I. ELECTIONS ARE COMING
Elections is happy to announce that this year’s Board of Directors election will be contested, with 4 declared candidates running for 2 open seats. Bios and platforms for all 4 candidates are now available at the Elections website with Q&A responses forthcoming. Bios and platforms have been translated by Translation into 21 languages, while news posts regarding the election are being translated into 26 languages. The election will take place August 13th – 16th, and anyone who became an OTW member by June 30th is eligible to vote! To ensure that everyone interested in voting is eligible to do so, Development & Membership ran a mini membership drive from June 24th – 27th advertising the election and the requirement to become a member in order to vote.
II. AT THE AO3
Systems is pleased to announce that they have installed two new archive servers, which bring capacity and performance improvements to AO3! Accessibility, Design and Technology posted about the growing traffic at the site and how it compared to growth in prior years. (Spoiler alert: It’s grown a lot.)
Meanwhile, with help from Communications and Translation, Open Doors announced the imports of Weaver of Dreams, Land of Dreams, and Sarek and Amanda Archive.
In May, Tag Wrangling handled more than 440,000 tags across more than 44,000 fandoms — at a rate of nearly a thousand tags per active wrangler! At the time of this writing, so far in June, Policy & Abuse had received approximately 1500 tickets, while Support was on track to receive around 1300, on par with their monthly average for the last three months.
III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
Fanlore held a very fun and successful Bingo Challenge — thank you to everyone who took part! They are now well underway with planning and editing pages for our next themed month, Fandom in Colour, which will be advertised on their social media channels in July. They also published two more Meet the Team features with Social Media & Outreach staffer Masha and Gardener Auntags.
The Board of Directors will be holding another public meeting on July 11th at 16:00 UTC (what time is that for me?) to discuss their prospective new officer roles — check Twitter closer to the time for the link to join!
IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
From 24 May to 24 June, Volunteers & Recruiting received 99 new requests, and completed 90, leaving us with 27 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
As of 24 June 2021, the OTW has 1,007 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New Committee Chairs: Kate Sanders (Strategic Planning) and Ranowa (Policy & Abuse)
New Committee Staff: Allegra, Shyamala Parthasarathy (both Communications), and 1 TWC staffer
Departing Committee Staff: 1 Elections staffer; BooksAreLife and tarael2020 (both Policy & Abuse); 1 Support Staffer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: crimsonherbarium, Emyn Nefydd, Stay and 6 other volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Cageot, Ellisa_SS, Ely_Baby, tezzin and 3 other volunteers
For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.