Kaffee mit Konrad - OMG Special Edition - Day 2110

Day 2,110, 09:09 Published in Germany USA by Cerb


Kaffee mit Konra😛 Extraausgabe OMG - Tag 2110 / Coffee with Konra😛 OMG Special Edition - Day 2110

(EN)

Recently, I sat down to interview veteran OMG player Kalif Batan. Kalif is a former Party President of Open Mind Germany, former Minister of the Interior, and a great guy!

Konrad von Tirpitz: Why did you first join Open Mind Germany?

Kalif Batan: As I already wrote long time ago here, as a eBaby I first joined SPeD, but the game didn't attract me that much after I played some weeks, so I was not involved there. Some months later, I started playing the game seriously again. But eGermany had completely changed, except the OMG. So I joined OMG first, because it reminded me of the "old" eRepublik. As I got more and more involved, I learned that the people there are really nice. And yeah, of course this was a reason too, even a newbie as me could get in congress easily just by being nominated.



Konrad von Tirpitz: What was the hardest challenge you faced as a Party President of OMG?

Kalif Batan: A hard question, because I was Party President quite often. I think, the hardest part was and might always be, to keep the members active. It is a struggle that all other party presidents have now, but OMG always had it, even when other parties were quite active. It was also hard work to coordinate the congress election (as party president, you had to do more work with the old system), especially for me, because I was Minister of Interior most of the time too!



Konrad von Tirpitz: What has changed in OMG between then and now?

Kalif Batan: Let me first tell you what has not change😛 OMG is still the best place for newbies to start ePolitics and it is a (the most?) powerful party in eGermany.

Kalif Batan: Unfortunately some things changed that should not have: we lost most of our big politicians. Back in the day, we had an OMG President quite often. Now, I can't see many who could be president in the next few months!
Second, we lost some of our open-mindedness on the way. Of course, every member still has the right to have any opinion he wants as long as it benefits eGermany, and still gets the same treatment as any other member, but these different opinions aren't present anymore. I think this is because there are nearly no new members to bring in new ideas. To fix this, we need our members to get more active. So it is kind of a catch-22 we're in right now.

Kalif Batan: To avoid that anyone gets intimidated by my experience, I left OMG last month. I hoped this would lead to more people sharing their opinion and becoming active. As far as I see, it hasn't worked, so I will come back I think!



Konrad von Tirpitz: What advice would you give to new/young OMG players who are just starting out?

Kalif Batan: My main advice for starters in ePolitics would be: you should get active after a short time watching. Start in the party forums and IRC, and later in Congress and in your own newspaper with intelligent articles. You might get disappointed if you move too fast in public, because you could receive criticism for typical newbie mistakes you could make.

Kalif Batan: If you want to, you can get into government within 2 or 3 months easily starting from nothing, with just a bit of activity.



Konrad von Tirpitz: Have you ever seen bernhardms or Maxi Fifole wear lederhosen? 😃

Kalif Batan: As far as I remember, neither of those two come from parts of Germany where you wear Lederhosen. Not too sure about Maxi's location, though.
I haven't met anyone from this game in RL until now! Unfortunately, I missed the meeting in Munich last year, which would have been my best chance. I hope the chance comes again! I'd love to see Kati in a nice dirndl 😉



Thank you for reading, and thank you to Kalif Batan for agreeing to the interview!


Konrad von Tirpitz
Bundesadler
PP - OMG
vMoFA