ira_gladkova

Hey all, sorry for suddenly going quiet -- work and life suddenly exploded a little. I hope to pick back up over the next week or so. Cheers!

(Apologies about the lack of Minutes Monday this week -- there were no new minutes to discuss, but lots of interesting stuff next week!)

Recently some tag wranglers were talking publicly about a letter the staff had sent to them about negativity and criticism. Separately but contemporaneously, one of my closest friends, seventhe posted about her ambivalence towards the OTW.

So! Let's talk about that.

Criticizing the OTW, Inside and Out

First up, I hope it's clear from clear from my history that I have no problem with criticizing the OTW.

Here's the thing. I think criticism is healthy. I think it's necessary. Feeling like you're in a place where you can't even criticize your experience? Where it feels like your experience is being erased? That's terrible. That's about the worst working environment possible. Leaving people in a place where they feel they can't criticize or recount negative experiences is the worst thing the OTW can do to itself and others.

But many of us have seen that there are a lot of issues around criticism of the OTW. I think this comes back to the basic tension inherent in the OTW: fannish project vs. nonprofit organization.

Fandom in general has a complex relationship with criticism: hesitance to criticize labours of love; cultures centered around improvement and constructive criticism; cultures centered around positivity and protection from crit; harshing people's buzz; different attitudes towards critical analysis of canon and fan works; pleas for honest reviews.

On the nonprofit org side is an expectation of professionalism and of a culture of service. This includes being open to and prepared to deal with criticism, up to and including anger and undiluted negativity, all in the name of improving something in service of the mission. However, not even this is without complexity: nonprofit orgs are often run in part or entirely by volunteers, or have limited resources in other ways. This impacts the ability to deal with criticism efficiently.

The OTW lands in the morass in between.

The path to sustainability lies on the nonprofit end of the scale — we cannot forget our fannish cultural roots, but to persist in our mission, we must adopt structures and practices suitable to nonprofit organizations. And here is where criticism comes in:

If you expect us to act like a nonprofit org, you have to treat us as a nonprofit org.

So here are some things I think are useful to keep in mind vis-à-vis criticizing the OTW to make criticism maximally effective:

• Be aware of the space and audience when you criticize.
  
  ( Read more... )
  
  


• Keep in mind our limited resources.
  
  ( Read more... )

So I think criticism is great, but I want it to work. I want criticism to be effective and to lead to change. How you criticize and why is your business, but if your goal is the same as mine, then I think these points are essential to keep in mind.

---

Now then, about a particular recent incident centered around criticism.

The Letter to Tag Wranglers

( The full text of the letter, plus commentary )

So I can understand where the frustration and negative interpretation comes from. But I continue to think that the key lies in treating the OTW as, well, an organization.

---

At this point, I must address a likely concern: how can I expect people to treat the OTW professionally when the OTW doesn't behave professionally?

To that I say: It's symbiotic. We need both sides of that equation to make it work. We are working hard on being more professional, and it will help us immensely to achieve that goal if people treat us as such. It's a good faith thing, I know — but for all that I love and approve of criticism, I think good faith from both sides is absolutely essential to the enterprise.

Given this, there's understandable difficulty in treating the org like a nonprofit with a hierarchy and proper channels of communication. For one, our hierarchy is poorly-understood both within the org and inside it: this is something we're actively working on. On the flip side, however, points of contact are not hard to find for anyone who goes looking for them. It's all about reciprocity: our nascent hierarchy can only be fully effective if people respect it and behave as if it is real.

This includes waiting while the machinery grinds along (or pitching in to push further up the chain) — and in the reciprocal direction, it involves communication and updates on the status of the grind. Hierarchy must be respected reciprocally. This is where the org is struggling, and I am going to be honest here. I keep saying it has to be symbiotic, and I mean it. We need all the help we can get: please help us.

So. People have criticism and negative feelings, not necessarily at the same time but not mutually exclusive either. It's up to each individual what they do with those, but if the goal is to help the OTW change for the better, I hope this gives a little insight into how we work and what the most effective ways to talk to us are.

