Officer Awards

The Keeper's Awards are annual awards that recognize outstanding service during the past year. They are mid-level awards between Members' Choice and Amyrlin's Awards, and a Gold Merit Badge is bestowed on the recipient of an award.

The awards were a result of the 2012 Admin Meeting and the first person to receive the award was Morrighan Daghdera. There are four to nine people awarded a year, divided into these categories:

• Moderators (1 or 2)
• Chat Op (0 or 1)
• Other Staff (1 to 4)
• Membership Administrator (1)
• Non-Membership Administrator (1)

2012

Moderators of the Year: Morrighan Daghdera

Morrighan was nominated for her outstanding work as one of the Moderators for our Book Discussion Forums. Moderating the Book Discussion Forums is a particular challenge. Not only does it require that you "handle drama;" it also requires that you keep up with spoilers and make sure people aren't posting something from Book 6 in the Books 1-4 forums. It can be daunting, but Morrighan handles the "drama" (yes, it happens in book forums!) and keeps up with the tangle of spoilers superbly.

Moderators of the Year: Kelgan al'Moranwin

Staff Member of the Year: Miya Kiyoshi

Miya has been an outstanding member of our Outreach Activities Team for a while now. She has been consistently active in that role and is always bringing her creative thoughts and talents to the team. At the beginning of 2012, she stepped up in to the staff role of Outreach Activities Graphics Coordinator. For those of you who aren't familiar with that position, Miya is in charge of making sure that all the graphics needs for our online events are taken care of. She not only personally works on projects, she coordinates other graphically-minded people to make sure all the work gets done. From graphical greetings to site headers, she helps take care of it all. She's done an exceptional job and she's done it consistently.

Staff Member of the Year: Venric Methalion

Staff Member of the Year: Taelinn Dolivras

Staff Member of the Year: Loraella Melodie

Loraella served for over a year in the position of our Tower Voice, wherein she was a constant presence updating our Facebook, Twitter and social media feeds. She was always an active presence in the Marketing forum and even kept up with her job when her computer had problems. I speak from personal experience when I say posting or doing anything site-related from one's phone is not easy, but she managed it! In addition, she's done excellently serving in the MM: The Hall and she recently joined the Department of Administration staff as well. She is always a hard worker and willing to lend a hand

Membership Administrator of the Year: Bryce al'Mara

Our Captains of Recruits and Captains of Soldiers have an unfortunate series of incidents happen to them that result in real life sucking them away in the middle of their term. Not only has Bryce managed to avoid that curse, he's been an excellent and steady presence for our Recruits. In addition, he's overseen the creation and implementation of a new mentor system for our male Junior Members that has been very successful. Bryce has been a fantastic addition to the Department of Membership.

Administrator of the Year: Azi al'Thone

Azi was our most-nominated person this go-round, and with good cause. Azi has put in countless hours of work migrating our posts/threads to our new forums, troubleshooting, and in general being a Technology badass. He's always ready to help out more and manages to do it all while still being nice. I'm not quite sure why we haven't burned him out yet, but I can only be grateful that he continues to donate his time and talent to us.

2013

Moderator of the Year: Halan Leion

A multiple-term Moderator for Current Events Forum, Halan has always demonstrated a reliable, steady hand and level head in his duties - something that can be incredibly difficult in this particular forum - and has often had helpful input on various issues. His presence in this capacity is always most welcome whenever he chooses to volunteer.

Operator of the Year: Deoan Kakarot

Not only was he extremely helpful to our Director of Moderators in transitioning to his current role, Deoan has worked tirelessly behind the scenes making sure that our channels remain up and running and working to get all chat functionality (particularly with the bots) consolidated under Tower control. When our channels went down in December 2012, Deoan is the one who worked with the IRC admins to get everything back up and running. He's been invaluable in this setting.

Staff Member of the Year: Ebona din Casei

For her staff work throughout both 2012 (after the Keeper Awards cycle) and 2013 with the Servant of All Program. She has nearly single-handedly put the program together and worked to keep the Admins and Director of Community Outreach on track with this program, pushing it forward despite utter neglect and on the tough issues. She has also added an invaluable international perspective to the process since the very beginning. I cannot sing her praises enough. She has been amazing!

