Managing your MUSH - A Working Picnic with Elvira - TOMORROW! Sunday 10th February

Thank you everyone who turned out. It was a lovely event with lots of people and a whole lot of chat afterwards! The next one will be on M*U*S*H on Sunday 17th February at 4:30pm MUSHtime (10:30pm GMT) and your host will be Impster@M*U*S*H.

If you would like to speak at one of these events, please contact me at M*U*S*H!

Here's the log:

It's a lovely sunny day in Linden Grove. The smell of flowers and sandwiches
is in the air, everyone's settled nicely on picnics and a small podium has
been erected. Elvira steps up nervously, taps the microphone and smiles at the
crowd. "Good afternoon/evening everyone"

Teliver says, "Freebird!"
Teliver shuts up

Ender says, "No, we are not playing Freebird."

Tyr logs.

Êlvïrå fixes Teliver with a look then continues, "Welcome everyone to the
working picnic, the first in a series of 'Managing Your MUSH' on M*U*S*H' I'll
just explain what we're doing here first of all..."

Judge Dredd says, "Eating sandwiches?"

Êlvïrå says, "My plan is to run this every Sunday as long as there is interest
with a different speaker each week."

Êlvïrå says, "This week, I'm going to give an overview of the themes of the
sessions. A couple of notes - firstly, this is going to be a fairly short talk
followed by a fairly informal Q&A/discussion."

Impster ooh and starts pulling off his shoes and socks, "I like informal."

Swank has arrived.

Êlvïrå says, "Secondly, I'm not presenting a 'perfect' way to run your MUSH.
It's more a selection of ideas, concepts and frameworks. Some of which may
work for you. Some may not. It's to offer a different perspective of looking
at MUSH management. But very much focussing on management, taking real life
business concepts and seeing how they apply and whether they can work in this
environment."

Êlvïrå says, "For those arriving, we're logging as we go to
http://walker.pennmush.org/logs/mym1.html"

Swank says, "Thank you. :)"

Ian has arrived.

Êlvïrå says, "Thirdly, I'm very grateful so many of you are here and I hope
this is useful to you. I trust that we can listen to one another politely and
that this will be a friendly, positive session. I'll be very happy to listen
to any feedback or answer any questions after the session."

Êlvïrå takes a sip of orange squash

Êlvïrå says, "Oh. The last thing is that this isn't scripted (as will probably
be obvious). I don't really believe in scripted speeches on MUSHes otherwise
I'd just be writing an essay ;)"

Êlvïrå says, "So... as the announcements for this session suggested, I'm
looking at a particular overarcing framework for management. The key elements
of this are People, Marketing, Operations, Finance/Resources. And there's one
I forgot to include, which is Information. Let's start with marketing."

Nymeria walks in from the park to the south.
Nymeria has arrived.

Êlvïrå says, "Marketing on MUSHes often means plastering your advert on other
MUSHes. I'm presenting marketing as more of a two-way concept. It's not just
about selling your MUSH like crazy to everyone who'll listen. It's also about
knowing what people want from it."

Raven emerges from the west, walking along the bank of the brook.
Raven has arrived.

Êlvïrå says, "The only concept I'm going to talk about right now under
marketing is that of the 'value proposition.' When you set up your MU*, you're
coming up with something you hopefully want people to play. You're making a
value proposition to your players and telling them what they're going to get
out of playing there."

Êlvïrå says, "This idea is driven by that of 'value disciplines' - a concept
introduced by Treacy and Wiersema (if anyone feels like googling more
information). There are three of these and I'll explain how they're relevant
to MUSHes. These sum up what drives your game. The value disciplines are:
Customer intimacy, product leadership and operational excellence."

Êlvïrå says, "In the real world, operational excellence equates to a low cost
airline or something else that is mass manufactured and produced. It requires
streamlined, efficient operations."

Êlvïrå says, "Meanwhile, customer intimacy is your first class. Or perhaps
your charter flight. Product leadership is innovation. These are your hot air
balloons. Your crazy but groundbreaking forms of transport."

Êlvïrå says, "So how do these concepts apply to a MUSH? Well, my
interpretation is that the open chargen game with a huge playerbase is the
equivalent of the low cost airline. The operational excellence. You have to
know how to manage a lot of people, a lot of requests and a lot of jobs and
have the infrastructure to cope with it. It may be harder than it looks."

