The CSM 14 March 14 Summit: CCP Reactions

Yesterday, CCP published the CSM 14 spring summit minutes. I thought the CSM members reactions at the end were worth copying into a blog post. I should do the same thing for CCP's reaction. So what follows is more shameless copying and pasting.

CCP Dopamine, Senior Community Developer: EVE Online is a vast and interconnected universe that can be near impossible to grasp for a single human being. Having a group of experts with extensive knowledge across various areas with years of experience behind their belts helps us better understand all the different aspects of the game along with the needs of a broad segment of our players.

To my mind, the knowledge sharing during this summit was particularly beneficial. We had four presentations delivered by CSM members that provided insight into the areas of expertise of  individual members. I consider this to be one of the biggest impacts we get from the council. These information-packed sessions serve as a great way for anyone at CCP to learn more about a specific topic, which then prove useful when working on upcoming plans. 

I also feel that both parties left with an excellent understanding of each other’s reasons, requirements, and motivations. While we might not always agree on everything, having a candid discussion where everyone can professionally share their thoughts is critical for the CSM program and the future of EVE Online.

CCP Burger, Creative Director: New Eden is massive, both in scale and depth. There are endless ways to interact with the universe, and there is no one right way to achieve the goal at hand. There is no way one single person can grasp the whole and my game is very different from your game. Similar to player events, CSM summits are one of my favorite times of the year, it’s when I get to peek in front of the curtains and see my day-to-day from the eyes of EVE’s players on a way higher level then myself. The main difference between meeting people at events and at the summit is the summit’s structure and professionalism. The sessions are civil - naturally, there is healthy debate, disagreement and hard-hitting questions, but over the years we’ve managed to find a good balance in our conversations to make sure we all get the most out of the eight-hours-a-day-for-fourdays-in-a-row stuck in a room together (and, of course during the afterhours). The CSM has reached a level of professionalism that made the March session one of the most productive summits to date.

We are doing some really important work right now and having a panel of expert capsuleers to vet and validate helps us set up EVE for the forever. The success of the NPE has a lot to do with input from CSM members that interact with new players every day, the set-up of frequent releases and many of the changes we’ve seen in the last 6 months would probably not have happened if it wasn’t for the all the input from the CSM. Moreover, the changes to New Eden’s economy that we are going through right now have sparked very healthy debates resulting in a better EVE Online for the future.

The poetry of EVE Online is unmatched. Every day we work towards understanding this living organism better and making sure it has the ingredients to live (somewhat) healthily. There is no EVE in medium gray, EVE needs conflict; conflict driven from people and emotions. The market, ships, modules, resources, CCP and CSM are the ingredients to allow you to set your adventure, claim your stake and write your story.

CCP Rise, Senior Game Designer: The CSM is a critical resource for us on Team Talos. This session, they worked hard to help us shape changes to wormholes, gather feedback from the front lines in low sec, establish an updated plan for capitals, and above all explore options for the future of structures big and small. Without the CSM, it would been very difficult to roll-out so many veteran-oriented changes at such a fast pace, as we have been doing over the past few months.

I would specifically highlight the recent transition to a more proactive CSM we’ve seen over the last two summits. Exooki set a fantastic precedent with his wormhole presentation during summer and Gobbins, Vily, and Olmeca all stepped up in winter with equally thoughtful and well-researched contributions. These presentations have driven important conversations forward in development and given us a look into the world and motivations surrounding some of EVE’s most important leaders.

The CSM is not our only source of feedback, of course, but having an expert group under NDA and on-call allows for precise conversations on almost any topic at any time of day. I’ve come to rely on them quite a lot and greatly appreciate their hard work.

CCP Goodfella, Brand Director: Overall, the second CSM 14 summit was great and I really enjoy having the opportunity to work closely with the CSM. The main discussions of this summit can be broken into three segments:

• The great strides that have been made with the focus on new players that resulted in an increased number of players joining the game and sticking around in EVE for a longer time.
• The continuation of balance updates, events, system changes, etc. that the CSM has both greatly advocated for and helped us shape, frame, and iterate on. I know that having them give us feedback on these things that we are frequently working on enables us to keep up the fast pace.
• The challenging but vital changes to the economy that have begun and will continue throughout 2020. The EVE ecosystem is incredibly complex, and having discussions (and debates!) on how to set up EVE to outlive us all is an incredibly important topic, and being able to discuss this with the CSM is crucial.

