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 Bobmon.
 
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 Bobmon, member of Habitual Euthanasia, Pandemic Legion and I?m the active CEO of Evenews24.com. I started playing EVE Online in 2010 following an introduction by a couple of my friends who had their own Dutch corporation. Since the start I've been in alliances such as: Convicted, Black-Mark, Red.Overlord, Unclaimed, Northern Coalition and Pandemic Legion.
I've been involved with different kinds of operation within EVE Online so people might know me from:
-     0.0 Nullsec Warfare: I have been a part of multiple 0.0 alliances with whom I fought many battles!
-     FC: Started in 2011 and from that point on led everything from small subcap fleets to capital fleets.
-     Alliance Leadership position: Second in command & Head Diplomat of Unclaimed.
-     Mentor for new players: I?m currently a mentor for members in Pandemic Horde
-     Evenews24 Chief Editor and CEO
-     Part of the Evesterdam Organisation team
-     Player Presenter: Was one of the presenters for EVE TV at Fanfest 2015.
-     Fanfest Presenter: gave a presentation about"> EVE Media
-     Member of the #Rekkingcrew, PL
 
Who would you consider to be your key constituents, who you would best represent within the playerbase?
My main focus has always been the EVE Online community. My Ingame role and my work for EN24 has always allowed me to work closely with many different player demographics and keeps me in constant contact with a large number of content creators from many backgrounds. My home in PL allows me to work closely with individuals on a day-to-day basis, who have a lot of knowledge in the nullsec and capital related warfare. This will allow me to spot issues more rapidly and inform CCP devs in order to get them resolved.
Being a community orientated candidate means that I will try to focus on topics that the community thinks is important. From personal experience I know that issues found by the community are very important to be resolved quickly and I will do my best for fill this role if I get the chance to be a CSM member.
An example of a problem is the current function of the CSM. A large part of the community thinks that the CSM is useless and this is largely to do with it being very hard to see what the CSM actually does in terms of work. I think finding ways to make the CSM more ?'transparent?? will be very important for the future as it will possibly restore some trust in the CSM by the community.
Lastly I do want to say that I want to represent the individual player. Changes are often made to affect the bigger picture and I sometimes feel that the impact on the individual player can be forgotten. I think that this is a shame because a group of individual players make a corporation and a corporation makes an alliance.
 
Please summarise your platform. (Preferably using key bullet points)
- Communication between player and dev
- Nullsec / lowsec
- Alliance Warfare and how changes affect this
- Don't forget about the independent players when it comes to changes
- Space Usages / Coverage
- Ships and their use
- Make sure changes are necessary and not the ''let's add a shiny ship'' tactic
- Make sure the devs understand players? problems
- How changes affect small alliances
- Fleet fights (Think about 50 high sp chars vs. 250 newbies)
- Increased support for Events
- I would love to see an increase in support for our players who are blind, deaf etc.
 
Why have you decided to run for CSM this year?
Last year I ran for CSM X - I didn't make. I did however end up 22nd out of the 76 candidates, which was an amazing accomplishment. I would have been Manfred Sideous replacement however due to there not being enough time left on the term CCP decided not to add any new candidates.
This has only encouraged me further as I know that I can make great contributions to the CSM, and that is why I'm running again for CSM XI.
 
Have you run for or been a member of CSM in the past? If so please list each year and if you were elected.
Yes, CSM 10 - 22nd out of 76
 
What makes you a unique representative when you compare yourself to other candidates?
What makes me unique from other candidates is that I, over my years of being active in the EVE Online community, have come to the conclusion many times that I'm deeply in love with our community. This is a key reason to why I've always kept playing EVE Online and it has often put me in a position where I had to explain to my RL friends why I'm so passionate about the game!
While being active, I've also been in a ton of game related discussions and through my work at EN24, I've been in contact with a lot of different types of players, from the best FCs to the pilot who can barely fly his Retriever in highsec. I've spoken with those players a lot, and I've learned about their ideas or concerns. This helps me understand the problems that are out there and make it easier to discuss these problems to find possible solutions.
I would also refer to RoCkEt X, leader of the Rekkingcrew, his support statement to answer this question:
?? Bobmon will have my support,
Bob is a 'people person' and has easily what it takes to communicate player's feedback and ideas to the developer team. He's young and enthusiastic, but what he lacks in experience he makes up for in his energy, and his capacity to take guidance from others (I've experienced this first hand whilst he's been flying with me as part of #REKKINGCREW). He definitely has a buzz for the game and it's community. I feel he would be a valuable addition to CSM XI.??
Also I?m used to entering discussions while being under NDA (or something compared to an NDA). An EVE related example of this would be the discussions I have with PL as a topic. I?m obviously not allowed to leak any internal information about PL and its operation however through experience I've learned to find ways to still discuss the topic, without leaking information.
 
