With the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) Elections coming up soon we at EVE NT have contacted all the running candidates who have announced their intentions to run and provided them with a standardised interview template. The goal of this is to give each candidate a set of standard questions for them to respond to with the aim of helping you, the voter, to choose a candidate who best represents you and your play style to CCP. The same questions have been asked of every candidate as to allow easier comparison. The responses posted are unedited and will be published in the run up to the opening of the voting period on Febuary the 29th in the order that they have been received. You can find out more about the CSM elections here.
Today's candidate is Steve Ronuken.
 
Please start by giving us a short introduction to who you are and your history within EVE Online. Include how long you have been playing and the groups you have been involved with.
I?m Steve Ronuken, also known as Fuzzysteve (amongst other names). I?m primarily an industrialist in Eve, with a side order of missioning and exploration, and a dash of NPSI. Outside of Eve, I?m a third party developer, running (amongst others) https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/, and I?m one of the major sources for converted versions of the Static Data extract that many other applications depend on.
I started playing Eve in 2011, so I?m a relative newbie compared to some. I spent a little time in a player corp, until it collapsed and I founded my own, where I've been ever since (and it's now a solo Alliance, ?Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM?, to try and get that subliminal message going) While it's a solo corp, that doesn't mean I don't interact with people, spending time in a bunch of channels, and occasionally going on Roams with NPSI groups. (I have an Amarr FW alt, but I don't take him out as often as I should)
 
Who would you consider to be your key constituents, who you would best represent within the playerbase?
My key constituents fall into a few buckets. The first are industrialists and marketeers, as that's my main play style within the game. I've done pretty much all of it, outside of reactions and capital construction, so I have a good handle on the needs of those players, and what will help there (and thus help the rest of Eve, blowing up what's been built)
The second are third party developers, and the people who use their tools. Pretty much everyone in Eve uses a third party tool of some sort, from Evemon to Zkill, and all the steps in between. Eve has a strong developer community, and I?m tied into that pretty tightly, able to give advice to CCP on what's good, and what's bad for us, and thus the rest of the player base.
 
Please summarise your platform. (Preferably using key bullet points)
It should be understood that the CSM exists only to advocate for certain kinds of changes, and to tell CCP 'that's a bad idea? (when it's a bad idea). As such, I can make no promises past ?I?ll represent the interests of industrialists, and third party developers as best I can.? Anyone making promises of making CCP change stuff are, at best, badly misguided.
I?ll be advocating for:

• Third party developers (Can we get an API for that?)


• Industrialists


• Marketeers


• Mission runners


• Explorers


• FW people who want fights.

 
Why have you decided to run for CSM this year?
I've been on the CSM before, and feel that I still have more help to give. Last year there were some problems, but I've been careful not to burn any bridges, and I think I can help make CSM XI work better
 
Have you run for or been a member of CSM in the past? If so please list each year and if you were elected.
This is my fourth run for the CSM, and hopefully my third time elected. I ran for CSM 8 (2013), and was elected for CSM 9 (2014) and CSM 10 (2015).
 
What makes you a unique representative when you compare yourself to other candidates?
I think my unique selling point is the combination of industry and third party development. I?m deeply tied into the third party community, and a proven contributer.
 
Do you have any out of game experience and skills that make you a good candidate?
I was a cat herder in a previous life? More seriously, I?m a Systems Administrator in my meatside job, which means I?m often the interface between our development team, and the rest of our operations team. I have a fair grip on what development teams look like from the outside (and from the inside as a dev in my spare time)
 
What areas of EVE are you weakest at knowledge wise?
PvP. I mean, I can fit and fly ships, and I?m not bad at it, but it's my weakest point.
 
If you was offered one year of unlimited development time - what's the biggest change you would lobby for in EVE?
That's a hard question to answer. Assuming it's not a full company thing, I'd probably push to remove the final roadblocks to some of the more interesting crest features possible. If I had any time remaining, it would probably go on discoverability features, like chat and mail, so people could find those extra communities. And maybe the creation of social groups in Eve, as extra groupings, in addition to corporations.
 
If you could wind back the clock - what feature or change would you remove from EVE?
There's no real feature I'd remove, unless that removal would open up the time which was used on it. Take Walking in Stations, for example. Removing it wouldn't give any benefit, unless the time could have been repurposed to something meaningful
 
If you could pick one candidate to be elected with you, who would they be and why?
That's another hard question to answer. I'd pick Sugar, but then she'd be less than happy for making her run again, when she's gotten out. For the people running, I want to see the full list before I give any endorsements.
 
What is your favorite memory in EVE and why?
Varies depending on my mood. Getting my first Billion was good. But so was my first PvP kill.
 
What platform(s) do you use currently to engage with the wider player base? If someone wanted to contact you what is the best way to do this? (Include Twitter/Emails/Skype/Slack etc.)
I?m on Twitter, Email, tweetfleet slack, skype, reddit, evemail, and chat in Eve.
For the times I?m not logged into Eve (my employeers object to me playing Eve at work, for some reason), Twitter's a fair way to get my attention. If you want a conversation, then the tweetfleet slack works well.
 
If people wanted to find out more about your platform - where is the best place to do so? (Include blogs, forums posts and podcasts)
I have an AMA thread up on reddit, a campaign thread on the official forums, and I?ll be putting some posts up on my blog once the election has officially started. I?m also open to direct questions.
 
In short - what is your closing statement (no more than 500 words please!)
Vote for me! It's in my alliance name and everything.
Pretty much everyone uses third party tools in Eve, and I want to get more power into the player's hands. I don't want people to have to use the tools, but I want them there if people want to use them. At the same time, I don't want to enable botting. So there are areas of Eve I don't want to see writable APIs. (putting in industry jobs, changing market orders. That kind of thing). Everything else is fair game.