I do feel that the OTW has at least one good thing going for it in this context: there are a ton of ways and venues to reach us, and overall there's much more availability of direct and personal connection with our personnel. That's pretty awesome — but it's also something that has to be treated carefully. That sense of personal connection can make it a lot easier to interact with us — the org as a whole or individual personnel — as if we're only fellow fans on a fannish project, rather than part of a nonprofit organization. We're both, and negotiating that line continues to be tricky.

As always, thank you all for your thoughts! I hope this helps.

(I also wanted to talk a bit about ambivalence towards the OTW, but this post is long enough already. So chucking that in the pile of to-do tl;dr.)

Heyyy so there was a pretty big announcement: the OTW Board will be expanded to 9 people and the bylaws amended. In case it is not immediately obvious from the length: yes, I had my hands all over this post, with a base outline provided by excellent Elections Officer jennyst and revisions and input from Board, the Elections Workgroup, and Comms. (I also did the graphics; it was a nightmare.)

So there's a lot going on here. I was Elections Officer last term, so I have a pretty keen interest in elections goings-on. I never really posted about my election works much: near the start of elections, I went on leave for a family illness, during elections it was necessary for me to remain neutral (which was simplest by staying quiet), and afterwards, I was, frankly, too exhausted and demoralized. Until recently, I was also too sick. Basically I have a backlog of elections feels thoughts.

The things I want to cover include:

• What are you thinking with this adding seats business?


• How did we get into this mess with the seats?


• What happened last year?


• How will elections work this year?

But then I realized this would be very tl;dr. I do know I have a problem. So I'm saving the last three items for later; today is going to be all about:

Adding Board Seats, Burnout, and Taking Care of Our People

Just to be clear from the start, the idea of adding Board seats does not spring solely from a need to fix the elections issue. (This is another reason I want to cover the more electiony stuff separately: it is a separate issue.) As the OTW news post linked above demonstrates, it certainly helps. But the Board does honestly struggle with workload in ways that would be ameliorated by being able to spread the work around a little. Our committees are growing; the number of committees is growing; the number, reach, and scope of our projects are growing — and that's all awesome, but it's also simply too much for seven people to cover.

However! Not all of the workload stems from this. A large part of Board's problem is that we are currently still too involved in micromanagement and/or management on a level that causes conflicts of interest. As an example, when some kind of staffing or work gap appears (say, due to a sudden retirement), we often feel like we have to be the ones to step up, either first or as backup. And in the case of filling chair positions, I think it also creates conflicts of interest. We do not do this to hog positions or work, but because we often feel like there is no one else — we are some of the most experienced people in the org with a wide range of skills. But this also gives short shrift to everyone else in the org and robs people of opportunities to grow.

There's not really a simple answer like "well Board should just stop filling these gaps themselves". A lot of the time these positions are pretty key and there is work that needs to be done urgently: we don't have time to wait for someone to train up or to recruit someone. The real issue here is a lack of personnel management and succession planning, not just for chairs — something we've been keenly aware of this year — but for key positions at every level. If we were consistently training people up and had a framework in place whereby anyone doing load-bearing work had an understudy, we wouldn't be having this problem. But one huge obstacle is that the org is collectively often too busy doing its project-based work to also do its people-based work ^{(ETA 01)}: we're too busy building our projects to also build the builders. And I think that's a real loss and a true tragedy in terms of the org culture. Given the way things are, I'm not sure there is a solution besides just slowing down on projects for a while in order to build up our people. That's a hard thing to accept, both for us and, I think, for our audience: why should the users and beneficiaries of our various projects have to wait because we can't manage to keep our house in order? However, I am, have been, and am increasingly of the opinion that this is what we will have to do.

