronet@southernpass.org, seneschal@southernpass.org and chatelaine@outlands.org.

Sep 29

Un-Official Citadel Rapier YouTube Channel

The Un-Official Citadel Rapier YouTube Channel has been updated!

All videos shot in 1080; please watch, like, subscribe and share with others.
Any recommendations for future videos are encouraged.

Your humble servant,
Don Carlos Nieto de Andrade

Aug 26

One More Way to Get Citadel’s Calendar into Your Phone

The flood of social media is unfortunately here to stay and as people spread to the edges of the earth with every new platform that pops up, we figured we’d take a step in a direction that saves you from the madness and leverages a tool we’re already using.  Now our Google Calendar automatically syncs in Discord in a Calendar Channel on a weekly basis.  Not sure when Fighter Practice is or where that A&S event is at?  Simple, join up on Discord and you’ll be able to quickly scroll through a weekly listing of events or ask in one of our text channels.  It brings all that the Citadel has to offer to your finger tips.  By joining our Discord you will also get push notifications for events and ongoing discussions between populace members.
Not sure how to coordinate showing up for a carpool to an event?  Need to track someone down, but don’t have their phone number?  Use Discord!  The app allows you to talk and text using wifi or your phone’s existing data plan.  We’ve also set it up to automatically pull articles up from the website as soon as they’re posted.  Don’t want to wait for the next newsletter?  Have no fear, Discord sends it directly to your phone.

Want to know more about Discord?  Head on over to our Discord Page to get started right away.

Jun 24

What is Largesse?

Throughout history, the generosity of the Landed Nobility has been termed “largesse”.  In the SCA, the giving of largesse by the Crown and Coronets allows for them to show that their wealth and happiness is a direct result of the wealth and happiness of the populace.  Not only is gift-giving expected of Royalty, it is a tangible symbol of their courtesy and appreciation.  It is one way to give something back to the populace and say thank you to those who have freely and willingly given their time and energy to Kingdom or Barony.

The populace of a Kingdom, Shire or Barony – the craftspeople, artisans, merchants – any and all interested, donate items that are then given away as gifts to visiting Nobility, Event Autocrats or members of the populace that have given of themselves for the good of the group .  These generously donated items benefit in two ways: the Landed Nobility have a wide and diverse variety of items to choose from to give away as largesse, helping to alleviate the financial burden that they already carry as Royalty; and the artisans have the opportunity to have exposure for their work, not only to be recognized by the Nobility and populace of their home group, but also throughout the entire Kingdom.

The best largesse items are ideally handmade or period in nature, ie: lengths of fabric, buttons; purchased ceramic and wooden plates and drinking mugs, etc. can be acceptable.  Items should be as period as possible, or at least have a medieval aire.  Items can be donated as a set and in pairs, in addition to individual items. These items are bestowed by the Landed Nobility as they see fit: gifted to other Landed Nobility, Event Autocrats, as prizes for event winners/sponsored prizes, or to other such deserving gentles.

We call upon all who would be interested in donating items to the Baronial Largesse stock.  If you would like to contribute something for Their Majesties or Their Excellencies to use as largesse, you can contact the Baronial Arts & Sciences Minister, Lady Rita, or their Excellencies themselves for guidance.  There is no limit to the number of items you can contribute. One item or many items are all equally appreciated.  All largesse received from members in the Barony need to have a label before they are given out as largesse in order for the artisan or donor to be recognized for their talent and generosity.  If the person does not wish to have their name on it, you can use “Populace of the Citadel of the Southern Pass” as the name.

Yours in Service,

Tariq & Elieth

Jun 16

What is the Recruitment & Retention Council?

The Barony has shown remarkable recovery over the past 4 ½ years since the Investiture of Baron Christopher and Baroness Jamilla.  During their tenure the Barony went from 38 (paid) members to 88 at their stepping down (Their tenure lasted 21 months).  The Barony is currently at 92 (paid) members, having peaked at 106 between June and August of 2015.

Through most of this time, the Barony was without a Chatelaine, which is part of the problem that we have had with not being able to keep up any sort of recruiting push.  Additionally, during his tenure, Christopher’s focus was on recruitment whereas we have shifted our attention more to a retention strategy, focused mostly on the rebuilding of a Baronial culture.  Unfortunately, that refocusing, coupled with the lack of a supporting officer for recruitment has caused our numbers to begin to fall.

 

We believe that our fluctuating numbers are not a reflection of the level of satisfaction with the current state of the Barony, but rather part of the “normal” expansion and contraction the Barony has always gone through, being that a significant percentage of our populace are either active duty military and their dependents, subject to periodic relocation.  It has been calculated that currently, only about 14% of our current membership is active duty military or dependent.  The percentage of military membership when Christopher and Jamilla stepped down was above 30%.  We, however, feel that although we hate to lose our people for any reason, we can work to mitigate the effect on our numbers caused by relocation; both by increasing our local population membership and by creating a functional plan for the constant recruitment of Military personnel and their dependents.  We will also see that recruitment of military personnel will in the long run help to keep the SCA as a whole in a better state.

