The Face of Fandom: Dialogue with the OTW's Dr. Francesca Coppa
Below you will find a transcript of the text-only, chat interview I conducted with the Organization for Transformative Works' Dr. Francesca Coppa. Any feedback can be left below. I'd also like to once again thank the OTW for all their help, and for granting me an interview, I really appreciate you sharing your views!
Circumlocutor: Well, first of all, let me thank you and the OTW for granting my request for an interview, I really appreciate it.
Francesca C. : You're so welcome!
Circumlocutor: So, to start off the interview, I'd like to ask a couple of introductory questions, just to get to know you a little bit, so feel free to add as much detail as you like. I've tried to get a little sample of who the different people who participate in fandom are, as well as their opinions on it. To get you started, can I ask what you do for a living?
Francesca C. : Yes, I'm a college professor; I'm director of film studies and associate professor of English at Muhlenberg College.
Circumlocutor: So how long have you been involved in fandom and how did you involvement start?
Francesca C. : I got involved in fandom in about 1982, which was a great time to be a fan. It was between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi; Star Trek II: Wraith of Khan was 1982, The Search for Spock was 1983ish, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was 1984; it was a big post-Star Wars sci-fi boomtime.
Francesca C. : I was in my early teens and fell for fandom hard, like you do.
Francesca C. : I had a friend at the time who was a much more involved Trekkie, and moreever, she had a really cool mom who would bring us to movies and conventions and such. So that's about how it started.
Circumlocutor: Fandom has changed quite a bit since then, most recently introducing a group, the Organization for Transformative Works, that you have helped get off the ground. Can you tell me a little about the OTW? What is it, exactly?
Francesca C. : The OTW is a nonprofit organization run by fans for fans, mainly to help fans get the things they need in the Web 2.0 world, which is very much about profit. When I came into online fandom in the mid-1990s...well, online fandom was a very different place. Most of my online world was on university servers, which had a different kind of commitment to free speech and fan culture. Now, a decade later, that sort of "public" internet culture has been replaced by a private ones, and fan culture is taking place using an array of for-profit tools. This is fine, and fans are early adopters of technology and tools (and willing to pay for good ones) but we--myself and the fans I knew--wanted to also have a stable center for fandom that was not dependent on profit or any particular Web 2.0 company.
Circumlocutor: What goals is the OTW working towards at this time?
Francesca C. : So, for instance, the OTW is building--from scratch--a fanfiction archive that we hope will be the Library of Congress for fan fiction: a place where fans can host or back up their stories, that is nonprofit and supported by OTW member dollars like a public radio station.
Circumlocutor: Sorry, carry on, didn't mean to interrupt
Francesca C. : That archive, the Archive of Our Own, will hopefully be standing as various web hosting companies rise and fall, as fans enter an leave fandom, etc. It hopes to protect fans and fan culture from the ups and downs of the market.
Francesca C. : Vis a vis what we're working on: the Archive (AOOO) is probably our primary project. We launched three others this year, that were part of our first year plan:
Francesca C. : Fanlore, which is a wiki for fan history and culture (fanlore.org)
Francesca C. : Transformative Works and Cultures: an academic journal for scholars of fan works and cultures
Francesca C. : We also made a series of short documentaries on fan vidding for MIT's series on New Media Literacies. We do hope eventually to host a vid archive as well as a fanfiction archive.
Francesca C. : *could go on. *g**
Circumlocutor: Yes, I read/watched the first part of the vidding documentaries that were posted on Henry Jenkins' blog the other day, they were really great! Essentially I am trying to do something similar, getting opinions from various fans on how they participate in fandom, why they do it, what it means to them, etc.
Francesca C. : Thanks!
Circumlocutor: That is one project you've worked on for the OTW, do you have a title, or a specific job within the organization? What are your own personal responsibilities?
Francesca C. : Me myself, personally? I'm a member of the Board; there are seven of us (our bios are on a page at the transformativeworks.org website.) We all of us wear many hats: we have roles, chair committees, and are liaisons to other committees. I'm Secretary to the Board, a member of the ADT committee (Accessibility, Design, Technology) which is building the archive, the Chair of the Vidding History and Open Doors committees, and I currently am the Board Liaison to the Journal committee, the Webmasters, and our Development and Membership Committees. I'm what you would call busy. *g*
Circumlocutor: Wow, I'm even more glad you could take the time to talk to me now! You are a member of the Board, so obviously there is some internal structure within the OTW, how does that work, exactly? Fandom as a whole tends to be fairly fond of equanimity and even a little bit of anarchy, occasionally, did the OTW take that kind of non-hierarchical bent into consideration?