[ETA 01]: After reading bookshop's comment, I think this (from my response to her) would be a more precise and accurate statement: The org is collectively more concerned with producing popular and/or acceptable output (often in the form of projects) than with doing the personnel support and management necessary to make that work happen in a healthy way. Apologies for the suboptimal initial wording! [/ETA]

And it's not fair. I know it's not fair. It's not fair to our staff and volunteers, who do this work because they love it and believe in it. It's not fair to our audience, who have to wait on things that matter to them. It's not fair because in the end, we collectively screwed up and now everyone, whether part of the problem or not, has to pay for it. We made a collection of mistakes that put us in this position. There is no one person or group of people to blame; the issue is too endemic.

But the status quo, letting it continue— I think that would be even more unfair. It undermines our work. It undermines our people. People leave the org feeling sick and used. Even if people simply leave feeling tired and nothing more, their legacy is tarnished by our poor ability to preserve it: the work they left suffers from the lack of structure, because the people left to continue it don't have enough support, in one way or another, to do the work proud.

Our Volunteers & Recruiting committee does not have the resources right now to handle a huge influx of people at any level, from volunteers to high-up staff, though I know they are working their asses off to strengthen the personnel management aspects of the org (read renay's posts; she is Volcom chair and does mind-boggling amounts of work). But even if Volcom could handle an influx, the rest of the org, for the most part, still can't: almost everyone is already overwhelmed by project-based work, way too much to do the mentoring and nurturing necessary to handle incoming volunteers. This is one huge reason behind the endemic burnout: there's no one there to catch you.

We cannot afford to keep growing our projects without growing our people.

So what does this have to do with increasing the number of Board seats? I mean, reducing Board workload is nice, but — given everything else — so what?

I think an increase in Board seats has to be part and parcel of a movement to decrease Board micromanagement and increase Board's role in (temporarily) slowing down project growth while focusing instead of growing the core of the org: its people. Resource allocation is our call and our calling. And we need more resources in our people. Yesterday. We need Board members who can focus solely on this tremendous task, on shaping us into a more reasonable, professional space. With the number of directors we have now, we simply cannot do that.

Increasing the number of seats does not come without a cost. It'll be harder for us to meet, and all the other possible communication problems that come with any increase in number of people with their hands in the pot. If we're serious about decreasing the trend in Board members also filling other key org positions — and from Board discussions throughout the term, this is the direction we're headed — this means that whoever we draw into Board will leave behind gaps, the very problem we're already having.

But the change has to start somewhere, and I think there is no way around the need for slowdown. Slowdown would make the gaps in coverage a little less dire, as the work will perforce be less urgent. There's no way around the fact that it will still suck. If there is a pain-free solution to this problem, I cannot think of it. The pain is already here. It already hurts. If we do this, it will at least be pain that's paid towards something other than perpetuating the same system we already have.

The bottom line, for me, is this: We need this increase because we are failing our people right now. Board needs these resources so that we, in turn, can give the rest of the org the resources it needs.

( the tl;dr version )

I am far from caught up yet! But I figured I could do an update on 2012 goals even without that, and then, if necessary, do another update once I'm caught up. But first!

Types and Visibility of Board Work

There's been a lot of talk in the wake of jennyst's post about the frustration of Board member absenteeism. It was a good post and a good thing to be open about, so please do read it. I also want to draw attention to a clarification she made later:

Obviously, it's a problem if someone can hardly ever attend, misses a lot of meetings in a row, etc. But if someone misses one meeting, reads the transcript shortly afterwards, participates in discussion via email and votes via email a few days afterwards, it's not a big deal. So long as people are still doing the work, still contactable, still have time for discussion, it can work. The problems come when someone is too busy to do the work. Attendance figures are a symptom, not the root cause and not the whole story. Statutory holidays and illness can easily mean missing 20% of meetings or more. So yes, I was frustrated by the difficulties in getting quora for votes and particular discussions, and I still am. But that's more about responses to emails and participation in discussions than just numbers of meetings.