The discussions we had were professional, fun, and fruitful. One new element that I think has been really positive is the presentations that CSM members have started giving on specific topics. These presentations give great insight into specific professions, features, and more in EVE. They are the spark for fantastic discussions and give CCP a lot of ideas to consider. Another topic that we discussed with CSM was communication, and we had good feedback about the opportunities available there that can have a greater impact on EVE.

I thank CSM 14, it has been fantastic working with them and I am already excited for the upcoming CSM 15!

The CSM 14 March Summit: CSM Reactions

While I'm not maintaining a website tracking the CSM candidates this year, I'm not going to entirely ignore the player-elected body. The 14th edition of the Council of Stellar Management held a summit with CCP in Reykjavik from 2-5 March. While reading the summit minutes, I was impressed enough by the post-summit thoughts of the members that I thought I would shamelessly copy and paste their thoughts here. I will add some formatting things (like paragraphs) as needed.

Aryth (Goonwaffe/Goonswarm Federation): Going in there was confusion between CSM and CCP on specific aspects of previously released features and what that meant for future releases. The initial concerns were discussed and addressed and we gained a much clearer idea of what CCPs overall intentions and goals were. 

These goals were high level and didn't necessarily translate into the changes we see that may be the cause of lots of consternation in the playerbase. The high level goals make sense and have mostly objective measurements that are easily defined. What needs to be made a bit more clear is that the tactical changes happening are often things that CCP may not know the ramifications of but are attempting to address much greater issues with a game 17 years of player history. Things will go wrong, adjustments will be made, but the guiding star is to return EVE to a healthy place that can continue for the next decade. 

Hilmar played a large part in clarifying this vision and I would say that the summit didn't truly come together with a cohesive picture until Hilmar's session directly with the CSM. It is very easy to lose sight of the high level objectives when you are only discussing tactical changes. CCP was able to tie these two areas together with Hilmar explaining it all. This was a new structure of engagement with the CSM and was highly successful. That being said, while we don't necessarily agree with every change, we see our job as to educate CCP as best we can on the ramifications of the changes they are doing and make them have the least negative impact as we are able. 

At the end of the day CCP makes the final decision thus the game will change. Change is the constant we can always rely on in EVE. Change is scary, it breaks playstyles, it turns the economy upside down, it has sweeping meta ramifications, but it also ushers in a new age of EVE.

Steve Ronuken (Fuzzwork Enterprises/Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM): The End of an Era. That's what the summit in March was. My last summit after 6 years on the CSM. Not the best, but far from the worst; there were fruitful discussions, which have led to a better understanding of goals, objectives and situations on both sides.

It's going to be challenging for a while, as Eve goes through some significant rebalances, but if we can hit the target numbers, everything should be in a better

position.

Olmeca Gold (Democratic Space Socialism): Had a great summit overall. With NPE improvements kicking in, I'm happy to see growth in the player numbers again. Seems like substantial work will go into veteran gameplay in 2020. It will be a painful transition from some of the unsustainable aspects of Eve, to a long-term sustainable game. I hope it all goes well. 

The three issues I paid specific attention in this summit were the risk/reward balance around PvE and non-consensual PvP, small and large scale conflict drivers, and making on-grid PvP skill matter more in the sandbox

Merkelchen (Karmafleet/Goonswarm Federation): This spring's summit was as good of a summit as I have had in my 2 years as a CSM player representative. CCP has taken heavily to a data driven approach to their resource allocation and game design and based off the information we saw it seems to already be paying off. Focus on the new player experience(not to be confused with the tutorial itself) is bringing great returns that should get every Eve player excited because, even though many of us finished up that aspect of the game a long time ago, it being more effective leads to more people in space. These new additions to the player base become Corp mates of the future, industrialists

supplying the ships we fly, or maybe even the bad guy that just got called primary on a fleet.

The current focus on bringing the ecosystem to a more healthy state is going to require an immense amount of effort and collaboration between CCP, the CSM, and the greater player base. I wish there were easy and pain free solutions to these issues but its likely going to take some time to find the Goldilocks zone where things are in a great state. Having a good working relationship between the CSM and CCP is fundamental to working through these kind of immense challenges and as a player communicating your thoughts on the matter to your CSM representatives is critical to make sure every voice is represented in these discussions. Much like I'm sure many of the CSMs do I get a lot of in game mails, discord conversations, and reddit private messages and I make sure every one gets to the person that would need to hear it in CCP so please continue to speak to the Council! I wish the best of luck to the future CSM XV and I thank CSM XIV and CCP for another great year.