 

Additionally, we feel that it is necessary that we bolster our newcomer orientation program.  Traditionally, newcomers, although generally warmly welcomed into the group, tend to be left to their own devices in terms of learning how to be in the SCA.  In many cases this has proved to be very ineffective and people end up getting bored or overwhelmed and eventually drift away in favor of other activities.  Although Sir Berold’s SCA 101 program and Citadel University have been programs that have been offered in the past, the frequency of these programs has not been sufficient to cover the needs of the group.  To this end we hope to develop an on-going program that will not only be engaging for newcomers, but will also draw out older members as well.

 

Furthermore, we feel that it is very important to address the problem of inadequacy regarding the youth.  Across the society as a whole we see an age gap when it comes to youth activities.  Time after time we see that pre-teens and teens are left with very little dedicated activities to engage them.  This feeds boredom at events and with the SCA in general, causing many of them to abandon the SCA altogether once they are old enough to choose to not attend events.  This is a problem that hits very close to home for us because we ourselves have a pre-teen at home that has quickly lost interest in the SCA since youth combat was halted in our Kingdom.  Much needs to be done in this direction and we hope that our efforts here in the Barony, if successful, can become a model for the rest of the Kingdom.

 

The reasons above as well as others are why the Recruitment & Retention Council was formed.  We believe that working together as a team we can accomplish so very much more than one person could ever do alone.  This council is intended to be an open venue for any and all members of the Baronial populace to voice their ideas and opinions in the hopes of helping us to stimulate the growth of the Barony as well as to continue to keep our current membership motivated to continue to be a part of this great Dream that we call the SCA.  The comment “That’s the way it’s always been” was my impetus to try and develop an active recruitment & retention plan.  There is no reason that past trends such as the relocation of military personnel should profoundly impact the Baronial populace if we have a permanent recruitment and retention system in place.  If you feel that you want to be a part of this initiative the please reach out to either me at coronet@southernpass.org or our amazing Chatelaine, Lord Esteban de Leon at chatelaine@southernpass.org.  We are looking to you, the Mighty Populace of our Great Barony, to step forward and help us make the Citadel the best it has ever been!

YIS

Shayk Tariq

(Photo of the Citadel encampment at Grand Outlandish 2017 by Elizabeth McKee)

May 20

How to prepare for A&S Competition

Illumination

Example of competition set-up

Consider what type of competition it is and post source. You probably have many inquiries so come and join us on the 12 of June, 2017 at 3309 Nairn St , El Paso, Tx 79925.

Lady Rita Perle von der Wetterau

May 01

Empowering Officers and the Populace to Post Website Articles

Good Evening fair members of the populace!

One of the goals of the Officer of the Chronicler is to help record and spread the good word of the Barony most often times taking the form of the Newsletter.  I want to take that a step further and empower you all to share information that pertains to each of our other offices, events and the general good works and projects that you all are working on at any given moment.  We should celebrate the accomplishments of our skilled and artful populace both in the workshops of our Barony and on the fields of battle, tournament lists and archery ranges.

To this end, I have authored this article to help you familiarize yourself with how to publish articles of your own design and push them to the far reaches of the Barony and beyond.  Additionally, it also enables the Chronicler to scoop up your contributions and push them further through the monthly Newsletter and other social media platforms all with the single click of a button.  Much of this is automated and will propagate throughout Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Pinterest and Google Plus giving you maximum exposure for your news, articles and other content.

The first option is to simply send the Chronicler an article in text format and include any images you may want to include to Chronicler[at]SouthernPass[dot]org (@ and . spelled out for anti-spam purposes).  There are no deadlines, so please send whatever you have whenever you find the time to write up an article.  If you are concerned about a timeline, please send it before the end of the month to ensure it gets included in that month’s Newsletter.

The second option, if you are internet savvy and wish to have a little more control over how and when articles are posted (or you want to reduce the workload on your friendly, local Chronicler!), involves obtaining an account for the website by contacting the Webminister or the Chronicler to have them create an account for you.  Once you have an account you can log in by going to the bottom of the website on any page and clicking the “Log In” link, which will take you to the website’s Dashboard.  On the left hand side you will see a menu with several options that may change depending on your level of permissions.  What you’re looking for, for the purposes of this article, is the Posts portion.  There should be a menu that expands when you hover over Posts, but if you click on it, the link will also take you to a page with a list of all the recent Posts and an Add New link near the top.  The hover menu will also reveal an Add New option.  Once you’ve clicked on the Add New option you will be presented with a text editor.  Make sure you use the Visual tab unless you’re WordPress savvy and want to venture into the world of advanced editing options.  We’ve included several plugins that enable a Page Builder that will let you do way more formatting tricks than any single person needs.