This is true! And I wanted to kind of break that down a bit further and talk about the ways Board members participate and do their work. I definitely do not want to minimize jennyst's frustration or concerns, because those are on-point and valid (and I am assuredly included there). However, from what I've seen it looks like it's not very clear what Board does (okay, that's old news), and where, and how. I think breaking that down a little bit may help everyone understand both where jennyst is coming from — though she generally does an excellent job communicating that herself, but I'm hoping a multiplicity of viewpoints can help — and how the Board functions overall.

(Quick disclaimer: This is my interpretation of our roles and work. I'm only an authority in this insofar as I happen to be one of the seven people doing this. Other Board members may have different ways in which they think about our work!)

There are three major things we all currently do as Board members: we hold meetings to talk to each other and make decisions, we hold discussions and make decisions over email, and we liaise with committees/committee chairs and workgroups/leads. Various Board members also perform other tasks specific to their skills and duties: some of these are the positions mandated in our bylaws (chair, secretary, treasurer), and some are less well defined but involve networking, seeking out opportunities to connect with other causes, etc. We also give each other assignments as a product of email or meeting decisions, such as putting together writeboards or emails about something we want to discuss or propose, or contacting person A about topic X, or hosting org-wide meetings. However, the core of our work involves coming together with each other and with people inside the org to make plans and decisions about the overall direction of the org.

So here's how it shakes out: ( break it down! )


But okay, enough explication. What got done during my alleged quiet presence earlier this year?

Goals Update!

As always: While I do serve on the Board, this doesn't mean I have a magic wand or anything — the OTW's very strength is that it's the work of many people with many different skills, backgrounds, and opinions, so no one should have a magic wand and that's good. A lot of work is done by people who are not me, and I'll do my best to acknowledge that and give credit. Corrections, questions, and updates welcome!

This time, also an additional caveat: I'm definitely not caught up, so this is mostly meant to cover in broad strokes my period of radio silence before about mid-May. I may be missing things still — scratch that, I definitely am — but I'm operating on the principle that a partial update is better than no update.

See the master post of 2012 OTW Goals

See my general approach to being on Board here!



[Caption: A small cheerfully-yellow booklet depicts, in an ink sketch, a house massively on fire. Along the top, handwritten imperfect block lettering reads "SHIT'S FUCKED". Along the bottom, "a positivity guide" in peppy cursive.]

Principles Update

This is of necessity pretty general this time around, but in the future I hope to focus on specific developments as they go down.

( let's go! )

General Goals Update

This is, unfortunately, the section I feel least able to comment on right now until I've taken better stock: this is the middle ground between overall principles (which I feel a pretty good grasp on in terms of where we are/overall progress) and specific action items (which are small enough to easily catch up and comment on) where I feel I could too easily miss or mischaracterize something. So I'm going to work on checking in with my projects and people and see if I can put a good focus on this soon. Apologies!

Concrete Goals and Action Items

The fun bit! I'm only pulling out goals/items where I have relevant comments/updates here.

( 8 items below! )

So that's updates for now. Next time, I hope to be ready to look at adding new goals and possibly revising old ones. We'll see!

Thanks for listening, and as always, questions and feedback welcome and I will try to respond =)

I know I've been really quiet here — I've been dealing with a bunch of medical issues for all of 2012 so far, and between that and my org work I, well, haven't had the energy to come here and talk about said org work like I very much want to.

However! GUESS WHAT TIME IT IS




That's right, it's time for the spring Membership Drive! Please show your support for the OTW in whatever way you can: spread the word about the drive and the OTW and our awesome projects, donate money, donate time. Add to the wealth of history on Fanlore, preserve your works on the Archive of Our Own and tell your friends; take part in April Showers. Take a look at our fascinating journal of Transformative Works and Cultures; write for its sister Symposium Blog. Revel in the Fair Use vids test suite, nerd out on the OTW's work with EFF on the petition to the Copyright Office to renew the DMCA exception for vidders and other awesome legal advocacy work. Talk us up at the next con.

Whatever way you do it, it's fandom, it's fan work, it's fanwork.

This will never cease to amaze me: the OTW is a fanwork. It is by fans, for fans. We're growing, we're changing, we're learning. We want to preserve fandom's past and safeguard its future, and we want you to be a part of our future.

