If Only Real World Politicians Could Be This Candid

The Mittani, chair of the Council of Stellar Management:

Arrived (in Iceland) Tuesday at 2am, got Nonnis, went to bed.

Wednesday I had all to myself, so I did some summit prep and then hit up Islenskibarrin, which is where all the expat CCPers drink, and proceeded to get drunk and gather intel. This is pretty much how real summit work goes - most of how you find out about undercurrents of what's taking place within CCP, as an outsider, is to damage your liver and develop contacts over beer. If you don't develop contacts, you don't find out where the rot really is coming from, if there really is rot or not, etc. You have to be a social guy with a tough liver. The rest of the CSM arrived at 2am around mid drinking binge/political rampage.

Obviously, I'm not saying what I learned from who, but I spent until 2am or 3am doing that, then passed out for a few hours, woke up Thursday morning for Serious Summit Day with the rest of the CSM.

Thursday morning we saw crap like the unsub metrics, dealt with Incarna/CQ stuff. Relatively simple issues to understand and deal with. After lunch was NeX store discussion, which was contentious if not hostile - not because of ZOMG GOLD AMMO but because the CSM was broadly furious with how botched and prevantable the NeX rollout fuckups could have been avoided, etc. There will be much more detail of this in the CSM statement. Around this point I'm gritting my teeth, everyone in the room is angry, and I tweet when I get home that things are 'grim' but 'making progress', which is true.

Thursday dinner we skip booze and hoover down coffee to prep for more drinking and intelligence gathering and backchanneling. I make a couple of really cool new friends and end up chilling with them until fuck, almost 5am. Again, you don't get details - that's how backchannels and politics works. So I crash out again for maybe 3.5 hours of sleep.

By this point my liver is beginning to adjust to the constant barrage of coffee, alcohol, and no sleep. I have no real hangover going into Friday. Friday morning we discuss microtransaction policy/future plans - the takeaway is, ofc, no gold ammo, nothing really new from the May summit, just a whole pile of terrible messaging mostly as a consequence of the NeX fuckups + the Fearless leaks. ...

I don't expect the other mysterious ongoing negotiation affecting my life -- who is in charge of the Providence School District -- to sort itself out so easily.