Thread by @swardley

X : Have you ever built a guild on World of Warcraft?
Me : Long ago. It was substantial but not in the league of the largest guilds which are 900+ ... never made it that far. However, you can build much larger guilds on EVE online. It's good management training, I'd recommend it.

If you want executive training in this space then Fernado Flores is where to look - pluralisticnetworks.com/?q=home

X : You mean a corp on EVE online.
Me : I know. It's the same thing.

X : What skills do you learn?
Me : Collaboration, situational awareness, motivation, communication, relationship building, organisation, dispute resolution, trust, resource management ... it's quite a long list ... and you have to do it all without resorting to actual money.

X : Organisation? How does pioneer - settler - town planner fit into this?
Me : Lol. We actually had groups that always wanted to be first complete a raid. They'd fail a lot, but keep going, experimenting and trying. You can call them our "pioneers" ...

... then we had another group, who were always about that learning phase i.e. making sure everyone knew what roles to play, how to complete the raid, teaching and improving. You can call them our "Settlers" ...

... finally, we had a group who didn't care about being first, who were pretty unforgiving if you didn't know your role ... all they cared about was setting the fastest time to complete the raid. They constantly found ways to maximise, to push it. They were our "town planners".

Very different groups, very different attitudes. With the pioneers, if the raid blew out ... well, that happened all the time, they were first. With the Town Planners, if you caused the raid to blow out because you thumped the wrong key ... oh my, the language, the curses.

X : How does this differ to corporate management.
Me : In many ways, you have to get deep into skills. If you turn up and go ... I'm an executive (positional power), I've a top floor office (status symbol) and I'm good at speaking (relationship power) ... expect a guild of ten.

X : Guild of ten?
Me : It's long ago. That was (if I remember correctly) the minimum number of random people you needed to form a guild causing endless spamming in the chat ... "do you want to join my guild" etc.

X : Do you think I should put my EVE online corp on a CV?
Me : If you can build a significant corp on EVE online then if I was an organisation looking to hire, you'd be straight on my executive track.
X : More important than an MBA?
Me : Practice over theory? Hell, yes

Me : Of course, I'd be asking HR why did you have to write a CV and what steps are we taking to hunt / poach for future talent on EVE online etc.
X : MMORPGS as hunting grounds?
Me : I'm great believer in creating centres of gravity and of hunting talent.