Francesca C. : Sure, fandom is anarchistic, but fandom's also always been organized. Conventions don't throw themselves, fannish archives don't just appear, lists aren't moderated on their own. Fandom is full of very organized people. And in this case, a lot of our goals couldn't be met by anarchy: if you want a permanent fanfiction home that won't suddenly go down when a particular fan loses interest, you need a structure to support that. We've lost a lot of fanfiction and fan art because an archivist gafiated, or--I mean, people still talk of the day Tripod went down and hundreds of fannish sites were lost.
Circumlocutor: I remember when that happened, it was an unfortunate loss. So besides the BoD, how is the OTW run? Is it solely a volunteer organization?
Francesca C. : Yes, that's right
Francesca C. : It's all volunteers: The Board convenes any number of committees: Dev/Mem, Wiki, Journal, Webmasters, Election, Open Doors, Vidding History, etc etc
Francesca C. : Each committee has a chair; the chairs form committees and run meetings, set milestones, etc.
Francesca C. : People also are incredibly generous with us in terms of time--people who can't formally volunteer
Francesca C. : still do work for us: make graphics, design a site, help with some code or css. Fandom is an incredibly talented place.
Circumlocutor: Now, how did the OTW come about? Was there any kind of impetus for the organization? It seems like fandom has been around for quite a while, but we've never had an initiative quite like this, how did it start?
Francesca C. : Well, 2007 was a difficult year for fandom. Livejournal was banning communities: you might remember an event called Strikethrough.
Francesca C. : http://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough
Circumlocutor: Yes. Bad times were had by all.
Francesca C. : And then there was Fanlib, which was a company run by a bunch of men, and which had terms of service that many summarized as: you take all the risks, you give us all the money. The other thing about Fanlib was that they ran the danger of raising fandom's profile even further--by creating a for-profit company--but without any particular commitment to fannish culture or ideas.
Francesca C. : So you say, we've never had an initiative like this, but in a way, we have: the people who started OTW, both the board and the committees, were drawn overwhelmingly from people in fandom who build archives, ran challenges, through conventions, moderated lists, etc. etc.
Francesca C. : This group--and we're talking about a hundred people who are full time volunteers--
Circumlocutor: To clarify for our audience, Fanlib was company that solicited fan authors to host their material on the Fanlib website in order to profit from them, while offering no legal protection for that material.
Circumlocutor: Sorry, please continue. I just wanted to make that clear, since some of my audience isn't as versed in fandom current events as we are.
Francesca C. : That's right; http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlib
Francesca C. : That group decided that it would not let Fanlib and the like be "the front door" of fandom to outsiders. We decided that we could put up our own front door.
Francesca C. : Fandom in many ways has anticipated large-scale economic and technological developments; lots of people are interested in fandom right now. But we didn't like the people who had decided to speak for us: this is why it's so important that everyone in OTW has been in fandom and is committed to fandom.
Circumlocutor: Has the geneal response from fandom to this initiative been all positive?
Francesca C. : Yes, I think its been very positive!
Francesca C. : We've held two membership/donation drives, which did well, and I think people are really waiting for the Archive to open. We've also been able to help fans who have been approached by the press, or fans who are worried about legal repercussions and C&D letters. We've been a good source of information and I think most fans see us as a resource.
Circumlocutor: As you mentioned earlier, the OTW has several side projects that you are working on now. Do you have any goals for the future, and new projects that are still in the works?
Francesca C. :
Oh, yeah: I mean, as I said, the fanfiction Archive is still the first priority, and when we open, there'll be a large-scale outreach encouraging people to back up their fanfiction and fanfiction archives, in case of crashes or TOSings. I would love us to get a vidding archive off the ground. I've been also working on an oral history of some of the first vidders: vidders who worked in the 1970s and 1980s. The Open Doors project is currently negotating with a library to hopefully co-host a zine archive. There's lots of things still to do!
