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Friday, July 7th, 2023
| Time | Event |
| 2:21p | June 2023 Newsletter, Volume 179
I. BOARD OF DIRECTORS UPDATEBoard held a public meeting on 2 July; theyve heard the feedback about needing to improve for the next meeting, and they are exploring options. Thanks to everyone who offered up ideas for making Board meetings run better in the future - they fully intend to make changes for next time and beyond. During the meeting, they shared updates on diversity, including their recent post, and they also shared an update to our Code of Conduct to include caste as a protected class. Board hopes to have more updates, including additional progress in their search for a DEI consultant, by its next meeting. As part of the diversity consultant process, Board asked their Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DCRO) to help with requirements gathering and to survey volunteers for high-priority topics. The DCRO has finished this feedback period and are hoping to begin entering negotiations with specific consultants by September; theyll be reaching out to consultants early in July. II. AT THE AO3Open Doors announced the import of Staykas Saint Seiya Archive, an archive dedicated to fanworks inspired by the manga Saint Seiya, and Smoochies, a multi-fandom fanfiction and fanart archive. Meanwhile, Support was on track to receive 1,600 tickets again in June at the time of this writing. Accessibility, Design & Technology has been working with Policy & Abuse, Support, and the wonderful team at the OTWs spam detection service to stay on top of some gnarly spam issues. Finally, Tag Wrangling took some actions this month to update several canonical freeform tags related to the alpha/beta/omega-verse trope across a number of fandoms in order to remove an acronym that they learned was also an offensive slur. It would like to thank the volunteers and users who took the time to alert the committee to this issue. In May, wranglers handled more than 420,000 tags across more than 58,200 fandomsmore than 950 tags per wrangler! III. FANLORE OUTREACHFanlore Bingo was a big success this year with 37 participants who completed at least one bingo and 26 who got a total blackout! Fanlores graphic designers created some lovely fruit and vegetable themed graphics while other volunteers pitched in to award badges. Fanlore also geared up for its next themed month, Fandom in Color, running throughout Julyso be sure to follow its social media (Twitter and Tumblr) for some awesome page spotlights! IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTWDevelopment & Memberships table at Euro-Con in Sweden was a huge success! Its volunteers are continuing to work on updating their convention outreach materials and have been applying to table at more conventions this year. Its hard to believe that its been three years since the last one, but Legal is preparing its submission to the U.S. Copyright Office seeking renewal of the legal exemption that allows makers of vids and fan edits the ability to use material from DVDs, Blu-Rays, and streams. Legal also responded to a number of user queries about intellectual property law and proposed U.S. legislation and worked with a few other committees to write a post responding to user questions regarding AO3s policies regarding, among other things, CSEM response and data retention. The committee is also thrilled to extend a huge welcome to two new interns. Systems kept busy in June auditing the OS versions of its systems in preparation for upgrades to the recently released version of Debian. Communications has been reviewing its news distribution practices to social media outlets which affects both our future staffing and training plans. We have dropped manual posting to two little-used accountsLiveJournal and Dreamwidthin favor of automated feeds available at those sites. You can find out where to receive OTW News by visiting our Where to Find Us page on our website. V. GOVERNANCEElection season is upon us! The candidates platforms and bios are on Elections website. (Sadly, one candidate has withdrawnwe wish them the best!) The election will take place August 11 14, and Development & Membership worked with Elections to hold a mini-drive at the end of June to register voters. Looking ahead, Finance has been focused on prepping for the 2022 audit by making year end adjustments, reconciling accounts, and updating audit schedules, and Strategic Planning has been reviewing and incorporating final suggestions to the upcoming 2023-2026 Strategic Plan in preparation to post the complete version. VI. ITS ALL ABOUT THE PEEPSFrom 25 May to 24 June, Volunteers & Recruiting received 110 new requests, and completed 107, leaving us with 40 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of 24 June 2023, the OTW has 934 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below. New Communications Volunteers: Claudia Rebaza (Media Outreach Lead), 1 Site Moderator, and 2 Chair Assistants Departing Directors: Heather McGuire 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. |
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