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#OTWRevolution
So I'm offline for an afternoon, and all hell breaks loose. Wow.
The short version is that the entire OTW Board of Directors resigned today, effective mid-December. The long version is very long, covering years of cronyism and unprofessional behavior by the Board, and I am neither qualified nor able to tell the whole thing. If anyone has a link to a good summary, feel free to share? Anyway, the precipitating event was the decision by the Board of Directors to appoint an outgoing Board member to a different empty seat, even though she came in last in the most recent election. Note that the foregoing is an official communication from the OTW Elections Committee, so how the Board thought they were going to get away with such a blatant abuse of power is beyond me. The tone of their letter strikes me as a classic fandom flounce rather than a serious attempt to make restitution for a mistake, but even if they resigned for the wrong reasons, it's what had to happen, and I'm glad they went quickly.
The last time I wrote about the OTW, back in November 2010, I expressed hope that the very public discussions of the organization's problems would lead to good internal conversations and real change. I think it's pretty safe to say that it didn't happen then. So the golden opportunity is NOW. Both the incoming board and the OTW as a whole need to take a long, hard look at their processes, their communications, and their culture. It's long past time that this organization stop thinking of themselves as a fandom project and start running like a professional non-profit organization. The OTW is not just a place to post fic -- they do important work in academia and defending the legal rights of fans to create and post fanwork. We need them, and I hope they survive. But if that's going to happen, serious changes need to happen. Installing a new board is, I believe, an important and necessary step, but it's not the end of the process. It's the beginning.
The short version is that the entire OTW Board of Directors resigned today, effective mid-December. The long version is very long, covering years of cronyism and unprofessional behavior by the Board, and I am neither qualified nor able to tell the whole thing. If anyone has a link to a good summary, feel free to share? Anyway, the precipitating event was the decision by the Board of Directors to appoint an outgoing Board member to a different empty seat, even though she came in last in the most recent election. Note that the foregoing is an official communication from the OTW Elections Committee, so how the Board thought they were going to get away with such a blatant abuse of power is beyond me. The tone of their letter strikes me as a classic fandom flounce rather than a serious attempt to make restitution for a mistake, but even if they resigned for the wrong reasons, it's what had to happen, and I'm glad they went quickly.
The last time I wrote about the OTW, back in November 2010, I expressed hope that the very public discussions of the organization's problems would lead to good internal conversations and real change. I think it's pretty safe to say that it didn't happen then. So the golden opportunity is NOW. Both the incoming board and the OTW as a whole need to take a long, hard look at their processes, their communications, and their culture. It's long past time that this organization stop thinking of themselves as a fandom project and start running like a professional non-profit organization. The OTW is not just a place to post fic -- they do important work in academia and defending the legal rights of fans to create and post fanwork. We need them, and I hope they survive. But if that's going to happen, serious changes need to happen. Installing a new board is, I believe, an important and necessary step, but it's not the end of the process. It's the beginning.
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and various things posted here https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/otwrevolution such as this (http://pearwaldorf.tumblr.com/post/133759533877/the-otw-and-financial-transparency) although I cannot speak to the veracity and roundedness of any of it.
That said, my feelings about the OTW have always been "keep at arms length."
Hopefully this blowup is resolved for the better and nothing happens to threaten their nonprofit status and financial situation.
although I won't shed a tear if the whole thing comes tumbling down.no subject
I care enough about the mission and survival of the OTW that I can't quite keep the distance you do, but I certainly understand why you and many other people do.
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Sadsigh.
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Dragging all this stuff out into the light can only be helpful, I think, although a lot depends on what is done with this information.
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... the problem is, they made this bed. We don't understand how things have worked because they've deliberately chosen not to tell us, even when we've asked. These questions have been around for several years. I know one of the outgoing board members on a fannish level - at least, I did, in a couple of previous fandoms. I don't think for a second that she, or any of her fellow board members, were unaware of the displeased rumblings in fandom. I think they just chose to ignore it, or to put off the inevitable reckoning until, in their minds, they had better answers.
As for the new board, I think the best case scenario right now is that they invite the other two(?) candidates who participated in the election to join them - but I also think they need to tell the membership BEFORE they do so, and allow people to voice any objections they might have. (And listen to them, that's an important part of the equation!) I don't think there would be a large number of objections - other than the one outgoing board member, no one I saw had any particular problems with the candidates, and they've already done their homework on what the board is and what they'd like to focus on if they became board members.
But if this whole thing has done one thing, it's made me want to take a bigger role in all of this. I'm not sure I'm ready to volunteer yet, but I intend to pay a lot more attention to the running of the OTW from now on.
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I can definitely see where that's coming from. But like you said, I totally also blame them for getting themselves into this position. From my (admittedly very outsider) point of view, it seems like the board has done a very good job of cutting themselves off from the rest of the organization, not working collaboratively and only communicating when it allows them to exert control. If they'd been paying any attention, they'd have known that this decision wasn't going to fly. And there's so much failure of common sense. In particular, how the outgoing board member thought it was okay to cast a vote in the matter of her own appointment is totally beyond me.
Anyway. I agree that inviting the other candidates to join board is probably the best first step (there were three I believe, so that would make up a board of 5 -- a little small, but good enough to keep things running), with full transparency as you say, and maybe these three get shorter terms. And then they can either appoint or hold a special election to fill out the rest of the seats.
I have thought, off and on, about volunteering for OTW -- my librarian skills would actually seem to be a good match for some things. But I never have, and then I was angry enough about the board actions before they resigned that I was ready to renounce my membership until things got fixed. Now I'm willing to go back into wait and see mode. But I'm not ready to jump in any further than that right now.
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