Êlvïrå says, "The small, invite only game with an application process, that
focuses on quality roleplaying is perhaps your game with customer intimacy.
You know your players and you shape plots to fit them."

Êlvïrå says, "Your product leaders... well, they're the games that are
innovating. Trying new things. Working outside of the box. I wonder where
M*U*S*H fits? I suspect product leadership is definitely one of our strong
points. Just working with Fili here suggests that to me. We're very open to
innovating. Which is a sometimes risky endeavour. But it can have big
payoffs."

Êlvïrå says, "So, there's an introduction to marketing. It's all about knowing
your customer. Working out who you want to appeal to and how to do it. At the
moment, I'm studying how to manage and monitor performance. So perhaps the
value disciplines will help you consider how your game is performing. How will
you measure that? Is it all about the size of the playerbase? The innovations?
Or having a few, very happy and involved players?"

Êlvïrå says, "So... moving on then, to people"
Êlvïrå says, "I saw a discussion recently talking about how a MUSH works. Are
players customers? Are staff really staff? Are staff just players with
responsibilities?"

Êlvïrå says, "So, here's how I'm going to frame this... A MUSH is a non-profit
organisation full of volunteers. Everyone who is involved in that MUSH is a
stakeholder."

Êlvïrå says, "Now the stakeholders vary. You've got players, admin, the
god(s), the site manager. And additionally, you have your competitors and
potential collaborators."

Êlvïrå says, "MUSHing is very much a community. I notice that our playerbase
overlaps strongly with the other MUSHing resource games out there."

Êlvïrå says, "So there's a lot of relationships going on here. How are we
going to use those relationships? Traditionally, at this point in business
management, there would be a lot of chat about networking and this is
definitely applicable here. CPO, WORA, Electric Soup and so on are dedicated
networking tools."

Êlvïrå says, "I should point out here that I'm raising questions at this time.
I'm not necessarily answering them all. Hopefully this will inspire discussion
and will also help subsequent speakers to find niche areas they would like to
talk in more detail about :)"

Êlvïrå says, "In business, HR is a critical area. How do you manage people?
They need motivating, they need to be rewarded for whatever they are doing.
Obviously, very few people are paid in MUSHing so they need to feel rewarded
in other ways."

Êlvïrå says, "They also need to be treated ethically. Sure, it's unlikely that
there'll be people calling for tribunals for unfair dismissal or anything like
that, but healthy treatment of your staff and players results in a healthy
working environment (or a fun game that people want to be involved with!)"

Êlvïrå says, "I look at M*U*S*H and I work out the stakeholders. What do they
all want from the game? The UIC expect us to run an ethical game with their
equipment. Javelin has certain expectations of the game and playerbase. The
PennMUSH dev team have certain expectations. The players and staff have
expectations. And the outside MUSHing community, even those who don't play
here may have certain expectations of us."

Êlvïrå says, "So... moving on from people to operations."

Êlvïrå says, "Operations is simultaneously the most difficult and easy thing
about the game. It's what you produce. It's your inputs into outputs."

Êlvïrå says, "What do you want to produce on your game? I'm guessing that most
of your inputs are people. People who then make code, text and roleplay. And
who may add all sorts of other things to the game too."

Êlvïrå says, "What are your outputs? People again. People who have had a great
experience or series of experiences on your game."

Êlvïrå says, "Defining this more tightly will depend on your game and its
objectives. But you can work through the process. One way to do this is to
'staple yourself to an order' - in the real world, this is like being a
mystery shopper. It means examining every stage of the order process and
seeing what can be tightened up. Are people held up in long queues when they
submit an application to your game? Are they hanging around with nothing to do
while they wait for a tinyplot to resolve?"

Êlvïrå says, "Can you make better use of that downtime? Do you have bored
staff who don't want to work on the things that need to be done? How can you
resolve this?"

Êlvïrå says, "Let's look at finance. We're almost finished now."