Dunk Dinkle (Brave Newbies Inc./Brave Collective): CCP learned a lot from the Summer of Chaos and has made several major changes. There has been a significant reorganization of how CCP does game design and how teams work together. Overall, the mood of the meetings was open and positive. Very little acrimony. The tone of discussion was much more interactive and convivial that the Summer Summit, which was adversarial at times.

We are seeing more regular deployment of new features and better discussion of the future than we have seen in a few years. There are things coming that some players will love. There are things coming that some players will hate. My advice is to keep doing what you like to do and don’t get stressed about the other changes around you.

Innominate (Karmafleet/Goonswarm Federation): The biggest problem this year on the CSM has been communication from CCP. This summit has led to dramatic improvements in CCP's communication both with the CSM and with players that I hope is a continuing trend back towards the transparency we used to expect. While there are several positive changes both released and upcoming, I am most excited to have seen the most effective npe changes CCP has tried in years, which promise to bring back real growth in the player base.

Gobbins (Pandemic Horde HLD./Pandemic Horde): The main direction of this meeting was the desire from CCP to change deep andcore aspects of the game in order to walk towards a new vision. The core of this vision is the longevity of eve online. CCP plans to achieve this with at least 3 points of action: increased retention of new players, drastic healing of the game economy, and improvement of the veteran experience through small but constant changes.

The improvements to new player retention are driven by solid data and the stats show that the current work has already been bearing fruit. The impact of these improvements on the game population as a whole might not be noticed at first but are projected to make a big difference in a matter of 2-3 years.

The work on the economy is the most delicate work and a vastly ambitious project. The current state of the eve economy is not compatible with longevity and the intent behind this project is well justified. The devs involved in this task are very set in their goals and hesitated to disclose information at first but have since developed a regular dialogue with the CSM at least to receive feedback. However due to the complexity of the topic, there is little consensus in general on how the economy is to be fixed. The speed at which this task can be carried out is also limited by the delay in which economic changes take effect in the game, and the existence of stockpiles; so players are advised to expect tweaks to the economy to continue happening for a long time.

Lastly the improvement of the core experience through small but constant changes has been ongoing now since the formation of team Talos. This team formed shortly after the first CSM14 summit and has been steadily delivering updates. Over half a year later, not a single biweekly update was missed. Without a doubt, these small changes have had an effect in making the game feel more alive and vibrant, as well as addressing crippling imbalances that could be fixed with relatively minor

changes. One issue that is starting to emerge however is that the amount of work might be too much for one small team, as becomes evident when the team must tackle bigger balance issues and more ambitious revamps. The current pace also seems to have little to no room for iteration, although this is a wider issue of the company as a whole at this time.

A greater blind spot that remains is conflict drivers. The topic was discussed during the summit but does not seem to be a priority yet, partly because it is believed the changes to the economy will also drive conflict. That prediction seems flawed at the moment, but hopefully the topic of conflict drivers can become more prominent once some of the urgent issues with the economy are dealt with.

Final comment, the top leadership of CCP was very available to us during this meeting and widely shared their vision and enthusiasm for eve’s future. The atmosphere is one of genuine confidence and optimism, which I share. My personal comment is that there is still a bit of a gap between the top decision making at CCP, and the technical and direct knowledge of the game in its modern state. Hopefully this summit helped narrow that gap through the feedback provided by the CSM as

well as the increased number of CCP employees participating as players in eve online.

Sort Dragon (Resilience./Initiative Mercenaries): My focus for this summit was CCP's communication with the player base. While CCP has always had a long-term vision and short-term and long-term plans, I wasn't sure what those plans were, or how they intended to implement them. In the past, CCP has had issues communicating their plans and vision to players, with the result being that some players had unrealistic expectations on future game changes or expansions while other players became cynical, with low or no expectations at all. My goal was to urge CCP to ramp up their communications efforts, find a way to be transparent while managing expectations, and to encourage them to communicate more with players.

During the summit, I saw CCP's long-term plans for the future and the reasons behind the changes they have made and their reasoning behind future changes. These plans are big, and they're bold. I'm looking forward to seeing how they implement them and how they communicate them with the player base in the future.

ExookiZ (The Dark Space Initiative/Scary Wormhole People): A very positive summit. Compared to our firsts summit in september, It was obvious that a lot of CCP’s reorganization and refocusing has begun to pay off. Many of the sessions were even more contentious than before, in part I think due to the CSM becoming more comfortable with each other and CCP devs. That said I left the summit feeling that we probably helped point Eve in a better direction more than I did the last time.

