Award Nomination Tactics

We got some belated good news in Stormvale today, but it was also a little perplexing.

At the Havoc in Hastings event on September 3 in Andelcrag, three of our members received awards: an Award of Arms for Stormvale Web Minister Mariska of Stormvale; an Award of the Purple Fret for co-host of the populace meetings Giovanna Costanza; and an Order of the Silver Oak to period fishing scholar Breac MacFinnein.

At the Squires Revolt event on October 8 in Northwoods, two members received awards: a second Award of the Purple Fret for co-host of the populace meetings Skalla Geirmundr Ulfsson; and a re-award of the Silver Oak to Breac.

One thing in common for these two Pentamere events? Apparently, not only were none of the awardees present, no one from Stormvale was present to report back or accept for them. We only found out about them, and now we're not sure we know about all such occasions, when I happened to glance at a Court Report in the November Pale today.

This leads to some thoughts about award nominations. Most of us are aware that there have been a number of very hard working members locally who we ought to promote to the Crown as deserving of awards, mostly service or arts and sciences awards. Obviously, some of us are making those nominations and some of them are getting made. That's the good news.

The bad news is that it looks odd to those in court and around the region when there is never anyone in court to accept these awards from our group. This sort of thing tends to annoy the Crown, too. First we ask them for an award for someone from our group, then no one from our group bothers to attend their court to either receive or note their largesse.

We need to promote our deserving members in hopes of their recognition. But we also need to make sure our members attend local courts at which they may receive awards. This is a delicate business, because the prospective recipient cannot be told they may receive an award. So how to get them there?

One tactic is to tell such persons that they may want to attend a particular court to observe a friend getting an award. Since nominations tend to come in clumps and several members often know about the nominations, this is plausible a argument and tactic. After all, we should be there to cheer on our colleagues anyway.

A better tactic is to simply plan as individuals and groups of friends to attend more local events, and to stay for court. Often, nothing will happen of personal interest to us, but courts are interesting in and of themselves. One meets people and finds out what is going on in the kingdom and in our region. One sees how to behave when called for an award, so one knows how to behave oneself.

A final word: this a two-part thing. Nominating people is good. Getting them there to accept is also necessary whenever possible.