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 February the 29th in the order that they have been received. You can find out more about the CSM elections here.
Today's candidate is Kyle Aparthos
 
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.
My name is Kyle Aparthos, a ?jack of all trades? character who has resided in Spacemonkey's Alliance since the summer of 2013. Prior to my  membership in SMA, I had two major phases in my career. First, membership in a small and very tight-knit wormhole corp. We went our own separate ways after about a year. After that, I was the CEO of a small corp in highsec, operating out of Orvolle in Placid and doing salvage runs into lowsec and nullsec to scavenge resources from major fights. When I first joined SMA I spent about six months to a year as a complete nobody, doing nothing of any real import. As my membership continued on, I spent time as a decent FC, and then a diplomat, being fortunate enough to hold the position of 2nd in command of our diplomatic department, as well as being present in a number of advisory roles over time, spitballing ideas for alliance leadership about the steadily changing mechanics of EVE Online. I am currently retired from being an ?official? diplomat and instead focus my time on analysing the meta of EVE and performing various community roles. Much of my current space job, as a result, involves either analysis or talking to people. In short, much of my history revolves around living within SMA and slowly becoming closer and closer friends with the other awesome people in alliance leadership.
 
Who would you consider to be your key constituents? Who you would best represent within the playerbase?
To be honest, I wouldn't say that I?m trying to appeal to a specific type of constituent. I?m more than willing to engage with literally anyone regardless of where they come from or whom they represent. However, I will absolutely concede to being most well-versed and most heavily invested in nullsec and sov mechanics. As a result, my primary constituents would be a) anybody who agrees with the platform that increased player agency, especially relating to group organization/interaction, is a vital component of EVE to be expanded upon, and b) those who live or want to live in nullsec, particularly those who desire more options for living in their space.
 
Please summarise your platform. (Preferably using key bullet points)

• Group management, especially at the alliance level (though corp level applies too) needs some serious love. Currently most groups of more than a handful or two of individuals rely on out of game tools entirely for their organizational purposes. While this is not entirely a bad thing, more in-game tools would also be very useful, such as the ability to set in-game blacklists, alliance level taxes, alliance-level hangars in the vein of corp hangars, etc.


• Player agency, both individual and group-based is the most important feature of EVE Online. Having the option to do something is by far the greatest feature that CCP can grant us. To that end, Capital, Structure, Sov, and Management reform should all be based around the idea of having as many different branches open for opportunity as possible.


• In the vein of the previous statement (multiple ways to accomplish the same goal), every type of action should have multiple hard and/or soft counters, rather than a single counter to every action (this encourages stagnation and predictability).

 
Why have you decided to run for CSM this year?
I have chosen to run for CSM because I have spent the last year and a half slowly gathering experience on diplomacy, FCing, and analysing game mechanics through my semi-popular column Opinionated Analysis (which currently lies dormant due to some RL stuff at the end of 2015 but is subject to change in the immediate future.) As a result I feel like I have the experience and analytical knowledge to offer something to CCP and the playerbase.
 
Have you run for or been a member of CSM in the past? If so please list each year and if you were elected.
I have not ever run for CSM previously to this year.
 
What makes you a unique representative when you compare yourself to other candidates?
I would say that one of the things that makes me unique to the other candidates that I have seen thus-far is the category of person that I am. I've seen quite a lot of candidates who are outright cynical of the CSM, or have a particularly narrow focus on one set of mechanics or worse, one group in EVE. I would say that my willingness to engage with players regardless of their location and position would set me in a minority (though certainly not totally unique) group.
 
Do you have any out of game experience and skills that make you a good candidate?
I am currently pursuing a PhD in Physics, as well has having a fair bit of out-of-game experience interacting with both individuals as well as large groups of people. The former has lent me quite a hand with mathematics and analysis, and the latter has helped me interact with a patient and open mind with all but the most irredeemably vitriolic people in EVE Online
 
What areas of EVE are you weakest at knowledge wise?
I would have to say that my greatest weakness is knowledge of lowsec PVP, as I moved straight from highsec to a wormhole and straight from a WH to nullsec.
 
If you were offered unlimited development time - what's the biggest change you would lobby for in EVE?
I would honestly have to say that I would want to continue to dedicate as much development time as possible to the new structure paradigm that CCP has announced. I feel like some of the ideas that they've spitballed around could be absolutely spectacular if given unlimited dev time. Especially ones that revolve around structures that, for a cost, customize your space in so many unique ways.
 
If you could wind back the clock - what feature or change would you remove from EVE?
I would say that I would likely remove the warp speed penalties introduced during Rubicon, or at least lessen their impact on larger ships. I feel that it was little more than a stopgap measure that did more harm than good, and strongly disincentive the use of large ships.
 
If you could pick one candidate to be elected with you who would they be and why?
Steve Ronuken, by far. He's a cool dude who has helped me on many an occasion.
 
What is your favorite memory in EVE and why?
My favourite memory in EVE was most likely the first time someone wrote a large letter to the CSM about changes that he felt needed to be made, and included me with the CSM on the address book due to my Opinionated Analysis column, stating that I had a good handle on EVE. It made me feel like all my work was beginning to really pay off.
 
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 engage with the EVE playerbase via Reddit (u/KyleAparthos), in-game (Kyle Aparthos), via Tweetfleet Slack (Handle-Kyle Aparthos), via Skype with the handle Kyle Brashear, and soon with a website that I am developing to bring back Opinionated Analysis! (address will be opinionatedanalysis.wordpress.com)