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Profile: The Builders Project Profile by Jay Watamaniuk
To reach as many new mod builders as possible and get them educated in the use of the NWN Toolset. We asked Kim to help give us a few more details about her guild to help potential builders out there: Can you explain what the main goals are for your group?Kim: We are attempting to reach out to members of the NWN community and lend them the help and support they need to build mods. If that means answering scripting questions, offering playtesting services, lessons in basic toolset use, whatever they need really, we try to lend them that support. I drafted the guild objectives as a newb, and tried to list the things I knew I personally needed. Those things are pretty much universal, I think. Most new builders are looking for a support system. That's why many of them come to the BioWare site to begin with. All the guild was ever established to be was as a smaller, more intimate support system within a support system. The Builder Project is a place where we could hopefully feel more relaxed asking our silly newb questions, seeking help, and learning from each other. Everything else that the guild does has evolved over time, and it became about more than just newb builder support. It wasn't readily apparent to me when we formed the guild that more people than just newbs would be interested in that support system. That is something that I learned as we went along. How did the guild start?
You'd have the advantage of learning something from the mistakes of the new builder next to you, who has been there and done that. Plus, when it came time to seek the help of someone more knowledgeable, your questions would be more organized and concise. More bang for your buck, so to speak... The guild or co-op I had initially envisioned would be mostly comprised of new builders, getting themselves organized, sharing information, and learning from each other's mistakes, and then seeking help from more knowledgeable builders as a group. I posted a topic in the toolset forum, suggesting a new mod builder's co-op for just such a purpose. The interest in that idea was staggering, growing to six pages of posts in just a couple of days. Somewhere along the line, it was suggested that I take up leadership of the enterprise and form the guild, and I did, with the proviso that I would most likely step down after a while so that I could concentrate on just building and learning. That never did happen, though I did try to pass the torch at one time. I finally gave up on the idea and just concentrated on making more effective use of my time so that I could run the guild and still have time to build and learn. It hasn't always worked out perfectly, but I have come a long way from the clueless newb I was 2 years ago, and that is very much thanks to the guild. Where the guild has evolved, in a way I really hadn't expected when we formed, was that many of those knowledgeable people I had envisioned us going to for help were actually interested in participating in the guild firsthand. I think that even those among us who seem to have skills the rest of us wished we had felt that they had more to learn, and that they could also benefit from what we were doing. Some of them just enjoy helping others and wanted to be a part of that, so we essentially started with our own group of experts, and the Q&A that I had initially expected would take place between a guild of newbs and "experts" external to the guild became a self contained system where that very dynamic was taking place on our own guild forums. Out of that dynamic, the Help Desk forum evolved. That is essentially our forum for asking specific questions and getting answers from a group of moderators who have some pretty advanced skills compared to folks like me who knew very little. The moderators aren't the only members who pitch in to answer questions and help people out with building issues either. Any members who know the answer to a specific question, or have viable suggestions to offer, are free to jump in there, and they do. Who is invaluable to the running of your group and why?
The guild administrative team, or "Guild Council", as we affectionately call it, is essential to the running of the guild itself. That team is comprised of guild admins or moderators of our guild forums, the guild officers, and myself. The admins moderate the forums they each are responsible for and serve as that first-line representation for the guild. They answer questions and point members in the right direction when they are in need of something. They are news administrators, so they post news items to keep the membership updated on current events, and they probably do more actual work than any of us, since they are the ones actively minding the store and keeping our little programs running. The officers initially were the only council members who had a vote in guild policy and procedures, but we voted to include the admins in on that vote rather early on. It made sense, as their opinions were so valuable to the running of the guild, and as they do so much in regard to keeping everything running like it's supposed to. They have as much administrative power as is possible over the guild without the administrative powers officers have. Our officers keep an eye to the bigger picture and are responsible for various departments or divisions, such as guild resources, forums administration, membership, and playtesting, and most of them have a team of admins in their respective departments to help them make sure everything gets done. There are differences between the administrative abilities of an officer and an admin, but not in the input they offer into the running of the guild. We manage the guild together, discuss everything, and make decisions as a team. I imagine it would take up a lot of space to acknowledge all of the team members in this interview, but they are all listed here in our guild. Those are the people who keep the wheels greased and the trains running on time, and they deserve as much acknowledgment as me, if not more. I certainly couldn't do much without them. My role is to keep them all motivated. I do that either very well, or only marginally, depending on how lazy I'm feeling, but it's an essential part of the guild management as well. Keeping a team of people with real lives and commitments interested in working without a paycheck is a tricky business, and not something I'd recommend to anyone who thinks being a guild leader is all about being in charge. Sometimes it's a dirty, thankless job. Especially when I have to referee the mud wrestling tournaments... If I'm a new builder, or interested in using the NWN Toolset, where do you suggest I start?Kim: I think everyone who has been doing it for a while probably has different suggestions, depending on what works best for them. My suggestion is always to start with the tutorials here on the BioWare site, and to actively do each exercise in the toolset as you go.
