More OTW Board thoughts because I am apparently obscessed
Matty and Lady Oscar, the new OTW Board members, take office tomorrow! I'm excited for news/updates.
I did some reading yesterday and came across some interesting posts.
A post about Nonprofit Management 101 by sara that had a different viewpoint on the whole issue, particularly that the Elections Committee post was unprofessional. I hadn't thought about it that way, though I still am glad they did it. How else are we the public to know what the hell is going on? There was an interesting comment by synecdochic (one of the founders of DW, who knows her shit as far as I can tell) on what she would do first as a new Board member: survey every single Org volunteer and ask some difficult questions. I really like that, and would like to see that undertaken. https://sara.dreamwidth.org/534683.html
A post at Andrea Horbinski's DW on the 2011 Board elections: http://ahorbinski.dreamwidth.org/25871.html Interesting snippits below the cut:
I believe in the OTW, plain and simple; that’s why I’ve stuck around this long, when I have at multiple points been so, so tempted to just quit and take my complaints to the critical masses outside--which, let me be clear, I believe the OTW needs to listen to and needs to learn from. I have a lot of friends out there on the critical horizon--many of whom, moreover, were once OTW volunteers themselves or who have tried their damnedest to meet the OTW or the AO3 halfway and been, frankly, almost totally stonewalled or stymied.
The critical masses that they need to listen to - like the 'new' candidates who basically all said the Board doesn't work with people in the Org very well? Or the people whose questions and outrage they didn't want to address in that chat where they reinstated Andrea herself back to the Board?
This is as good a segue as any to my other major concern based on the candidates’ statements, chats, and further posts: namely, transparency, and what the OTW needs to do to improve it. A friend of mine, who is on the AO3 coders list but not active as a volunteer, commented to me the other day that the recent flurry of Board election posts is actually the most information she’s gotten out of the OTW on the current state of itself and its projects yet. The moment she said this, I realized just how right she was: I can’t think of a more cogent summary of the OTW’s transparency problems. This, the current, state of affairs is insupportable, and unsustainable.
Transparency - Like the way they don't conduct open Board meetings or keep open Office Hours anymore, or inform people what their meeting agendas are or when they are voting on important issues or why they make the policy changes they do, and the way the meeting minutes are totally vague?
She says: Organizations need a screen of privacy--like the one I’m stepping out from behind to write this post right now--to conduct their business in an effective fashion, and the dissemination of information is not the same thing as being organizationally transparent. I can think of multiple suggestions for how to improve the OTW’s transparency; making the wiki public is nowhere near that list. Actually communicating with our members, and asking what they want--which Novik has reiterated that she sees no need for the OTW to do--would be right at the top of it, though.
I think her definition of transparency is different than much of the rest of us. And I don't think there has been any more dialog with the public about what we want from the Org than there was in 2011. I think there have been more posts by Communications about general Org business which is great (see the monthly newsletters, which are more frequent now than they had been several years ago), and Support answers all sorts of problems and complaints it gets through the feedback form, but that's not the whole answer. If you look at the biannual fundraising posts people have been asking for better financial management/transparency for a long time, and we still don't have a published budget - that's not the way to answer the public trying to have a dialog with you on what they need from you. It would be easy to post a survey on Org performance and what the public wants from it (because we know there have been sub-groups of fans with significant issues with the AO3, and thus by extension the OTW) and link to it on AO3 and in an email to all members, but that hasn't happened. I don't mean to be dismissive of the MANY things the OTW is doing right, but Andrea specifically mentioned directly asking the public what it wants and that dialog may not be any more robust than it was before she came into office. Please let me know if I'm wrong about that!
She quoted some other people throughout the post as having opinions/statements she agrees with, two of which I found interesting:
troisroyaumes: What upsets me is the total dependence on one or two individuals in the first place! From what I've gathered, this problem is systemic to the organization and not just limited to AO3. Again, I know that there are some active efforts to work on this issue and why a lot of OTW staff have been talking about sustainability, but I'd like to know that the new Board will prioritize it (as well as the other two issues I name above) for the upcoming year.
Dependence on one or two people - like having only one person handling the finances and not reinstating the financial committee when your Treasurer asks for that to be done? I know that there are several committees that have been taken from defunct to thriving (our two new Board members had a direct hand in that, for example!), but the finance committee was DELIBERATELY shut down by the Board (according to Sanders) and put into the hands of one person. The exact opposite of what she espouses above.
Troisroyaumes again: But then you realize you have even less say than before because you've traded in the right to publicly criticize [the Org] openly for a chance to make things better [by becoming a volunteer]. But the structure is not set up in a way that allows you to effect much change.
And Andrea responds to that with: I believe in the OTW, and I believe that the OTW can, should, must do much, much better. Furthermore, I believe firmly that some of the candidates, in their statements and answers to questions, have demonstrated a dangerous lack of understanding of the nature and scope of the serious problems facing the OTW today, and what the Board needs to do to address these problems in the immediate future.
From what I can tell, that - the silencing of dissenting voices within the Org, and the Board being out of touch with how off-base they are on issues - is still a big problem! And Andrea herself has shown a dangerous lack of understanding of what the Org wants and needs from her! People talk about siloing within the Org, but it sounds like the Board itself is the biggest siloed group of all.
I was totally dumbfounded to read that post because it seems to be the exact opposite of the reality of the situation! To be fair, there seems to be less of a burnout problem in the Org (that I can see from the outside), so maybe she did have a positive effect on that topic. But what I don't understand is how we got from a person who seems to be saying most of the right things to someone displaying such poor judgment and who seems to be so disconnected from what the people in her Org and the donors want and need. How???
