The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization run by and for fans to provide access to and preserve the history of fanworks and fan cultures.

  • OTW Fannews: Awesome creations

    By Claudia Rebaza on Friday, 24 May, 2013
    Tags: Anime and Manga, News of Note, Audio Fanworks, Twitter, Women in Technology, Television, Fan Videos

    Mother Jones wrote about Jennie Lamere, who recently won the "best in show" award at the national TVnext Hack event by helping fans avoid spoilers on Twitter. She did it by writing "Twivo, a new program that allows Twitter users to censor their feeds from mentioning a certain TV show (and its characters) for a set time period." She was the only solo woman participating. "Hackathons (which have nothing to do with illegal hacking) bring together programmers, developers, and designers, who compete to code an innovative new program in a limited amount of time." Lamere has already been approached by a company to market her creation. "She came up with the idea for Twivo the night before the competition, and it took her 10 hours and 150 lines of code to complete."

  • OTW Fannews: Collective action

    By Claudia Rebaza on Wednesday, 22 May, 2013
    Tags: Activism, Anime and Manga, DMCA, News of Note, Intellectual Property, Takedowns, Academia, Entertainment Industries

    Fans and the general public are becoming less tolerant of corporate overreaches in copyright claims. A crackdown on Etsy vendors marketing Firefly-related hats caused sufficient outrage that one outlet selling the licensed hats decided to donate its profits to a Firefly charity. Yet as The Mary Sue pointed out, at least part of the anger was because now that "Fox has actually decided to license merchandise based on the ten year old television series" they're "taking shots at the smaller, unlicensed retailers that have been serving the market niche they’ve been ignoring."

  • Volunteer Recruiting: Testing Volunteers & Web Developer Staff

    By Curtis Jefferson on Monday, 20 May, 2013
    Tags: Accessibility, Design, & Technology, Volunteering, Volunteers & Recruiting, Webmasters Committee

    We would like to thank everyone who responded to our previous call for Support Staff. The chairs are reviewing applications and should be contacting people within the next two weeks.

    Today, we're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

    • Testing Volunteer - Closes May 27th
    • Web Developer Staff - Closes May 27th

    We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

    All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist volunteers@transformativeworks.org in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

    Note: We are continuing to work on a set of Volunteering Frequently Asked Questions that we hope to have posted within the next few weeks. If you have any questions about volunteering for the OTW, please let us know.

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