Please spread the word! Any and all help is great =D

Voting opened a little over an hour ago, so you have just under two days to vote! Polls close noon UTC 18 Nov (check the time in your area). You can find the ballot here, review the candidate profiles here, and read up on how voting works here! If you have any questions or haven't received any voting emails yet, please use this contact form.

There are also two more posts of interest:

2011 OTW Elections Voting - The People!
You've seen how the voting process works, now take a look at who makes it work, and what behind-the-scenes work goes on during elections and voting to make it all happen.

OTW Elections – What the Bylaws Mean for the Coming Term
This is a heads-up about what the current four-seat election and the bylaws mean for the coming term. This is something I hope to discuss more soon, but as it's a task for the new Board, I'd like to wait on that until after elections are over =)

Thanks for your participation this election season, everyone!

dance dance internets at home! and laptop hopefully fixed soon!

I mentioned a little while ago that I'd like to put together sort of "candidate profiles" as a resource for voters, where you can see all of a candidate's responses to all questions together, then the same for the next candidate, etc. I've been pretty flattened since then, but as today was a holiday in my area/at my job, I took the time off to put that together, finally!

general_jinjur/allisonmorris (names linked w/ permission) has lent her assistance in getting those put up on the Elections site, and now we have a profile of each candidate linked from their candidate statement.

Take a look on the Candidates page. Or, for those inclined to less clicking:

• Julia Beck
• Naomi Novik
• Lucy Pearson*
• Betsy Rosenblatt
• Nikisha Sanders
• Jenny Scott-Thompson

All together, the candidates produced over 60,000 words worth of responses over the course of a bit over a week — this is an extraordinary amount of effort and I want to thank all the candidates again for their effort!

*Lucy Pearson has withdrawn her candidacy; while I am saddened to lose her as a candidate, I am also deeply glad for her to have a chance to take care of herself and her needs. I'm leaving the link to her profile up, as her participation in this election has been of great value.

Up next I'm hoping to have up soon a post explaining the IRV process used to tally votes, this time with ~pictures!~. I know the system can be a confusing and can leave people a little lost on how best to distribute their vote to get what they want out of it, so I'm hoping that will help! This was a great idea of general_jinjur/allisonmorris's that she has also done awesome work on; you can see her post here for a preview. We'll have even more pictures/input from other talented and generous contributors to the project. Truly there will not that much work for me to do; I'm just happy that such a thing will exist, and grateful to everyone helping to make it happen ♥

So I made this big post and then kind of disappeared. I'm very sorry — it's been an extremely difficult year for me in terms of illness and personal circumstance, and in the end I had to take leave for most of the autumn due to an illness in the family. I'm currently trying to return to OTW duties, and I hope with my return to use this space as I had intended to.

Speaking of which! This year, I'm elections officer; while I was on leave, fellow Board member general_jinjur/allisonmorris (names linked w/ permission) kindly performed the election duties in my stead — thank you! She continues to help me by working on the transcripts and preparing the posts and generally being all calm and competent while I run around like a chicken on fire trying to manage chats and questions and wrangle everyone. Which is actually great, because we have an awesome level of participation this year! Six great candidates, a TON of questions, many people attending chats — I love it.

Something I'd like to do, though: I've been hearing a few people say that it can be difficult to find all the various answers/statements candidates gave, either fishing through the transcript while waiting for the concise version to go up, or just poking around the several pages where the statements/answers are contained trying to find what Candidate X said on Issue C.

What I want to do, then, is actually compile a resource that's sorted by candidate rather than by question, so you have Candidate X followed by all their responses to all questions, then the same for Candidate Y, etc. I'm still trying to figure out if there is/where there would be an appropriate place to put such a thing on the elections site. If nothing else I will just post it here, unofficially, since all the same information would already/still be available officially on the site, just in different places.

And there's my little toe-dip back in here. I still have a lot of catching up to do from my leave, but if I have the spoons for it, I hope to do an elections post here soon with some thoughts!