Introduction to the French room

Bahawin

Long story. I've been in the room almost since its creation, and I immediately felt confortable with the people who were going around with it as well. It was the people from different TPOs that were mainly active on it.

Much time has passed, and Leftiez has created a forum that would help our community to be on the top. I've participated in most of the tournaments that have been organized, and step by step, I've made my way as a player, and people have started to know me for that.

It was much later that I was promoted to Room Voice, as a reward toward my behavior in the room, and a bit later, iMeridian, who was a former Room Owner, asked me if I was interested in leading the tournaments organized on the forum and in the post of Room Driver. I accepted, as I also had some ideas for tournaments, and I was also complaining sometimes about the tournaments organization, so it was the occasion for me to doing things how I felt.

This post of Tournaments Director, combined with a decent driver work, helped me to win the trust of iMeridian, the only Room Owner at the time, who promoted me to Room Moderator few months later. After that, some conflicts appeared in the room, and I had to leave my post of Moderator but I wanted to keep my role of Tournament Director. Organizing tournaments was something I really liked, as it helped me to keep doing something for the community. Despite some disagreements, there are a lot of people I appreciate, so there is no reason to leave them.

Later, I resumed my post of Moderator, keeping my TD role, and my management of the tournaments helped me to win the trust of a lot of people, especially Leftiez and Vinc2612. My ability to handle the conflicts and make tough choices while maintaining impartiality allowed me to access to the post of Room Owner, which is primarly a management role. We are mainly here to supervise the staff and to make important decisions about the development of the room.

Bahawin

As I said above, the Room Owner's role is mainly based in making important decisions and supervising staff.

By "making important decisions", I mean the establishment of regular activity on the room—you have to think about many different things. For example, the French room hosts daily tournaments, which means that every day a tournament whose time and the tier are defined in a schedule will give points to create a leaderboard. Implementing this is primarily to ensure that the staff will be waiting for you to start the tournament and see the results, but it is also ensures that the tiers that will be played will appeal to the community, and that's certainly the most important thing.

As a TD, I think I may be having a double-sized role within the community formed around the French room, Smogon is opened, but that's also a demanding community, it is difficult to make its own way alone. I like to say that Pokémon is not learned, rather that it is a game that requires experience; reading guides does not bring results, but learning from the battle is the best school for me if we want to improve in this game. The French community is probably the richest non-English speaking community, and we have a lot of young talents; but the opportunities to make a name on Smogon are rare, as in most of the cases, you need to excel during Smogon Tours. Not everyone can do it, so for me the aim when iMeridian offered me the position was to give as many opportunities as possible to the players to play tiers that are played during Smogon Tournaments so that they can be fully prepared when the season is starting. Seeing young players win on the world stage after seeing them grow in our small community is probably the thing I enjoy the most from beeing TD.

Finally, I believe that being the Room Owner of the French room is a privilege because the community is very active and very diverse, and even if you don't really know how to play Pokémon, you still have all your chances to be integrated to the community.