Êlvïrå says, "Well, let's say finance and resources. Games are all hosted in
different ways. There are a lot of choices - paid servers, friends' servers...
There aren't the financial barriers to MUSHing that there once were and it's
fairly cheap to run a MUSH. But are there any other things that can be done
with resources? How about fundraising? Javelin mentioned charity work in his
recent TinyTalk. Is that a useful thing to do with MUSHing?"

Êlvïrå says, "If you have an original game, would people pay for a book about
the theme? Or a t-shirt? Is that an ethical thing to do in MUSHing? Why are
people expected to pay up to $20 a month for MMORPGs but MUSH for free?"

Êlvïrå says, "This relates a little to information. Information and knowledge
management is an interesting area of a game and manifests in a lot of ways."

Êlvïrå says, "On the simplest level, knowledge transfer can just mean a small
staff and playerbase which are closely knit and who talk to each other
frequently."

Tyr has reconnected.
Brazil walks in from the park to the south.
Brazil has arrived.

Êlvïrå says, "On the most complex level, it can require many coded systems -
perhaps including those outside of the game and even ranging to things like
journalling systems (as at Rio: Manha de Carnaval (sp?)) which posted to the
web."

Êlvïrå says, "How far outside the MUSH do you venture? How do you use tools
like character galleries, logs, journals and perhaps things like wikis and
discussion forums? What about real life linked-in LARP such as has been seen
in certain alternate-reality-games?"

Tyr grumbles.

Êlvïrå says, "None of this should detract however from the importance of
sharing information and knowledge. Of a staff and playerbase learning from one
another."

Êlvïrå welcomes Brazil and notes that we are logging to:
http://walker.pennmush.org/logs/mym1.html - and that the talk has almost
finished but there will be discussion afterwards.

Êlvïrå says, "The only thing I would say about knowledge-sharing though is
that there are aspects of confidentiality in business and these apply to
MUSHes too. It's up to a MUSH manager to decide on the pros and cons of
sharing information versus confidentiality. Personally, I'm in favour of a
fairly open book. I think MUSH management should be fairly transparent and I'm
happy to talk about this in more detail but I'm trying to keep it short :)"

Êlvïrå says, "I'm going to finish now, just by mentioning one more thing"
Êlvïrå says, "What I feel is important is that a MUSH monitors what it is
doing. I would suggest that 'news theme' on M*U*S*H is our mission statement.
It's a goal. If we want to measure our performance, we could derive objectives
from that goal. From that mission. We can then assess how well we are meeting
them. I think its important for every MUSH manager to frequently evaluate
their progress and make alterations to their course as necessary. How well are
they committing to their value discipline? Are players happy? What are the
important things for them to measure?"

Êlvïrå says, "One way to assess this is by benchmarking themselves against
competitors. Are players as happy? Is the playerbase thriving? Are all the
stakeholders finding the game meets their expectations?"

Êlvïrå says, "Ok, hopefully this has introduced some topics to think about and
has introduced the 'Managing your MUSH' framework sufficiently. I'm grateful
for you all coming and I hope you'll return to future events which will be
more tightly focused on more niche areas than this general introduction. I
believe Impster is leading next week's talk and I have several more speakers
lined up and would welcome more."

Êlvïrå says, "Now. Has anyone got any questions or comments they'd like to
make? Please raise your hand :)"

Êlvïrå grins, "Hmm."
Êlvïrå says, "If anyone wants to glance back at the log, it's at
http://walker.pennmush.org/logs/mym1.html"

Jennifer raises hand.
Êlvïrå says, "hi, Jennifer :)"
Êlvïrå says, "go ahead"

Jennifer says, "Is it useful to consider limited non-monetary resources (like
staff hours, for instance) in a financial light, by setting up an initial
budget and using it as a benchmark to decide when your staff is overworked, or
when you should let an idle staffer go?"

Êlvïrå says, "Ooh, that's an interesting question. It's certainly one way you
could do it. Perhaps it could tie in with a jobs system that allows you to see
what your staff are working on. I'm not sure I'd advocate using it to let an
idle staffer go - it's hard to measure contribution to a game in hours alone.
But it's perhaps worth exploring as a concept"

Êlvïrå will open that to the floor, but just thought of something else to
mention here

Brazil walks west, toward the waterfall.
Brazil has left.

