Citizen Council Election #2 – Applications Open!

As mentioned in the summary of the recent meeting between the Citizen Council and the Tau Station team, time has flown by! More than 1 cycle and 80 days (half a year) have passed, and it’s now time to start elections for the second Council.

First of all, we should express gratitude for the awesome work of the very first Citizen Council (CC). It was a great way to start, and thanks to your efficient organization, open communication and useful input, we’ve taken big steps forward together!

About the Citizen Council

For those who don’t know what the CC does, there’s a brief summary below. (You can also find more details in the original blog which introduced the feature in January 2019).

What is the Citizen Council?

  • The CC is an elected board of Community members who work closely with us
  • There is a dedicated section in the game about the CC, with a member list and forum
  • The CC organizes (bi-weekly) internal meetings to prioritize and prepare issues (based on Community input) to be discussed with the Tau Station team
  • The CC has regular video calls with us for raising topics and asking questions
  • The CC has 9 seats, plus 5 “alternatives” (standby members in case some of the 9 cannot attend a meeting)
  • Roles: The Chairman (person with most votes) organizes the internal meetings
  • Roles: The Secretary is responsible for taking notes & making them public
  • Roles: Vice-Chairman  & Vice-Secretary support & act as alternatives when required

Who can vote?

Every Community member can vote. There are only 2 conditions (to protect the election and avoid the creation of fake accounts):

    • You must have played Tau Station in the last tenspan (10 days)
    • Your character must be at least level 4

Who can be elected?

In addition to the voting conditions, CC candidate must also fulfill the following:

    • You are at least 18 years old
    • You have time to invest in your CC membership and role
    • You haven’t been banned from Tau Station for any period of time
    • You are willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement

The election process

We have 3 phases to prepare everything and then the election itself. Each of the preparation steps lasts for 14 days, the election 7 days.

    1. Submission period: if you want to become a candidate for the CC election, you send us an email.
    2. Verification period: we check all candidates to ensure they match the criteria.
    3. Promotion period: all approved candidates are invited to write their vision statement, so all Citizens will know what they stand for. Your texts will be shared on the CC page.
    • The election: Following your feedback, the election will last now 1 week.

Setup Changes

When we set up the CC, half a year felt like a good duration. But the big (upcoming) update took longer to develop than usual, and so we now wanting to extend the mandate, to benefit for a longer time span from each single CC’s input.

The mandate of Citizen Councils will be extended to 3 cycles (300 days).

Thanks a lot to the first Council

We’ve had some great cooperation with the first council. Your representatives shared valuable insights and provided many suggestions. As a result, we’ve improved the game a lot with your input, including big new features like the (upcoming) storage management.

We feel that hearing about your personal player experiences, while also being able to share our perspectives as developers, leads to a great mutual understanding with you. This helps us all put positive energy into the game we love. Thank you so much!

Consequently, we want to immortalize your efforts. A new section will be added to the Archive with one of the next updates, mentioning all (former) Council members.

Next steps – The Dates!

1. Submission Period

Please send us an email if you want to become a CC candidate for the election.

  • Start: 30th of September GMT (203.40/00:000 GCT)
  • End: 13th of October GMT, end of day (203.54/00:000 GCT)
  • E-Mail: Send your application via email with your citizen name to citizencouncil@taustation.space

2. Verification Period

You don’t have to do anything. We check all candidates.

  • Start: 14th of October GMT (203.54/00:000 GCT)
  • End: 27th of October GMT, end of day (203.68/00:000 GCT)

3. Promotion Period

All the approved candidates can promote themselves. If you want to get an impression how it works, check out what the first Council candidates wrote.

  • Start: 28th of October GMT (203.68/00:000 GCT)
  • End: 10th of November GMT, end of day (203.82/00:000 GCT)

4. Election Period

  • Start: 11th of November GMT (203.82/00:000 GCT)
  • End: 17th of November GMT, end of day (203.89/00:000 GCT)

In case of questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us in game chat, Discord or via email. If you’re thinking about applying, it could also be a good time to ask current Council members how they organized work, how much time they invested etc to help you decide. Good luck!

StarGazer for the entire Tau Station team