Circumlocutor: Well, that was the last planned question I have for you, but I'd like to open up the floor for you here, if there is anything you think we didn't discuss in enough depth, or there was anything you wanted to talk about that we didn't touch on earlier.
Francesca C. : Well, I think that at least one of the things worth mentioning here is gender. We have some guys in the OTW, and there are guys in fandom for sure, but I think actually that the OTW is a remarkable project to the extent to which it's being run by women, even in the technological, systems, and coding areas. Fandom has always been a place where technological women have thrived, and OTW wears its geek colors proudly! We had a Python vs. Ruby deathmatch early on, when we were trying to decide what to build the archive in, and our coders are overwhelmingly female. I think that's important and awesome.
Circumlocutor: I agree, it is also true of quite a few corners of fandom, that fandom has a unique demographic of women involved in what traditionally used to be a male-dominated arena.
Francesca C. : Yes, exactly: not just writers, but site designers, coders, vidders, etc.
Francesca C. : I told Henry Jenkins, increasingly my shorthand for fandom is, "It's the network, stupid." Our anarchy and diversity is great, but fandom also provides a network of
Francesca C. : tools, education, and support
Francesca C. : as well as boundless enthusiasm and squee
Francesca C. : that I think is really important for women.
Circumlocutor: It is a fabulous environment to acquire new skills, and to practice old ones. That is one of the most important parts of fandom, in my opinion. What do you think, for you, is the most important part of fandom? What draws to keep coming back, to work so hard in a volunteer capacity for the OTW?
Francesca C. : Yes, exactly!
Francesca C. : It's funny, because I think a lot of people get involved in fandom to give something back. I mean, you can buy a zine or read a story online and never be part of fandom, but I think most people get drawn in because they love the art and the culture and want to give back. So they send feedback, or they write a story to give back for all the great stories they read. This is just a different form of giving back, I think.
Francesca C. : Also--I'm tired of seeing archives go down! *g*
Circumlocutor: Well, if that is all you wanted to say, I'd just like to thank you again, and please thank the rest of the OTW BoD on my behalf, for doing this interview. I had a lovely time talking to you, and I think that what you've said will be really enlightening for my audience. Thanks!
Francesca C. : Thank you and I totally will tell them!
Circumlocutor: Well, first of all, let me thank you and the OTW for granting my request for an interview, I really appreciate it.
Francesca C. : You're so welcome!
Circumlocutor: So, to start off the interview, I'd like to ask a couple of introductory questions, just to get to know you a little bit, so feel free to add as much detail as you like. I've tried to get a little sample of who the different people who participate in fandom are, as well as their opinions on it. To get you started, can I ask what you do for a living?
Francesca C. : Yes, I'm a college professor; I'm director of film studies and associate professor of English at Muhlenberg College.
Circumlocutor: So how long have you been involved in fandom and how did you involvement start?
Francesca C. : I got involved in fandom in about 1982, which was a great time to be a fan. It was between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi; Star Trek II: Wraith of Khan was 1982, The Search for Spock was 1983ish, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was 1984; it was a big post-Star Wars sci-fi boomtime.
Francesca C. : I was in my early teens and fell for fandom hard, like you do.
Francesca C. : I had a friend at the time who was a much more involved Trekkie, and moreever, she had a really cool mom who would bring us to movies and conventions and such. So that's about how it started.
Circumlocutor: Fandom has changed quite a bit since then, most recently introducing a group, the Organization for Transformative Works, that you have helped get off the ground. Can you tell me a little about the OTW? What is it, exactly?
Francesca C. : The OTW is a nonprofit organization run by fans for fans, mainly to help fans get the things they need in the Web 2.0 world, which is very much about profit. When I came into online fandom in the mid-1990s...well, online fandom was a very different place. Most of my online world was on university servers, which had a different kind of commitment to free speech and fan culture. Now, a decade later, that sort of "public" internet culture has been replaced by a private ones, and fan culture is taking place using an array of for-profit tools. This is fine, and fans are early adopters of technology and tools (and willing to pay for good ones) but we--myself and the fans I knew--wanted to also have a stable center for fandom that was not dependent on profit or any particular Web 2.0 company.