Êlvïrå says, "Jennifer's idea made me think of whuffie which is described as
an economy (+help whuffie if you're not familiar with it). That's another
quantitative measure on a game that could be used for making decisions that
are otherwise usually made in a very qualitative style. For example, a game
run with whuffie could use it for determining who has which responsibilities -
even for electing staff."

Êlvïrå says, "Anyone else got comments?"

grapenut goes home.
grapenut has left.

Êlvïrå says, "On what Jennifer said or anything else?"

Tyr has partially disconnected.

Impster raises his hand.
Êlvïrå says, "hi Impster, go on"

Impster says, "To me it's like Mark Twain said there's three types of lies.
Lies, Damn Lies and statistics. Things like Wuffie, +jobs, +cookie or whatever
is nice but generally speaking from what i've seen of idle staff. It boils
down to are they doing their job or are they holding things up. When I was in
the hospital last year it would have been very easy to hold my game up if it
had been running the way I had hoped. Sometimes people are unwilling to admit
they need a break or a vacation. Other times they admit it but it holds up the
game. I think people have to do what's in the best interest of the game. If
someone needs a vacation and won't take one then you all need to sit down and
talk to them about it. If someone is always away and doesn't have the time
right now to devote to what they said they did then you need to talk about
that two. These little matrixes that my managers like to slide in front of me
just bug me. I'd rather use my personal opinion of if they're doing the job."
Impster says, "err.. Too not two. :D"

Êlvïrå says, "Yeah, there's a point. Do you have the confidence in your
opinion to decide whether someone is doing their job or are additional tools
useful? (There are a lot of ways to measure staff performances, ranging from
appraisals to specific targets like tinyplots, recruitment, +jobs etc.)
Bearing in mind that if you fire a staff member, you will have to justify it
to the other stakeholders."

Judge Dredd, and anyone else in an 'odd' timezone, can face some problems with
that approach, Impster. It can be quite hard for us to be seen to be doing the
job when there aren't as many people around to see it.

Luke mutters, "It's a beautiful British timezone."

Jennifer nods to Judge Dredd. "There's an idea. Assign realtime duties
(running scenes, monitoring channels) to staff based on timezone, rather than
breaking it out according to IC orgs."

Êlvïrå says, "one tool which is very useful to anyone running any type of
organisation (but which could be adapted to a MUSH) is the 'Balanced
scorecard' - there's a lot of information on it on the web, but sadly my web
connection has just died. But it measures different aspects of a company's
performance, taking a whole range of perspectives rather than focusing on
sales (or +jobs?)"

Disraeli says, "Mark Twain? that was Disraeli"

Wilco says, "What do you know about Disraeli, Disraeli?"

Êlvïrå says, "It has four areas. Financial, customer, internal business and
innovation+learning. Those could well translate into MUSH targets. It's by
Kaplan and Norton if anyone's interested in finding out more."

Luke says, "Sure, sure. Disraeli said that 100% of the time. But you can prove
anything with statistics. Mark Twain said so."

Porthos walks in from the park to the south.
Porthos has arrived.

Êlvïrå coughs, "Anyway"
Êlvïrå says, "Anything else anyone would like to say? We've been running just
over an hour and I'm happy to close now unless anyone else has anything to
say."

Impster move? :p. "Actually I can completely understand that with the strange
schedule I keep at times. But I still think it all boils down to sitting and
talking to the person about any perceived problems. As someone pointed out to
me a lot of us who mu* may pound our chest and act all tough but in the real
world wouldn't hurt a fly and are scared of our own shadow. So it gets taken
to extremes in a text based format. The problem with text as I'm sure we've
all run into is it's so easy to take things out of context or misunderstand
what is being said. But if you don't sit and talk to your players/staff with
your concerns then how are they going to be able to respond. It's not like
we're all a hivemind or something. I'll often live a wiz motd to my people.
Kind of a note on the fridge type thing. We're out of milk and oh I upgraded
the server patch level. Let me know if you see anything strange.

Êlvïrå says, "Ok, I'm closing up now. Thanks everyone for making this a really
valuable session. I enjoyed it and I hope you did too. Come back next week and
every sunday after that. Same time, same place :) For now, enjoy your
sandwiches, beer/squash and have a lovely day!"

Êlvïrå says, "log is at http://walker.pennmush.org/logs/mym1.html"