 

Once you’ve set up your article how you want it, we highly recommend you add an image to the top of the article by clicking “Add Media” and either the same or a different image as the Featured Image by scrolling all the way down on the right side to the Featured Image section clicking on “Set Featured Image.”

The Featured Image section is on the far right side of the page reached by scrolling all the way to the bottom.

Additionally, you should select a Category for the article as this will control where it gets displayed.  If you are adding news as an officer, please select Officer News and the appropriate officer news sub-category to ensure it shows up next to your officer section on the Court and Officers Page.  Featured articles will be added to the rotating slider on top of the main website and Homepage will display in the articles section below that.  We recommend you select the Homepage Category at a minimum and use the Featured Category sparingly as it bumps other articles off after a certain number is reached.  The Resources Category is meant for guides and other how-to articles that will be put into rotation on the Resources Page under the Resources Tab on the website.

Look for the Category section on the right side of the page

Now that you’ve got your body text, images and categories settled, you’re ready to add some Tags.  Tags are optional, but they make your article discoverable by the wider internet through Google and other search engines.  Tags are completely open ended and you can add whatever you want to the box and as many as you want.  Tags should be single words or short phrases that act as keywords to help people find your article.

The Tags section is located just under the Category section.

After all that, we’re ready to publish!  There are two options here.  You can either take the plunge and publish immediately or schedule the article.  There’s also a third option (more like a second to the original two?) where you can leave it in draft form and send the Chronicler a message to quality check your work, which we ultimately recommend.  Please send the Chronicler a message though, so we can make sure your Post doesn’t get left behind.

Click “Edit” next to Publish immediately to schedule the Post for the future if you don’t want to publish it right away.

Jul 26

On Wearing Garb: A Long-time Player’s Take on one of the Basics in the SCA

Sayyid Tariq ibn Yusuf ibn Askari al Ghassani

Joining the Society for Creative Anachronism is an exciting prospect for many people.  Whether they are a history buff, a cosplayer, a medieval combat enthusiast or even a Fantasy/Sci-Fi fan, being in the SCA is a chance to take a step away from their everyday mundane life to live in another time and place, even if it’s just for a little while.  There are many elements that are part of creating this illusion, such as (in the case of camping events) isolating ourselves from the modern world by going up into the woods, the sounds of drums and singers, medieval tents and banner, as well as other details.  However, the most obvious and important detail is the clothing that we wear during our sojourn in our artificial medieval world.  In the case of most local, single day events many of the other aforementioned elements are absent, leaving us with only our personal appearance to separate us from the modern world.  It is because of this that wearing garb to SCA events and activities is so very important.

IMG_3137-1024x683

Corpora (our Society laws and guidelines) states in section II-B that “Anyone may attend Society events provided he or she wears an attempt at pre-17th century clothing,… At business meetings and informal classes, the requirement to wear pre-17th century dress may be waived.”  The wearing of garb, therefore, is a requirement in order to participate in SCA activities.  That being said, the requirement is “an attempt at pre 17th Century clothing.” But what do we consider an attempt?

There are many ways to be able to adhere to without creating too much difficulty.  The first and easiest is to reach out to the local Chatelaine or Gold Key.  The Chatelaine’s responsibility is to make newcomers feel welcome and to help them make the transition into the “Current Middle Ages.”  The Chatelaine will either have direct access to loaner garb that belongs directly to the group or will have a list of people who would be willing to loan out personal garb for newcomer use.

A second option is to peruse your own personal wardrobe to look for things that could reasonably pass for an attempt.  For women, long, full skirts and fluffy cotton blouses or tribal-style blouses are pretty straightforward options that are considered good attempts.  The outfit could be rounded out with a pair of simple flats of simple boots.  For men it’s a little bit more complicated.  For pants one can use plain sweat pants or maybe even plaid Pajama pants.  Male tops are much more difficult to pass for a medieval tunic; however, a long vest with a simple woven pattern worn over a collarless dress shirt could work in a pinch.  Also, a smallish throw draped and pinned at one shoulder acts as a Viking-style cape and easily covers a mundane shirt.  If you have any doubt about whether or not a mundane outfit would pass as an attempt at pre17th century dress, feel free to ask the Chatelaine or any member of the local group.

A third option is to reach out to the Chatelaine or the general group membership for help to construct your own simple starter garb.  Although this is the most complicated option of the three, it is also the most fulfilling as it is a great way to begin actively participating in the SCA while still keeping things simple and manageable.  In addition, this is a great way to begin to form friendships, helping to solidify your place in the group as well as to strengthen the group as a whole

The most important thing to remember is that an attempt is just that, an attempt.  Don’t worry if your first try isn’t perfect.  There is plenty of time and plenty of helpful people in your group that will be more than happy to help you make or get your own garb that reflects who you want to be in these current Middle Ages.  You are only limited by your imagination!

So remember, garb is the easiest and most important way to help to create our Current Middle Ages.  Use it as the ultimate expression of the medieval you and don’t take it for granted.  Working together, we all bring The Dream alive!