Staff Member of the Year: Amarande al'Kalin

For his work within the Outreach Activities Team. Throughout 2013, and with the absence of our Outreach Activities Coordinator at the time, Amarande continued his role on the OAT staff as the Birthday Team Captain without missing a beat. He ran the team (of three people) to ensure that everyone on the birthday list continued to receive their well wishes from Name Day Narg. Amarande also has been the Apples-to-Apples go-to for OAT festivals, running the activity in #owah for quite a long time.

Membership Admin of the Year: Valadilene Aldieb

Vala has been involved in the TarValon.Net community for many years and has held many positions. She's always been even-keeled, which is a blessing, as this year she was faced with managing our group during a unique task in her position as Head of the Red Ajah: the addition of the first Gaidin to our ranks. Through it all, Vala conducted herself with decorum and set an example for all Reds by keeping a level head in the face of a very challenging situation for a very particular group of ladies. I know that all Ajahs and Companies go through changes. Red is not much different - the Red Ajah is fiery through and through, and Vala was a big part of helping our group to work out the kinks during this radical adjustment to our way of life. She's an open, welcoming person and there's never a question too small or too big for her to take the time to answer.

Non-Membership Admin of the Year: Isarma Maracanda

I can’t even begin to express my gratitude to Isarma and her amazing dedication to her work. Isarma is our Annual Report Project Manager - she gathers all of the information from the Administrative team to assemble the Annual Report that we release every year to the community. The amount of work that goes into making this happen is pretty incredible, and not always the easiest when working with deadlines, assembling pieces from a team of people with incredibly diverse schedules and needs, and fitting it into her own schedule at the same time. She does this with incredible professionalism, dignity and grace, and her work is always top notch!

2014

Extraordinary Service: Defen Estrator

A somewhat reclusive member of Dai M'Hael, Defen has been one of our Tower Masters of the Watch for over seven years, hosting and maintaining our server environment over this period of time and more. Ready to jump onboard to assist whenever there’s a database or server issue, he has taken calls at just about every time of day or night, and maintains a very laid back and friendly personality throughout all of the wonderful vagaries our environments have endured over the years. I think it’s probably safe to say that without him, we most likely wouldn’t be the site we are today.

Staff Member of the Year: Megana Vallentin

Megana, a member of the Gray Ajah, was part of our Tech Department before becoming our new Site Designer at the beginning of 2014. Since then, she’s jumped in and tackled the task of overhauling and updating our ‘face’ for the boards- a feat she managed not only for our current iteration of the boards, but for the short lived transition to vB5 as well. Her creativity coupled with her technical knowledge have given us a great look for the Tower, and I look forward to seeing what all she has to offer in the future.

Non Membership Admin of the Year: Siera al'Cere

Siera (formerly Hanajima) also comes to us from the Gray Ajah, and has been our Marketing Project Manager for the past three years, after having served the community in a variety of other roles, both Marketing-related and not. Most recently, she tackled the enormous task of overhauling our Company and Ajah logos, working directly with members of the Senior Member community to tailor these symbols of our membership to each group’s specifications. No easy task to do, she added this in on top of a variety of other ongoing projects for our CafePress and Zazzle stores, as well as graphic design work by request for other departments. Her love for what she does is evident to anyone that works with her, and is greatly appreciated.

Membership Admin of the Year: Atreyu Silverstar

A member of San d'ma Shadar, Atreyu is currently serving as our Captain of Recruits. Having also previously served as our Captain of Soldiers, along with a variety of other roles within the Tower across several departments, he’s been very involved in every aspect of the progression process for our Junior Members on the Gaidin path. In both roles, he worked to streamline the documentation process for mentoring and membership information for his folks, as well as being involved with activities designed to help get our Junior and Senior Members interacting in fun ways for everyone.

Moderator of the Year: Ty al'Djinn

Ty, a member of San d'ma Shadar, is currently serving his second term as a Moderator for Current Events Forum, one of our more challenging forums to navigate, let alone moderate due to the nature of the commentary and conversation handled in its demesne. He’s been involved not only in the moderation of the forum, but in working to help find ways to make sure it continues to be a viable and active part of the community and allows those that participate there to keep the debate-like atmosphere along with a respectful demeanor while discussing some of the world's more polarizing topics of conversation.

