Board Meeting Minutes: October 13, 2012

ORGANIZATION FOR TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING
October 13th, 2012, 00:01 UTC
PRESENT: Nikisha Sanders, Kristen Murphy, Ira Gladkova, Francesca Coppa, Naomi Novik, Franzeska Dickson.

GUESTS: FishieMishie, Alison Watson, Lady Oscar.

ABSENT: Julia Beck (on hiatus), Jenny Scott-Thompson, Eylul Dogruel, Andrea Horbinski.
DECISIONS TAKEN SINCE THE LAST MEETING

1. Approved a proposal from DevMem for some new donor premiums for the drive.
2. Confirmed the date of the first org-wide of next term as 26th January.

OPEN SESSION

1. Approved minutes of last week.
2. Open Doors proposal for rescuing domain names of failing archives was approved.
3. Volcom are really close to reopening induction, and will announce to chairs as soon as it is ready.
4. The October membership drive starts tomorrow.
5. The new search and filters for the AO3 are being deployed to the test server tomorrow.
6. Grants committee is getting going again after a pause, and Tara has done great work chairing it.
7. All board members (old and new) introduced themselves:
   • “I’m Francesca, I’ve been on the board five years running, I’m stepping down partly because I just got two book contracts with the U of Iowa for their new series on fandom, but I want to collaborate with the board on two things: first, establishing advisory and emeritus boards. The former, to try to get more of a boost from some of our allies and the latter to make sure we do what we can to keep access to board talent and institutional memory in a better way than we’ve done. So we can ask emeritus board members questions, maybe get help for really targeted tasks, etc. I’d also like to try doing some fundraising for us among advisory board members (a group to be pulled from academia, legal/fair use, industry and fannish worlds). The second thing is that I personally have a lot of institutional memory on my hard drive from being secretary the first few years. I was asked to keep minutes but not with an eye to making them public so I have been (failing to) slowly edit them for personnel and confidential and legal matters and sending them to the new secretary (Jenny this year, whoever’s secretary next year) to put up, and I will continue to work on that.”
   • Franzeska: “My OTW background is that I started out on Content helping write the ToS, then moved to Abuse, had a brief stint on Webmasters where I mainly learned that I loathe Drupal, and have spent some time on the Tag Wrangling Committee, among other things. Fannishly, I’ve been involved in fandom online since the mid 90s. I used to be in Harry Potter and a bunch of anime fandoms. Now, I’m in more US tv fandoms, especially oldschool slash zine fandoms.”
   • Kristen: “I joined the org in 2008 and have served longest on Webmasters; I’ve also served on DevMem, Communications, and as a tag wrangler. I work in higher ed, and I’m a part-time graduate student working toward a master’s in, appropriately, higher ed. I am in mostly sci-fi and fantasy TV fandoms, and am a writer and podficcer, though I haven’t had much time for either lately.”
   • “Hi, I’m Naomi, this was my crazy idea. I’m a pro and fic writer and vidder, I’ve started & worked on many fannish projects [examples redacted so as not to link identity]. I’ve been in a billion fandoms. Right now I’m ALL THOR/LOKI ALL THE TIME except for the Harry/Draco and the OUAT and the Merlin, and peering over at Elementary and Teen Wolf. I’ve been coding and noodling at sysadmining for roughly 20 years, I’m ABD [See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_but_dissertation for an explanation] in compsci in operating systems/networking from Columbia University, and I’ve worked on a million-user service (ran the beta test, helped set up the systems at the Boston office, and coded on the back end ad delivery system) and on computer games. I built and maintained the old Automated Archive package. In the org I’ve chaired the Board and worked on AD&T.”
   • “I’ve always been sanders or sandersyager in fandom and here, and it never occurred to me to be around as anything but my last name. I’ve been in OTW since very near to the start of the very first term, and was solely on Fincom until I got suckered into running for the board so we’d have a treasurer. Since then, I’ve gotten a crash course in Tag Wrangling and Volcom, learned to do data entry for DevMem, and kickstarted the Strategic Planning committee with Jenny. I’m also co-liaising Grants with Kristen and just picked up Survey from Julia. On top of that, I’m officially a co-chair for Fincom and the org Treasurer. So, it’s all finance all the time up in here for me, except for when I’m stalking Alison to other Campfire rooms. I’ve spent the last 20 years working for, in, and with nonprofits in the US and England, and I get very geeky and boring about it. I also get geeky about Daron’s Guitar Chronicles right now as a fan.”
   • “I’m Ira, and this is finishing up my second year on Board. I got sucked into the org through tag wrangling a bit over a year before that. I was a web designer and developer for seven years before that.”
   • “I’m Jenny S-T, I try not to link fannish and legal names publicly though I’m happy to tell people privately. I’ve been in the org for 3 years, first as a coder, then on Volcom, then back to AD&T and now on Board as well as Finance and Strategic Planning. By day, I’m a project manager in a large international consultancy firm, focusing on IT systems implementation work in telecomms.”
8. All board members shared their top two goals for the year:
   • Franzi: Reorganizing how we manage AO3 development and how our coders and designers interact with our different projects. I would like to see some serious publicity for Fanlore this year to whatever degree the board can (and should) help the wiki committee with that.
   • Kristen: I would like to work on building and improving the Board’s internal documentation, training resources, etc., with an eye to sustainability (e.g., making succession smoother) and to making at least the routine parts of our work a bit easier and less time-consuming. I’d also like to continue encouraging committees to do the same. I also want to continue to support the transformativeworks.org redesign project.
   • Sanders: My number one goal is increasing board capacity with financial management and fundraising, and then expanding that to some training being made available for staff and volunteers that want it. I also want to keep supporting the Strategic Planning committee in their work of surveying and analyzing our current structure, projects, and staffing arrangements to develop a clear roadmap to making the org more sustainable.
   • Ira: One big general goal for me is making sure we examine our structure and resource allocation, to ensure that we have a sustainable structure that lets all our projects get the resources they need. As sanders said, a lot of this is supporting the Strategic Planning folks in their work. I in particular want to give more attention to Fanlore and expand our legal work. I also would love to expand our ties with like-minded nonprofits and in general adopt more nonprofit best practices.
   • Jenny: Continue with or finish last year’s code of conduct, budgeting , strategic planning and comms goals. Then do more best practice, sustainability and strategic work, to refocus us on our mission in the changed landscape since the org started.

CLOSED SESSION

1. In 2013 boardroom, we started to explain topics in progress to new board members, including meta and appointments.
2. Board members were reminded to signal-boost the drive.

The meeting was adjourned at 02:20 UTC.

Minutes approved by the board on 26th October.