The Syndicate

Good morning everyone!!

We have some very good news this morning!

We are so happy to announce that Marmot will be joining the Admin team effective immediately. I think all of you realize how important Marmot's contributions have been over the years but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Marmot joined the Syndicate in January 2014, coming to us from Prog Archives and has been playing forum mafia for 13 years. He started winning Socky's in 2015 and hasn't stopped. This last year he won MVP and a Lifetime Achievement Award. He is currently 3rd in total wins on the site, 6th in town wins and 3rd in mafia wins. One of his biggest strengths as a player is his endurance. You can count on him in Day 4 for example even if others on his team are losing WIM. Like the energizer bunny he keeps going on and on and on never losing energy.

That's not the whole story though. Marmot has been a significant contributor in many ways, maybe the most frequently in the Technical area where he has rl experience. He also contributes in other areas though, including pre-game and offering his take on situations that come up and being genuinely supportive of all of us. One of the many qualities that make him special to me personally is how much time he takes to understand how things work in the facilitation area so he can recommend technical strategies that will work for us. And finally, he's an integral part of building our community on the site, in the discord servers and on other sites where he is a positive presence and role model for our community. He does all of these things with humor and grace which makes him such a pleasure to be around.

Marmot also has coaching and organizing experience in his real love, rock climbing. Coaching rock climbers takes, among other things, patience, the ability to stay calm no matter what the situation, excellent communication skills and the ability to help the climbers build confidence. He also started and runs a local rock climbing coalition so has great planning, organizing, and decision making skills. All of those skills plus his genuinely caring demeanor will be important in his new role.

Finally, Marmot satisfies another requirement that is important to some (coughcoughJJJcough cough). He is from Ohio and a passionate Bengals fan!

He has shared with me in private that his first act as an Admin will be to rename the site Marmotdicate.

Please join us in welcoming Marmot to his new role!