Working retail in December is a nightmare. This will be a quick update sort of report... thing. Yeah.

Not exactly Herald Style Hannukkah.... But I have been working through the robes that were earned by the houses and clans in the last two months of the Crusade. Those in the clans already have seen them (I hope), but I figured an actual show and tell might be nice, too. By the way, all of these unit specific robes are keyed to membership in the unit, and you have to be at least DJK to see them as available.

Plagueis earned two sets, so went with a more armored look, and a prominent logo. The set is called 'Resurgence'.

Arcona also earned two sets, and decided to get a set of their popular 'Invicta' robes made up for their female members. In addition, a new set with a unique sort of cloak was next. The new set is called 'Shadeborn'.

The last in this batch is the Naga Sadow set: the 'Birthright', meant to evoke their namesake.

Next up? Taldryan, Scholae Palatinae and Odan-Urr. Then maybe I can get something done before the real Hannukah stuff is done, haha.

Speaking of awards, Fleet point numbers have gone out to the summits. We're waiting to see what happens there: if people are looking to buy or hold off, knowing that EVEN MOAR points can come from the remainder of the events between here and the next GJW.

Raken also recently got back from his LOA, so we'll be finalizing the different assets on the taken planets in the next few days.

A little something special. Brimstone, over in Plagueis, did something pretty awesome. The guy has been working on a pretty solid record on submitting to events and pushing his fellows to do the same. But that's not what stood out to me. What stood out to me was how he did 18 events without a home computer or an internet connection.

He wrote fictions on his phone. He took pictures and modified them with apps. He responded to huge numbers of emails while on the road, either due to work or absurd weather conditions that crushed his ability to do the work from home.

18 events. No computer. This just proves that if you have the drive, you will find the way to do it.

And to reward the guy, above and beyond the nice loot he scored from his leadership, I dropped a custom robe on him. Brim is a pretty big Thrawn Fan, so it was pretty fitting to get him something reminiscent of the Grand Admiral.

Been a busy week or so around here. Working to improve the way that the site looks as well as wrenching on the join process has been pretty solid so far. Massive points go out to Orv, Jamez and the rest of the dudes working to adjust things on the fly so that our stuff looks shinier than everyone else.

Quickly recapping: avatars live on the site now (for real, instead of a distant possibility), new threading options, new layout on the sidebar.

Also, with all the new stuff changing and going out, I'm super happy for the traffic bumping up and the quantity of news posts and so forth going up. We've got a heck of a lot of active people, and it's good to see that someplace other than just IRC.

Next stuff? Super Obvious 'Do this next' sort of things on the logged-in page for noobs, so they can get on track that much easier.

Also, ramping up on how to bring more people to the site. Advertising gets ridiculously expensive. I spend a lot of money on the DB annually, and even a couple months worth of an ad on wookieepedia was beyond insane.

Some of you may recall that we took out a full-page ad in the DragonCon program a few years back. It was not cheap, either, and near as any of us could find, it net us zero recruits.

Xantros had some interesting stuff come his way about doing an event at Celebrations in the future. That actually might have some legs. We did get a fair bit of attention when we had a bunch of DBers show up to DragonCon, so he had worked up a plan to do an actual booth. Then life got in the way, etc etc... but if we can swing the manpower (booths need manning) and the money (promo materials like comics and flyers, as well as little swag bits like challenge coins, etc), it's definitely doable.

So, I guess the question becomes: how many of you would be willing to go to an event and sacrifice some of your time working to recruit for the DB?

The other day marked my tenth year anniversary of joining the club, and as I sorted out, that means nine and a half years consecutively in a position of some sort. It doesn't seem that long ago, because you all make it fun. Thank you all for that.

That's all for the moment. Have Fun!