Where you start is really dependent on the type of help you need. If you're looking for that support system, by all means, join us. If you're just looking to ask questions as you go and don't really feel you need the support system, I would say that in most cases, the BioWare forums are a great resource, and you should take full advantage of them. I think the advantage of being a TBP member vs. going at this sometimes overwhelming learning process independently is just the support system you have access to: via the United Architects Mentoring Program we have in place with our sister guild, and by way of some of our officers and admins who use MSN Messenger to make themselves available to members in need of on-the-spot help. They post contact info on the guild pages so that members needing help know how to find us. You can almost log in anytime and find someone out there who will take the time to answer a question, or help you with a problem. It's not a perfect live help system yet, but we are always on the lookout for ways to improve upon it. Mentoring at United Architects also offers more personalized "classes" in scripting, toolset use, or whatever a volunteer mentor has the time and the abilities to teach. They will offer these workshops and post the info on the UA forums, and people are able to sign up for them. Can we expect any changes for the Builder's Project in the future?Kim: There is a lot more that galap and I would like to do with our guild website, and that continues to expand and become a more valuable resource to the community every day. We don't restrict access to the resources available there to members only, so anyone in need of them has that option available. The members who continue to contribute to the Guide to Building would no doubt like to finish it one day and probably make it as public a resource as possible. If there were more I wanted to do, it would be to come up with a more efficient live help system, and work with Maximus at NW Vault more closely to make our Playtesting program more complimentary to what he's doing there. Right now, our Playtesting program is geared toward helping to prepare our members for uploading their works onto NW Vault. The ratings system at the vault makes it a somewhat competitive environment, and a lot of people are intimidated by that. We do our best to thoroughly put their mods through their paces, identify bugs and help the builders eliminate them, so that the work they present to the vault reviewers is something they can present with a certain level of confidence. We may not find everything, but there is a lot that thorough playtesting can eliminate, and it's a valuable service that our members have found tremendously helpful. I don't have a roadmap of how the guild is going to evolve over time. All I know is how much it has evolved over the last two years, and that is considerably. I think as long as NWN and the BioWare site are around we will be too. Where we go from here is something we have always approached with an open mind, so while I can't say what exactly we will be doing this time next year, I do know that as long as we're here, we'll be working within this community toward the same goals we always have, and we'll be having a lot of fun while we're doing it. It's the feeling of having a home within the BioWare community that keeps so many people around in the long haul. We have fun together as often as possible, and try to schedule games and events, so that we can do more together than just work. We have our upcoming two year Anniversary Event, to which we plan to invite the entire NWN community. It will be sort of an open house event, taking place for two weeks in December, and should be a lot of fun. This should give non members a chance to pop in and meet us, and learn a little more about who we are. If all two million BioWare members show up however, we'll probably run out of punch and pie... ~
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Kim: I hadn't been a member of the BioWare system for very long when we formed. I asked a few questions on the BioWare forums, and received very positive responses, but one of the things I noticed was that there were a lot of repeat questions. Even back then, it seemed to me that, if the newer builders who appeared to be primarily those asking the repeat questions were able to organize themselves into a group and share that information with each other, it would cut down on a lot of those repeat questions and give those builders the added bonus of learning from each other as well.
Kim: Everyone, really. Without those people willing to give their time to help someone else, we wouldn't be able to accomplish much. Without those in need of that help, there wouldn't be much for the helpers to do.
One of our guild projects, the 
