I’ve added the Russian Samodelki Comic content to the image gallery, check it out on the comics page https://biomediaproject.com/bmp/comics

After a series of recent events, it has become clear to me that need an additional person to join the BMP’s management team.

Why are we establishing a separation between regular BMP Staff and BMP Management?

The first thing you should know about the BMP is that we have a very high new staff member dropout rate.  The vast majority of new staff don’t even last a year before they disappear, which is due to new staff members’ inability to work independently on a regular basis.

As such, we cannot grant every new staff member all of the available privileges right away, because experience has shown us that most staff are likely to drop out at some point; disappearing from the BMP is the norm, and staff that stick around are the rare exception.  Given this high dropout rate, we have deemed it necessary to be more careful about who we grant full access to.

Why now?

1) We have lost one of our longest-serving senior staff members, Mints97, who has contributed a great deal to Project Brick’s LEGO game collection.  He’s worked with us for several years, and we greatly appreciate the work that he’s done, but he no longer has the time to work with us on a regular basis.

2) An uncertain interest level within our existing staff.  We cannot simply invite existing staff to join BMP management because of its additional obligations, training, and time required; doing so would require significant changes in how they work with us, though we do welcome current staff to apply for this role if they believe they are capable.

3) My personal spare time has been decreasing as of late.  I will still be following the BMP staff requirements, but I have noticed that the existing spare time I have has been taken up by crawling of new content, rather than used more effectively in providing leadership, which is what drives the BMP to make progress on the projects we start, as opposed to the archives that we habitually update.  Archive updates are great and all, but we do have long-term projects that we want to complete.

4) Every organization needs to have some level of succession planning in order to be prepared for the loss of management staff, whether planned or unplanned.  Different people fulfill roles, and it would be more difficult for one person to cover the duties normally completed by two people.

5) JMMB, who is heir apparent of the BMP, has expressed a greater level of interest in working on the technical side of the BMP.  He will still be given leadership of the BMP if I ever decide to leave the BMP(though I have no plans of doing so at the moment), but in the event that he decides to pass the torch to someone else due to this preference, it would be better for the organization to have a staff member who has already been trained to lead the BMP, rather than one who would have to learn all these skills from scratch.

What does this role involve?

I will be personally training the candidate to become a member of the BMP management staff, who are responsible for ensuring that the BMP reaches its long term goals.  The candidate will serve as my personal assistant for the duration of their training, as well as my protégé, and in so doing will learn how to do everything that I would normally do in the course of my duties.  In the event of my departure from the BMP, the candidate may become the leader of the BMP, at JMMB’s discretion.  As such, I will be teaching the candidate everything I know about the BMP and effective leadership of it, as well as the skills necessary to complete common tasks.  Since my role at the BMP is not an overly technical one, most of the training will consist of leadership skills and methodologies that are relevant to the BMP.

There will be two phases of training that the candidate will have to pass, though there is overlap between them.  The first stage is standard new BMP staff member training, where I will teach the candidate how to accomplish common tasks, and the second stage comprises leadership training.  Completion of the second stage will allow the candidate to join the BMP management staff, who are responsible for ensuring the security of the BMP and assisting with strategic planning to help the BMP reach its goals.

Please don’t take this position lightly.  This position is intended for a dedicated, eloquent, hard-working person who has the desire to join the management team of a LEGO fan organization.  This is without a doubt the most demanding position ever offered at the BMP, though I don’t think it is unjustifiably so, as management staff at all organizations do need to spend more time working on them than regular staff.

Requirements

• Time, lots of it. Most of the training is going to be done over email, so you have to be alright with frequent email conversations.  You’ll need 1-3 hours to spend on the BMP on most days of the week.  This is definitely NOT a position for people with busy schedules – this position is likely to take up as much time as a part time job – seriously.  If anyone you know would describe your schedule as even slightly busy, do not apply.
• Good spelling, grammar, and writing skills. It is expected that leadership figures are able to express themselves clearly and at length.
• The ability to think logically first, and emotionally second. We need someone knows which relationships matter and acts to preserve them.
• Access to and experience with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat
• Respond to emails at least three times per week for the majority of the year, preferably daily
• Check the team Google Doc at least three times per week for the majority of the year, preferably daily
• Complete at least one to-do list task every six weeks for the majority of the year.

If this sounds like something you’re capable of, please send an application to contact@biomediaproject.com with a sample of your writing, and an explanation of why you think you’d be good candidate for this position.

Check out our Artwork page to see the new images from the recent Style Guide released by Torsti of BZPower, as well as our text version of the BIONICLE Synopsis.  There were a lot of spelling mistakes in the official BIONICLE Synopsis as it was printed, moreso than any other serial that we’ve seen yet, so I corrected as much as I could before releasing it.

Here’s a quick crawl of the BIONICLE Style Guide images that we have to date.  This includes:

• The 2001-2003 Style Guide images from this BZPower topic
• The 2001-2003 Style Guide images from the promo CDs from the same topic
• The 2006 Style Guide images from Crunchbite Nuva’s crawl of http://www.ulkutay.net/styleguides/bionicle/

The images from the Style Guide CDs are notable because they are the first PSD images we have ever seen officially released, with layers too.  There are a lot of new images in there that we’ve never seen before.  These images will be included in our next version of the picture archive and will be added to the streaming image gallery.

We’ve added download links for the BIONICLE Style Guide CDs released by Torsti of BZPower on our Promo CDs page.  There are a lot of never before seen images there, in original PSD format too, something that we’ve never seen before, which we’ll be adding to the next release of the G1 pictures archive.

I’m considering making some changes to the serials archive, please login and cast your vote on the forums.

We are opening up our previously private Staff Googledoc to the public, allowing anyone to see, edit, and contribute to our work.

This is different from what we offered previously, which was simply allowing users a look at the To-Do and Voting pages – Now, we’re letting everyone see us as we work and chat about the site in real time, as well as the ability to join in and help us make the BMP better.  There are no requirements for viewing, and those who wish to contribute need only a valid email.

The BMP Staff will be using this gdoc the same way we did previously with our private staff gdoc, allowing users to see that we do hold frequent discussions and make some form of progress on the site on an almost daily basis.  You’ll be able to chat and collaborate with us like never before, with all of our most relevant site information all in one place.

Click to visit the BioMedia Project GoogleDoc!

Our goal with this is to lower the barrier of entry for contribution to the BMP, for those who wish to help us but don’t have the time to become a staff member.  If you wish to help us with tasks, you’ll be able to work on your own schedule, without anyone telling you what to do or when to do it.

We are also making use of revision history and moderation to prevent vandalism.  This is the BMP’s first foray into allowing users to edit our Staff GDoc; if this goes well, we will continue to use this open model for the forseeable future.

Pictures Archive 0.1.1 G2

EDIT: v0.1.1 released.

Vahkiti’s assembled together the new (useful)images we’ve seen so far from the BIONICLE unveiling and put them into a new image archive, for the second generation of BIONICLE.  We haven’t seen a lot, but we have a few images for our artwork folder as well as some new high-res wallpapers from the new site.  This is the first of a new series of archives covering BIONICLE – we’ll be creating others for the other categories of media as we see them.  You can also browse the archive’s contents here.

Check out the BioMedia Project’s Official Youtube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/biomediaprojectyt