Do you have any out of game experience and skills that make you a good candidate?
Outside of the game, I've helped to organize a lot of events which were work related. Organizing events is a lot of fun but also challenging as events take a lot of time to prepare and require a lot of focus to solve issues as quickly possible. I think that this experience will help me as a candidate to work with CCP and help them solve issues whenever they occur.
What will also make me a good candidate is being young. I don't have the frustrations from problems that were in the past so I will be able to focus on current issues and finding ways to help EVE Online improve for the future.
 
What areas of EVE are you weakest at knowledge wise?
The only area in the game that I really don't have any experience with is Industry.
 
If you was offered unlimited development time - what's the biggest change you would lobby for in EVE?
I think that I would make an overview of what you can do In EVE Online and look at the reasons why players would want to do something within EVE Online.
For example, I think the CSM could benefit a lot from being made more transparent as it will be easier for players to see how the CSM makes an impact on the game and why it's important to have a council in the first place.
Another good example would be looking at why alliance's go to war and what the advantages are to trying to take somebody else their space. I feel that there are not enough benefits for an alliance to own space and I think that more benefits to owning sov will result in a more dynamic null sec.
 
If you could wind back the clock - what feature or change would you remove from EVE?
Personally, I believe that the old nullsec system could have been amazing if a few problems were resolved. A lot of problems existed because alliances were unsure about the future of nullsec as they knew that CCP was developing a new system. No alliance will go to war if they are not a 100% sure that it's worth it at the end of the day.
I also think that it would have been better if CCP would have taken more time with developing both the jump changes and the sov changes and released them together. This would have taken away a lot of frustration that was formed within the community. This would have also given CCP more time to think about Jump fatigue etc. and would have allowed people to discuss the changes.
 
If you could pick one candidate to be elected with you, who would they be and why?
I couldn't say just one as I believe in the CSM being a team, so not in any particular order would be:
-       Nashh Kadavr = big community content generator with evesports and events
-       Apothne = Great guy and knows a lot of stuff about ships and the way they work
-       Noobman = Probably one of the best WH candidates that has ever run
-       Steve Ronuken = Amazing industry guy and has experience with the CSM
I think these are all people who could be very good to have as a CSM member
 
What is your favourite memory in EVE and why?
I started playing EVE Online in 2010 following an introduction by a couple of my friends who had their own Dutch corporation. This corporation was part of an alliance that had an active war going on at the time I joined. I was a brand new player and back then you couldn't really get involved with PVP so I decided to make a new alt, fly over to the location of our enemy, and see what they were up to. After a bit of chatting, I got to know them and they asked me to join. I then began relaying intel to my friends, and so I'm very proud to say that my first task in EVE Online was to be a spy!
Another honourable mention would be to the Against All Authority guy who got the final blow on my nyx and then told me that while I was in the middle of my Q&A after my presentation at EVESTERDAM. Laughed really hard when I heard it and he even bought me a beer :)
 
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.)
My Twitter = @BobmonEVE
Ingame mail = Bobmon
RL Email = Bobmon.eve@gmail.com
Slack =  Bobmon
Skype = contact me for my skype info
Blog = http://bobmon.space/index.html
 
If people wanted to find out more about your platform - where is the best place to do so? (Include blogs, forums posts and podcasts)
1) Check out my past Articles
2) Check out Bob's Corner where I talk about stuff that interests me
3) Watch my"> Fanfest presentation
4) Watch me on"> the Meta Show
 
In short - what is your closing statement (no more than 500 words please!)
It would be an honour for me to get the opportunity to represent the EVE community as a member of the CSM. I promise to work as a CSM member to improve the game for the community and not for any personal benefits. I want to use all my passion for this game to work hard as a CSM member and always to be honest to the people who supported me.
If there would ever be something that would stop me from doing my duty as a CSM member then I promise to discuss this with the rest of the members and act accordingly. I?m here for you, the players and I can't wait to get started (if I get the chance of course).