Monday, February 28, 2011

State of the Nation - February 2011


Greetings all,

As of this month Byzantium Novum is one year old! February of 2011 has been a productive month and it is good to see business continuing in spite of the poor weather where many of our Citizens reside.

Byzantium Novum is now up to 150 official Citizens, so we've reached a fairly milestone number! We currently have 1,786 Facebook "friends" which also gives us an increasing public forum for announcements and publishing information.

Advertising efforts on CraigsList and other forums seems to have lagged somewhat, but efforts will continue in March to find new Citizens for our community. The online ads DO work, and the new Citizens do seem to be coming from where advertising has been done. Once again, we ask our Citizens to please keep up posting ads - this is the ONLY way Byzantium Novum is currently growing as we've had to step down on paid Internet marketing!

The big news this month is that we've been *very* fortunate to have ten Citizens volunteer to officially serve Eparchs in the new Provincial territories! This is excellent news in that it will give us ten real-world areas where people are working for local recruitment and organization. The vote on this is almost complete in the Senate.

I'm also proud to say that Byzantium Novum also has in the works the founding of our first Provincial Colony... an area where there are enough Citizens living locally to each other to set up real world local meetings and such. This is a wonderful sign of our international Byzantine community growing to the point of local participation!

A handbook for local Provinces is still in progress so there will be plenty of information on "what to do" as more of our Citizens can meet and work on rebuilding Byzantium in the real world.

As we enter March 2011 we begin our first month of our second year. I just want to thank everyone again for making our first year a success. We are continuing to set a great foundation for a real revival of Byzantine civilization!

-Marcus Cassius Julianus
Senate President
Byzantium Novum

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Byzantium Novum One Year Anniversary

Greetings all,


The "official" one-year anniversary of Byzantium Novum was February 8th... we have successfully completed our first twelve months!

Most micronations never make it to this point. Recruitment issues, the amount of work, and internal disorganization claim most new nation projects within their first few months.

Happily, Byzantium Novum has continued to grow and become stronger with time. Our community is currently working on many projects including:

* Establishing local Provinces for live events and gatherings - Exarchs to coordinate several areas have been appointed and we are growing on the local level!

* Establishment of a Treasury - the Byzantium Novum Senate is currently working on a nonprofit corporation which will allow us to legally handle real-world affairs.

* New Information - current projects include a handbook for how to operate a Byzantine Province, and new information is being created for the Byzantium Novum website.

* New Advertising - Byzantium Novum is continuing to get its message out to those interested in "Things Byzantine" throughout the world!

In short, Byzantium Novum is doing everything possible to create a modern Byzantine community and to reestablish a living, functioning Byzantine state.

Many thanks to the many Citizens who have put their efforts into making Byzantium Novum a success so far - it is up to all of us to bring Byzantium back to life and so far all of us can be proud of our modern renewal of Byzantium!

May Byzantium Novum grow and prosper in the year to come!