Circumlocutor: What goals is the OTW working towards at this time?
Francesca C. : So, for instance, the OTW is building--from scratch--a fanfiction archive that we hope will be the Library of Congress for fan fiction: a place where fans can host or back up their stories, that is nonprofit and supported by OTW member dollars like a public radio station.
Circumlocutor: Sorry, carry on, didn't mean to interrupt
Francesca C. : That archive, the Archive of Our Own, will hopefully be standing as various web hosting companies rise and fall, as fans enter an leave fandom, etc. It hopes to protect fans and fan culture from the ups and downs of the market.
Francesca C. : Vis a vis what we're working on: the Archive (AOOO) is probably our primary project. We launched three others this year, that were part of our first year plan:
Francesca C. : Fanlore, which is a wiki for fan history and culture (fanlore.org)
Francesca C. : Transformative Works and Cultures: an academic journal for scholars of fan works and cultures
Francesca C. : We also made a series of short documentaries on fan vidding for MIT's series on New Media Literacies. We do hope eventually to host a vid archive as well as a fanfiction archive.
Francesca C. : *could go on. *g**
Circumlocutor: Yes, I read/watched the first part of the vidding documentaries that were posted on Henry Jenkins' blog the other day, they were really great! Essentially I am trying to do something similar, getting opinions from various fans on how they participate in fandom, why they do it, what it means to them, etc.
Francesca C. : Thanks!
Circumlocutor: That is one project you've worked on for the OTW, do you have a title, or a specific job within the organization? What are your own personal responsibilities?
Francesca C. : Me myself, personally? I'm a member of the Board; there are seven of us (our bios are on a page at the transformativeworks.org website.) We all of us wear many hats: we have roles, chair committees, and are liaisons to other committees. I'm Secretary to the Board, a member of the ADT committee (Accessibility, Design, Technology) which is building the archive, the Chair of the Vidding History and Open Doors committees, and I currently am the Board Liaison to the Journal committee, the Webmasters, and our Development and Membership Committees. I'm what you would call busy. *g*
Circumlocutor: Wow, I'm even more glad you could take the time to talk to me now! You are a member of the Board, so obviously there is some internal structure within the OTW, how does that work, exactly? Fandom as a whole tends to be fairly fond of equanimity and even a little bit of anarchy, occasionally, did the OTW take that kind of non-hierarchical bent into consideration?
Francesca C. : Sure, fandom is anarchistic, but fandom's also always been organized. Conventions don't throw themselves, fannish archives don't just appear, lists aren't moderated on their own. Fandom is full of very organized people. And in this case, a lot of our goals couldn't be met by anarchy: if you want a permanent fanfiction home that won't suddenly go down when a particular fan loses interest, you need a structure to support that. We've lost a lot of fanfiction and fan art because an archivist gafiated, or--I mean, people still talk of the day Tripod went down and hundreds of fannish sites were lost.
Circumlocutor: I remember when that happened, it was an unfortunate loss. So besides the BoD, how is the OTW run? Is it solely a volunteer organization?
Francesca C. : Yes, that's right
Francesca C. : It's all volunteers: The Board convenes any number of committees: Dev/Mem, Wiki, Journal, Webmasters, Election, Open Doors, Vidding History, etc etc
Francesca C. : Each committee has a chair; the chairs form committees and run meetings, set milestones, etc.
Francesca C. : People also are incredibly generous with us in terms of time--people who can't formally volunteer
Francesca C. : still do work for us: make graphics, design a site, help with some code or css. Fandom is an incredibly talented place.
Circumlocutor: Now, how did the OTW come about? Was there any kind of impetus for the organization? It seems like fandom has been around for quite a while, but we've never had an initiative quite like this, how did it start?
Francesca C. : Well, 2007 was a difficult year for fandom. Livejournal was banning communities: you might remember an event called Strikethrough.
Francesca C. : http://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough
Circumlocutor: Yes. Bad times were had by all.
Francesca C. : And then there was Fanlib, which was a company run by a bunch of men, and which had terms of service that many summarized as: you take all the risks, you give us all the money. The other thing about Fanlib was that they ran the danger of raising fandom's profile even further--by creating a for-profit company--but without any particular commitment to fannish culture or ideas.