I left the September summit telling people I was “cautiously optimistic”, in that if CCP kept it up I think we should see some very positive movement. 6 Months later, with talos still achieving its release cadence, and other teams beginning to follow suit I would say that I am not simply optimistic about EVE’s future. I was very impressed with everything we saw at the second summit, from the leadership teams focus on core issues to the teams various plans to make eve better over 2020. While all of that of course still hinges on their execution, with the last 6 months being mostly successful, i am more confident than before that by the end of 2020 EVE will be a very different, and hopefully much better game than it is now.

Six Takaways From The CSM 14 Election

The results of the election for the 14th Council of Stellar Management are now known. Instead of a sleepy, null sec sweep, we saw a fascinating, perhaps even controversial, example of a single transferable vote election. Since CCP supplies both a file with the raw vote totals plus an audit file containing how the voting algorithm processes the vote, I can do a little deeper dig into the results than just note who one. While a lot of would-be analysts are giving their take on places like the EVE Online sub-reddit, I’d like to think I might have some additional insight on trends and events others miss. With that explanation out of the way, here are my top takeaways from the results of the voting.

1. Imperium voting power reverted to the norm. While some people are under the mistaken impression that the Goonswarm election team usually causes 6, 7, or even 8 candidates to win, in reality, the official Imperium vote semi-closely following the coalition’s official ballot usually results in 3 members winning a CSM seat. The CSM 13 election was an outlier, caused by the disqualification of TEST candidate Creecher Virpio. The removal of Creecher after the voting started resulted in The Judge winning re-election. With no drama this year, the Imperium ballot reverted back to only electing 3 candidates: Aryth, Merkelchen, and Innominate.

2. Turnout matters. In single transferable vote elections, turnout is a key factor in the power of a null sec bloc ballot. The larger the turnout, the larger the quota, or number of votes required to elect a candidate. The larger the quota, the fewer excess votes available to trickle down to the next candidate on the ballot. So while voter discipline within the Imperium improved, with 1000 more ballots following the Imperium ballot cast in 2019 compared to 2018, that only resulted in an increase of 70 votes in the trickle Innominate received from Merkelchen in the first round of the simulation. The Imperium vote never impacted below the third spot on the ballot as Innominate won his seat without reaching quota.

3. The 1000/2000 rule in CSM elections still holds mostly true. When people ask whether or not they have a shot at winning a seat on the CSM, I ask two questions. First, can they garner 1000 first place votes. The second, do they have a path to 2000 votes. If the answer to both is yes, then the candidate is a serious contender.

In this year's election, Steve Ronuken defeated Sort Dragon for the last seat, 2332 to 2321. Sort received 1500 initial first place votes, compared to Steve's 920. This year marks the 10th time a candidate received 1000 or more initial first place ballots and lost. Sort also earned the distinction of becoming the first candidate to accomplish the feat twice. The previous candidates who lost while achieving 1000 initial first place ballots are:

CSM 8
1678 - Greene Lee
1616 - Nathan Jameson
1525 - Psychotic Monk
1487 - Corebloodbrothers 
1286 - Steve Ronuken
1213 - Banlish

CSM 10
1099 - UAxDEATH

CSM 12
1291 - Sort Dragon

CSM 13
1091 - ExookiZ

Sort Dragon also became the third candidate ever, and the first since 2013, to achieve over 1000 initial first place votes and over 2000 total votes and still not win a seat. The other two were Nathan Jameson (1616/2430) and Banlish (1213/2173), both in the first STV election in 2013.

4. Vily ends the TEST curse. With Test Alliance Please Ignore’s long history as a large alliance, the fact that TEST has never before elected a member to the CSM might come as a surprise. But since the institution of the Wright single transferable vote system in 2013, some event has always intervened to prevent a member of TEST from winning. Most people who follow the CSM are familiar with the disqualification of TEST’s leading candidate Creecher Virpio last year. But such bad luck goes back to 2013, when, as a member of the HoneyBadger Coalition, TEST voted as a bloc for Sort Dragon, the leader of the coalition. TEST wound up moonwalking out of the coalition shortly afterwards.

5. Low sec tried, but came up short. When people from null sec hear complaints about the domination of the CSM by the null sec blocs, the usual response is to vote their own candidate in. No one who knows what went on during the campaign can say low sec and small gang PvP players didn't try.

