OTW Elections! Now with less confusion!

[bookshop]

First,

OTW, or, I am exhausted. <-- if you only read one link about the OTW election, make it this one.

_____

If you're an OTW member, I believe you need to vote in this election. The org has gone through a lot of recent growing pains, and we have the opportunity to take it forward in a really positiive, progressive direction. Or, as outgoing

Comments

[ebilgatoloco]

Excuse me, but what does OTW stand for?

[bookshop]

the Organization for Transformative Works, which is a fandom non-profit that advocates for fandom and has multiple fanprojects going--mainly Fanlore and AO3.

:) It is awesome and you should be a member :D

[bookshop]

oh, and for the sake of giving the other projects equal air time, their other projects are all listed here! I am really fond of the Open Doors project, which is this thing where they save old-school fandom projects like zine archives from being lost in time. It's so cool. They are so cool. <3

[imaginarycircus]

This was incredibly helpful. Thank you. I've been really confused about all the upset and so many of my flisters are stressed out volunteers that I haven't really wanted to bother them to ask them to explain everything to me.

p.s. I linked to this post. <3

[bookshop]

oh! I'm so glad. I was seriously so confused when i started out, and I had so much trouble reading between all the subtext and getting concrete information that I really wanted to make this post to cut through all the subtext and sidestepping. I'm really glad it was useful.

[imaginarycircus]

I'm still a little uncertain about which way to vote, but I feel much more clear about the issues now and can meditate on things a little better. I think I'm pretty much leaning the same way you are after reading Renay's post and the comments there.

[bookshop]

I should also say that when I talked to internal staff/volunteers, I pressed them for concrete reasons for their opinions and not just internal org gossip, because I started out, as someone who has been accused of having too much power, being really wary of that argument. It took a lot of reading and thinking and listening to come to the conclusions in this post. I started out really wanting to vote for her, but once I had a better understanding of the organizational issues, I was able to read all of the candidate statements more critically.

[jiggery_pokery]

Not an OTW member, so my opinion here is uninformed, but I get the impression that this must have been a really conflicting, troubling post for you to have to make. :-( Thank you for the mental balancing act you must have done in order to make it.

[cobecat]

Hello! You don't know me and this is a really awkward way to introduce myself since I'm pretty sure you're not the right person to bring this question to, but I only just became aware of OTW and have no idea who else to contact, so here goes! I've had the opportunity to spend some time with people studying and practicing Organizational Development consulting, and from the posts that you've linked to, I'm wondering if anyone at OTW has considered looking for a consultant? Collecting, aggregating and discussing (i.e. valuing) data such as the burnout and disenfranchisement complaints referenced above is exactly what consultants do, and I've also seen them be very helpful on issues of restructuring and the kinds of "growing pains" that you discussed. Now that I know that OTW exists I'm fully in support of it, and I just thought I'd mention this option in case it could be helpful.

...also I very much admire your book reviews and your commitment to social justice in fandom.

[sesame_seed]

This post summed the situation up beautifully for those who, like me, have rarely kept track of anything OTW-related. Thanks for writing it; I respect you for it

[lian_li]

(shameless self-promotion, since you mention Chinese fandom: could I nab you for testing the AO3 translation interface for Chinese?)

[sesame_seed]

Oh, definitely! You can reach me at tenken@rocketmail.com. :))

[lian_li]

Awesome, thank you -- we'll be in touch soon! <3