Dear voters,

The Winter Summit for the 12th democratically elected Council of Stellar Management took place at CCP HQ in Reykjavík from Jan 15 -18, covering a wide range of EVE topics chosen by both the CSM and CCP.

The meeting minutes for the summit have been released and you can get them HERE. Some details have been held back for operational or marketing reasons but most of what was discussed is in the minutes to give you, the voters, better insight into the process and better equip you to have discussions with your CSM and with CCP about the CSM process, and the continous development of EVE.

The Summit was attended in person by 8 out of 10 CSM members, with two joining remotely as work and studies allowed.

Please leave your feedback in the comments thread for this blog, we'll monitor and respond to feedback there.

Changes to the election process

One of the discussion points at the summit was the current term cycle. The CSM all agreed that that spring/early summer elections would be better, and more in tune with CCP's development cycle. Summer being a slower period and good for onboarding of newly elected CSM members. The first quarter of the year, leading up to Fanfest, has largely overlapped with the election period and the CSM feel that once elections start, their focus, and their ability to work with the community goes down. We looked into this and we agree that it's worth trying out. The CSM project is always open to review and development, and in the past we've made regular changes to the number of seats, summit timing and the election process to name a few things.

We had already made plans to shorten some parts of the election process leading up to the announcement at Fanfest. Those changes included cutting in half the time we give ourselves to review and approve candidates, to give confirmed campaigns and community media more space to create a vibrant campaign period. We also planned to drastically cut down on the time the election is open. In the past the election has been open for three whole weeks which we feel is overkill for an online election. We feel a week is enough and that this will result in a more concentrated final sprint. Our metrics clearly show that the bulk of the votes are cast on the first day and on the final day.

We also decided to cut down the time we give ourselves between the end of the election and the announcement of results. An online election produces immediate results and we don't need a week or two to write a blog, make a video, or prepare a stream.

To sum it up, this should result in...

A longer "campaign period" - The period where voters and media can focus on the people they know for sure will be on the ballot.

Less time reserved for CCP to do backend stuff - Your time is more important than ours.

An overall compressed election process, spanning a smaller part of the sitting CSM's term - More space democracy, now with less dead time!

A brighter future for our children (clones)

We'll reserve details about the timeline and submission instructions for candidates for another blog to be released in the coming weeks.

Thank you all for reading, and once again, please leave your feedback in the comments thread.