The candidate players rallied behind was Stitch Kaneland from The Tuskers. He managed to pick up 937 initial first place votes at the beginning of the election, but lost in the 32nd round of the 34 round simulation with 1504 votes.

6. Wormholers get a representative, with a little help from their friends. After coming close last year, ExookiZ won a seat on CSM 14, beating Sort Dragon by 470 votes. But, the wormhole community needed help to get a representative. The help came from two places. The first was from the low sec/small gang PvP community backing Stitch Kaneland. After Stitch's elimination in round 32, ExookiZ picked up a net 359 votes on Sort Dragon, giving ExookiZ a comfortable lead. But without the trickle down vote from anti-null bloc candidate Olmeca Gold of a net 272 vote pickup over Sort, ExookiZ would have lost in the final round.

CSM 14 Voting Starts Today

Barring any controversies over the next week, I can relax and begin enjoying EVE again. The elections for the 14th Council of Stellar Management begin today and run through 17 June. The link to vote is buried a bit on the community site, but you can find it here. The link is probably on the launcher, but I had to leave for work before voting began. Dunk Dinkle provided a handy how-to guide on how to vote.

For those who are just beginning to notice the election and don't know anything about the candidates, I created a Google site with information from the last 5 CSM elections. The one for this week's election is here.

Once again, the podcast/streaming community has covered the election with a series of interviews. Between 3-time CSM member Jin'taan and Talking in Stations, 31 interviews were conducted with 23 of the 44 candidates in the race. One of the candidates Jin'taan interviewed did not make the final ballot, which is one of the pitfalls of having to conduct interviews before the ballot is announced. On my site, I had to delete 16 candidate pages this year. Yes, that many people were either rejected or decided not to run after all. I hear the number was even greater as not all potential candidates posted their intentions on the official forums.

In addition to Jin'taan and his one-man operation, I'd like to give a special shout out to MacCloud, the technical wizard who produces Talking in Stations. He stayed up all Saturday night to ensure that the remaining CSM interviews, including three conducted on Saturday, were posted to the internet on Sunday. A lot of people forget (or don't know) about all the work behind the scenes required to bring a podcast to life.

I'll have a couple of final posts once the election results are announced at EVE North, but for now, I'm finished with the CSM election coverage for this year. I do have a final question, though. What kind of turnout do you expect for this year's election? If you could take my Twitter poll, I'd appreciate it. The poll will run until downtime on Saturday.

Today's the start of the CSM election, running until June 17. Last year, 29,226 ballots were cast. How many accounts do you think will vote this year? #tweetfleet #CSM14election

— Noizy (@noizygamer) June 10, 2019

Thoughts On The CSM 14 Election One Week Before Voting Begins

With 6 days remaining until the Council of Stellar Management elections begin next Monday. I think I am all CSM'd out for this year. I still have to check for updates on the forums, although I think the odds of any additional candidates creating a new threads in the CSM Campaign section of the forums ranges from slim to none. Both Jin'taan and Talking In Stations have additional interviews due out this week. Between the two, 9 out of the 44 candidates have interviews posted so far. I need to keep listening, as some candidates have foot-in-mouth disease. For example, don't say, "I don't care if CCP sells bullets that do a little more damage, frankly. I don't see that as completely destabilizing the game." Wargaming removed gold ammo from World of Tanks for a very good reason. If a game publisher wants to attract players, a reputation for pay-to-win items like gold ammo is counter-productive to that goal.

I also am hearing some big talk from some of the null sec blocs about how they plan to win seats. Legacy is an interesting case study. No candidate backed by Brave Collective leadership has ever lost a CSM race. In Dunk Dinkle, Brave once again has a very strong candidate. Conversely, Test Alliance Please Ignore has never had a candidate win a seat. Last year, Creecher Virpio would have ended the drought but not for some meta-gaming by members of Pandemic Legion. Will Vily break the curse?

Another question is the fate of two incumbents, Sort Dragon and Killah Bee. Last year, the pair benefited greatly from the disqualification of Pandemic Horde's chosen candidate during the application process. With not only the leader of the Horde, Gobbins, running, but Aegaeonos and Arqui Nurbs as well, I don't think Killah Bee can count on help from those quarters. Sort Dragon has the additional handicap of fighing against PanFam at this time, so a big chunk of his support from last year is unavailable for his run for a fifth term on CSM.