Originally posted at http://pslasher.dreamwidth.org/62708.html. Read
comments over there.
I did some reading yesterday and came across some interesting posts.
A post about Nonprofit Management 101 by sara that had a different viewpoint on the whole issue, particularly that the Elections Committee post was unprofessional. I hadn't thought about it that way, though I still am glad they did it. How else are we the public to know what the hell is going on? There was an interesting comment by synecdochic (one of the founders of DW, who knows her shit as far as I can tell) on what she would do first as a new Board member: survey every single Org volunteer and ask some difficult questions. I really like that, and would like to see that undertaken. https://sara.dreamwidth.org/534683.html
A post at Andrea Horbinski's DW on the 2011 Board elections: http://ahorbinski.dreamwidth.org/25871.html Interesting snippits below the cut:
I believe in the OTW, plain and simple; that’s why I’ve stuck around this long, when I have at multiple points been so, so tempted to just quit and take my complaints to the critical masses outside--which, let me be clear, I believe the OTW needs to listen to and needs to learn from. I have a lot of friends out there on the critical horizon--many of whom, moreover, were once OTW volunteers themselves or who have tried their damnedest to meet the OTW or the AO3 halfway and been, frankly, almost totally stonewalled or stymied.
The critical masses that they need to listen to - like the 'new' candidates who basically all said the Board doesn't work with people in the Org very well? Or the people whose questions and outrage they didn't want to address in that chat where they reinstated Andrea herself back to the Board?
This is as good a segue as any to my other major concern based on the candidates’ statements, chats, and further posts: namely, transparency, and what the OTW needs to do to improve it. A friend of mine, who is on the AO3 coders list but not active as a volunteer, commented to me the other day that the recent flurry of Board election posts is actually the most information she’s gotten out of the OTW on the current state of itself and its projects yet. The moment she said this, I realized just how right she was: I can’t think of a more cogent summary of the OTW’s transparency problems. This, the current, state of affairs is insupportable, and unsustainable.
Transparency - Like the way they don't conduct open Board meetings or keep open Office Hours anymore, or inform people what their meeting agendas are or when they are voting on important issues or why they make the policy changes they do, and the way the meeting minutes are totally vague?
She says: Organizations need a screen of privacy--like the one I’m stepping out from behind to write this post right now--to conduct their business in an effective fashion, and the dissemination of information is not the same thing as being organizationally transparent. I can think of multiple suggestions for how to improve the OTW’s transparency; making the wiki public is nowhere near that list. Actually communicating with our members, and asking what they want--which Novik has reiterated that she sees no need for the OTW to do--would be right at the top of it, though.
I think her definition of transparency is different than much of the rest of us. And I don't think there has been any more dialog with the public about what we want from the Org than there was in 2011. I think there have been more posts by Communications about general Org business which is great (see the monthly newsletters, which are more frequent now than they had been several years ago), and Support answers all sorts of problems and complaints it gets through the feedback form, but that's not the whole answer. If you look at the biannual fundraising posts people have been asking for better financial management/transparency for a long time, and we still don't have a published budget - that's not the way to answer the public trying to have a dialog with you on what they need from you. It would be easy to post a survey on Org performance and what the public wants from it (because we know there have been sub-groups of fans with significant issues with the AO3, and thus by extension the OTW) and link to it on AO3 and in an email to all members, but that hasn't happened. I don't mean to be dismissive of the MANY things the OTW is doing right, but Andrea specifically mentioned directly asking the public what it wants and that dialog may not be any more robust than it was before she came into office. Please let me know if I'm wrong about that!
She quoted some other people throughout the post as having opinions/statements she agrees with, two of which I found interesting:
troisroyaumes: What upsets me is the total dependence on one or two individuals in the first place! From what I've gathered, this problem is systemic to the organization and not just limited to AO3. Again, I know that there are some active efforts to work on this issue and why a lot of OTW staff have been talking about sustainability, but I'd like to know that the new Board will prioritize it (as well as the other two issues I name above) for the upcoming year.
Dependence on one or two people - like having only one person handling the finances and not reinstating the financial committee when your Treasurer asks for that to be done? I know that there are several committees that have been taken from defunct to thriving (our two new Board members had a direct hand in that, for example!), but the finance committee was DELIBERATELY shut down by the Board (according to Sanders) and put into the hands of one person. The exact opposite of what she espouses above.
Troisroyaumes again: But then you realize you have even less say than before because you've traded in the right to publicly criticize [the Org] openly for a chance to make things better [by becoming a volunteer]. But the structure is not set up in a way that allows you to effect much change.
And Andrea responds to that with: I believe in the OTW, and I believe that the OTW can, should, must do much, much better. Furthermore, I believe firmly that some of the candidates, in their statements and answers to questions, have demonstrated a dangerous lack of understanding of the nature and scope of the serious problems facing the OTW today, and what the Board needs to do to address these problems in the immediate future.
From what I can tell, that - the silencing of dissenting voices within the Org, and the Board being out of touch with how off-base they are on issues - is still a big problem! And Andrea herself has shown a dangerous lack of understanding of what the Org wants and needs from her! People talk about siloing within the Org, but it sounds like the Board itself is the biggest siloed group of all.
I was totally dumbfounded to read that post because it seems to be the exact opposite of the reality of the situation! To be fair, there seems to be less of a burnout problem in the Org (that I can see from the outside), so maybe she did have a positive effect on that topic. But what I don't understand is how we got from a person who seems to be saying most of the right things to someone displaying such poor judgment and who seems to be so disconnected from what the people in her Org and the donors want and need. How???
Originally posted at http://pslasher.dreamwidth.org/62708.html. Read
comments over there.