Francesca C. : So you say, we've never had an initiative like this, but in a way, we have: the people who started OTW, both the board and the committees, were drawn overwhelmingly from people in fandom who build archives, ran challenges, through conventions, moderated lists, etc. etc.
Francesca C. : This group--and we're talking about a hundred people who are full time volunteers--
Circumlocutor: To clarify for our audience, Fanlib was company that solicited fan authors to host their material on the Fanlib website in order to profit from them, while offering no legal protection for that material.
Circumlocutor: Sorry, please continue. I just wanted to make that clear, since some of my audience isn't as versed in fandom current events as we are.
Francesca C. : That's right; http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlib
Francesca C. : That group decided that it would not let Fanlib and the like be "the front door" of fandom to outsiders. We decided that we could put up our own front door.
Francesca C. : Fandom in many ways has anticipated large-scale economic and technological developments; lots of people are interested in fandom right now. But we didn't like the people who had decided to speak for us: this is why it's so important that everyone in OTW has been in fandom and is committed to fandom.
Circumlocutor: Has the geneal response from fandom to this initiative been all positive?
Francesca C. : Yes, I think its been very positive!
Francesca C. : We've held two membership/donation drives, which did well, and I think people are really waiting for the Archive to open. We've also been able to help fans who have been approached by the press, or fans who are worried about legal repercussions and C&D letters. We've been a good source of information and I think most fans see us as a resource.
Circumlocutor: As you mentioned earlier, the OTW has several side projects that you are working on now. Do you have any goals for the future, and new projects that are still in the works?
Francesca C. :
Oh, yeah: I mean, as I said, the fanfiction Archive is still the first priority, and when we open, there'll be a large-scale outreach encouraging people to back up their fanfiction and fanfiction archives, in case of crashes or TOSings. I would love us to get a vidding archive off the ground. I've been also working on an oral history of some of the first vidders: vidders who worked in the 1970s and 1980s. The Open Doors project is currently negotating with a library to hopefully co-host a zine archive. There's lots of things still to do!
Circumlocutor: Well, that was the last planned question I have for you, but I'd like to open up the floor for you here, if there is anything you think we didn't discuss in enough depth, or there was anything you wanted to talk about that we didn't touch on earlier.
Francesca C. : Well, I think that at least one of the things worth mentioning here is gender. We have some guys in the OTW, and there are guys in fandom for sure, but I think actually that the OTW is a remarkable project to the extent to which it's being run by women, even in the technological, systems, and coding areas. Fandom has always been a place where technological women have thrived, and OTW wears its geek colors proudly! We had a Python vs. Ruby deathmatch early on, when we were trying to decide what to build the archive in, and our coders are overwhelmingly female. I think that's important and awesome.
Circumlocutor: I agree, it is also true of quite a few corners of fandom, that fandom has a unique demographic of women involved in what traditionally used to be a male-dominated arena.
Francesca C. : Yes, exactly: not just writers, but site designers, coders, vidders, etc.
Francesca C. : I told Henry Jenkins, increasingly my shorthand for fandom is, "It's the network, stupid." Our anarchy and diversity is great, but fandom also provides a network of
Francesca C. : tools, education, and support
Francesca C. : as well as boundless enthusiasm and squee
Francesca C. : that I think is really important for women.
Circumlocutor: It is a fabulous environment to acquire new skills, and to practice old ones. That is one of the most important parts of fandom, in my opinion. What do you think, for you, is the most important part of fandom? What draws to keep coming back, to work so hard in a volunteer capacity for the OTW?
Francesca C. : Yes, exactly!
Francesca C. : It's funny, because I think a lot of people get involved in fandom to give something back. I mean, you can buy a zine or read a story online and never be part of fandom, but I think most people get drawn in because they love the art and the culture and want to give back. So they send feedback, or they write a story to give back for all the great stories they read. This is just a different form of giving back, I think.
Francesca C. : Also--I'm tired of seeing archives go down! *g*
Circumlocutor: Well, if that is all you wanted to say, I'd just like to thank you again, and please thank the rest of the OTW BoD on my behalf, for doing this interview. I had a lovely time talking to you, and I think that what you've said will be really enlightening for my audience. Thanks!
Francesca C. : Thank you and I totally will tell them!