2015

Extraordinary Service of the Year: Pol Rohanson

Sometimes there's a person who deserves some extra recognition, but doesn't fall directly into one of the other categories. In this instance, this person has been a solid, reliable and efficient member of Administration, lending his particulate statistician skills to our surveys each year. He's been a member of the team for three years now, and is always ready and willing to assist as and when needed.

Staff Member of the Year: Enelya al'Morna

One of the many ways in which TarValon.net is working to expand its outreach to our membership and beyond is through the use of our external communications- our social media presence has been steadily growing and will be continuing to do so for the foreseeable future. Our Tower Voices have been a big part of carrying this along and posting both in the community and outside of it, and that responsibility has fallen somewhat recently on the shoulders of a very capable individual who has been carrying it admirably. I look forward to the continued exploration and growth of our social media avenues, and will hopefully see this year's third Staff Member of the Year as a part of that.

Staff Member of the Year: Belgareth Kiarc and Melearlin Valar

There's quite a few folks in our community that serve as Staff in our various departments, working together within their team to help drive a common goal for the benefit of the site and its members as a whole. From the members of the Hall to the graphics team in Marketing, our data crunchers in Administration, many of our Mods and Ops in that department, and so on- but of all our departments, I don't know if there's two folks that work more in tandem than these winners of Staff Member of the Year. They keep the steady streams of traffic flowing all throughout the community groups, allowing our members to move about and learn more of what it means to be part of our wonderful community and the various membership collectives we have here. Maybe one day we'll change one of their titles to Keymaster just for fun.

Op of the Year: Mendo Cath

Our Ops- the unsung heroes of our IRC space, where those of us that might not be huge on forum posting can congregate and converse in our regular community chat channel, #wheel, along with a host of other more specialized channels dedicated to our individual needs. And sometimes, the needs of our IRC community are bots that are named after horses, and let us do all sorts of random things in the middle of conversations with a simple combination of keystrokes. This year's Op of the Year has helped look after our stable of IRC bots, and been an asset to his department.

Non Membership Admin of the Year: Maibella Rhoiden

There's a pretty wide range of non Membership Admin folks in our community- some, I hadn't even realized were Admin roles, even though they obviously HAD to be for the kind of work they do. They are the leaders within the community that see to all our needs outside of being HoAs and CCs- entertaining us, teaching us, involving us and finding new and engaging ways to keep us coming back. They write for us, they research for us, they share with us and inspire us to see the world, both on and off the boards, in whole new ways. This year's winner is someone who took on her role by stepping up when her predecessor had to unexpectedly step down. Since then, she has taken on working with her staff to bring our community some pretty fabulous reading a d involvement in the form of our monthly editions of your TarValon Times.

Membership Admin of the Year: Andra Mikolan

Being a Membership Admin here is a role that has a lot of personal involvement- oftentimes people selected for this role are chosen for specific characteristics that make them ideal leaders within their groups. As the case often is with this type of role, there are good days, bad days, and days you just breathe a sigh of relief over when they're done. Those are also the days that I'm glad to have leaders of this caliber in our organization, and this leader in particular. Within the tight knit communities on our site, people find places to go to share happy news and sad, to congratulate a Brother or Sister or give them a shoulder to lean on, or to just share in what it means to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes that means sharing in a great deal of joy, and other times, it means being a source of inspiration in times of hardship and sorrow. I've seen this person do all that and more, both for herself and her Ajah.

Moderator of the Year: Eluial Aldaran

For our 2015 Moderator of the Year, the winner is someone that has taken on a special type of moderating role- it was a newly developed position, designed for a specific need in the community. Because of its uniqueness, it left a great deal open to allow it to be molded to the need of the people that populated its particular forum- also unique within the community. This person has taken on the task of getting the environment up and off the ground, rules organized and implemented, and logistical and user based issues addressed all while being involved in the more entertaining goings on within the forum. For her role in helping shape and build the Mafia forum structure and her diligence to making it a world-within-our-world, I'd like to recognize Eluial.