The other question is whether high sec, low sec, or wormhole space can elect a representative. High sec's best hope is incumbent Steve Ronuken, who is running to win for a sixth time. Three-time CSM member Mike Azariah is also running, with Lorelei Ierendi, a candidate who's come close with a few strong showings, a dark horse candidate. Low sec only has one candidate, Matthew Dust, lists faction warfare amongst his current credentials to rally around. In contrast, wormholers have several candidates running. If the wormhole community can get together and vote for all 6 at the top of their tickets, in whatever order they choose, a chance exists for w-space to sneak a candidate on. The question is, can the residents of spooky space find that unity of purpose as they did in the CSM 8 election?

One other observation. I won't write an endorsement post or announce who I've voting for until after the election, if then. Like I said at the top of the post, I'm all CSM'd out, and I still have several interviews to listen to. Two more weeks until I leave for EVE North in Toronto and this whole election is over. I think I'll drink to that.

The Nosy Gamer's Quick And Dirty Guide To CSM 14 Candidates

The election for EVE Online's 14th Council of Stellar Management will begin on Monday, 10 June and run for a week. A lot of people will tell players to make sure they fill out all 10 slots on their ballots, even though voters are only required to pick one. The reason given is to "maximize the power" of the ballot. Below is a video explaining how a single transferable vote system works.


But picking 10 candidates, especially for those not in large null sec blocs, can take up a lot of valuable time players would rather spend playing EVE. In an effort to make the decision making a little faster, I put together a guide with brief descriptions of each candidate, with most of the information coming from a candidate's campaign post on the EVE Online forums and self-descriptions on the official candidates page.

This guide is divided into the security bands (high, low, null, and w-space), with the order determined by the number of candidates coming from each area of space. I tried to display the candidates in alphabetical order as much as possible. In null sec, I divided the candidates into their coalitions, and then their alliances.

If a candidate looks interesting, clicking on the candidate's name will open up that candidate's page on CSM Wire, the Google site I set up to help people research candidates. Hopefully, this will help.

Council Of Stellar Management Elections Coming June 10-17

With The Briscident behind them, the Council of Stellar Management now moves on to the next event on the calendar: elections. In a dev blog yesterday, CCP Dopamine announce the election schedule and how to apply to run. Here is the basic timeline.

• April 30 - May 12: Candidacy application period
• May 13-17: Processing applications
• May 25: Approved candidates announced at EVE Down Under
• May 25 - June 7: Official campaign period.
• June 10-17: Voting occurs
• June 22: Winners announced at EVE North

The requirements basically have not changed from last year. The only difference is a statement specifying that all personal data will be handled in accordance with European data protection and processing laws:

Important disclaimer from CCP: We will be strict about incorrectly filed or incomplete submissions and reject applications that don’t meet our standards. The rules are very clear, but if you are unsure about anything regarding the process, we are happy to answer any questions. However, once the submission is sent there is no turning back, so it is imperative to get it right. 

To be eligible for the CSM, applicants must meet the following requirements:

• Your account must be older than 60 days at the time candidacy applications close.
• Characters on both Alpha and Omega accounts are eligible to run. 
• You must have a history of honoring the EULA and the Terms of Service. We will screen every applicant thoroughly and EULA/TOS violations on your record can result in a rejected application.
• Your account must have updated and correct information at the time of your application. This includes; your real life name, correct date of birth and the same email you use to submit your application. To view and edit this information go to the account management website.
• Candidates must have reached 18 years of age. If the legal adult age in your home country (the age at which you have the legal capacity to enter into a contract) is higher than 18, that number applies instead.
• As an applicant, you must consent to provide your personal details to CCP, including your real name and a copy of your passport. CCP needs to affirm your real life identity for NDA contract purposes and the ability to travel to summits in Iceland is a key function of the CSM. 
• If you do not currently have a valid passport, we will accept a picture/scan of a valid and approved passport application accompanied with a picture of your driver‘s license.
• You must consent to sharing your country of origin with the EVE Community and having it displayed on the EVE Online website. You will not be required to share any other personal information with the EVE community.
• If you are running as an "alt" and you control a character that has a reputation in the EVE universe, CCP may require you to run under that identity at its full discretion.

As I've done for every election starting with CSM 10, I will provide candidate information on my CSM Wire Google site. I've upgraded the site and CSM Wire should show up better in mobile devices now. I might even get fancy and get a domain. Probably not, but the current URL annoys me enough. The site is still under construction, but I'll keep a list of candidates up to date. As of an hour before I posted this, we had 17 announced candidates.