Category: OTW Culture and Communication 2015 Q&A Group 1

Nikisha Sanders 2015 Q&A: OTW Culture and Communication, Group 1

Jenny McDevitt

When Elections was ordered to remove Nikisha Sanders from the 2015 Election ballot, the committee was told to erase all information about her candidacy from the website. However, Elections firmly feels that there is no situation in which candidates, whether former or current, should be silenced or erased from Election information. As in all circumstances, Elections’ policy is to only edit and/or post candidate-written information with candidate permission. Therefore, with Sanders’ permission, we have posted the Q&A responses she completed prior to her removal.

How do you plan to engage staff and volunteers in dialogue regarding Board decisions and the direction of the organization? How about the membership? Read More

Matty Bowers 2015 Q&A: OTW Culture and Communication, Group 1

Elections Staff

How do you plan to engage staff and volunteers in dialogue regarding Board decisions and the direction of the organization? How about the membership?

While I realize the old liaison system was unpractical, I do think Board should be encouraged to meet periodically with chairs to discuss both committee and OTW goals. Board cannot lose touch with committees’ goals, and it’s important to keep open communication in all directions to make sure everyone is always on the same page.

I’d also like to encourage Board members to participate in Office Hours, with each Board member signing up for one week a month. This will allow volunteers and members to interact with Board members informally and give everyone a chance to ask questions and build a relationship with Board.

Talk about one thing a committee you served with did really well and how this taught you something valuable about collaboration in the OTW.

I became Support chair at a difficult time. Not only was the committee itself in a precarious situation, there was severe dissension between many committees and individual volunteers. Trying to navigate such a situation as a new chair was a nightmare. For a while I focused on my own committee, hoping that in the meantime the other issues would resolve themselves. When that didn’t work, I eventually starting reaching out to the other chairs in the hopes we’d find some common ground. Surprising no one, it turned out we all wanted the same thing – healthy committees, happy volunteers, and a functional Board. The details were trickier, but in the end, talking and listening to each other made all the difference.

These days many of the OTW chairs talk on a weekly, if not daily, basis. We generally know how things are going and help each other out as much as we can. We’ve learned how to communicate effectively and it shows in the work we are doing.

I think strengthening the lines of communication between Board and committees is vital. We work better when we are working together towards the same goals.

What are three things you think Board can learn from committees?

  • How to get stuff done.
  • How to get along.
  • How to work together as a team.

What are your thoughts on a more public ‘in person’ presence being established by the Org? How might you see this balanced with the desire and in some cases need for privacy?

I think it would be beneficial for the OTW as a whole to work on our expanding public presence.

While our Communications committee is amazing, it could be helpful to have our Board members also be more proactive about their presence on social media. In most functioning nonprofit Boards, members act as the face of the organization. They help with outreach, fundraising, and boosting awareness of the organization as a whole.

This is likely to be more of a long-term goal for me, though one we should be slowly working towards. At the moment, I feel we need to focus on getting the organization in a more stable place before we turn our attention outwards.

Daniel Lamson 2015 Q&A: OTW Culture and Communication, Group 1

Elections Staff

Note: Dan has withdrawn from the race, but he completed his answers before withdrawing, so they will be posted to the site.

How do you plan to engage staff and volunteers in dialogue regarding Board decisions and the direction of the organization? How about the membership?

I intend to be open and up front, but also friendly. I am really not the kind of person can be intentionally mean or I’d never try to belittle those around me. I would always try to convey quickly and succinctly, but when an explanation is needed I’d give one.

Two examples, I am talking about something board is approving, then the message can be short, ‘thank you for submitting it and it is approved.’ If it is something board has questions about or needs more info about, I would expand the scope of the message to include the ‘what we need,’ and not just say, ‘we didn’t have enough information, so let’s talk about it.’

Sure, there are some things board can’t talk about and it sucks, but confidentiality is important and if legal or our policies says something needs to be confidential then I would not be talking about it.

As to members, I think it is important to be open with them as well. On DevMem, we have been talking for a long time about sending out regular (every other month or quarterly) emails to the membership just to let them know what’s going on with the OTW. Many nonprofits send out emails like this, and it would be nothing intrusive or annoying (hopefully!) but it would allow us to communicate better with the membership about where the org is going. I do not think it would be out of place to ask board to contribute something here regularly, so they can have a more direct line to the members to talk about issues and successes the org has had. I hope this project moves forward with DevMem if I am elected to the board.

Talk about one thing a committee you served with did really well and how this taught you something valuable about collaboration in the OTW.

Last October, I was a pretty new chair of DevMem, my co-chair had just resigned and there was a drive (my first as chair, and second ever) two weeks away. Needless to say I was stressed. DevMem was smaller then, and so we had less people doing the work. It was a pretty crazy time for us, getting all the things ready for it.

We had to coordinate with translation, board, ADT and several other committees to make everything work, and I was kind of lost. I had a great committee, but there was a lot of work that we had to do with other committees that I’d never done before. It was really hard. It was also a bad time for me in my real life job, so it was additionally stressful.

But at the end of the day, the org came together, we got everything we could done and the drive was a huge success. I learned a lot about the OTW that week and how well our volunteers can function together, and how we can get huge things done by working together. These are lessons I use even today as I do org work, so I’m very glad to have learned them.

What are three things you think Board can learn from committees?

I think board can learn from committees, for sure. I think sometimes board is a bit separated from the rest of the org and its committees. Sure, some are in focus with them depending on what’s going on, but on whole, there’s not the same level of communication from board to committees/chairs as there is from committee to committee. I think this could be a good thing to bring the OTW closer together and to have the board more a part of a ‘us’ as opposed to a ‘them.’

What are your thoughts on a more public ‘in person’ presence being established by the Org? How might you see this balanced with the desire and in some cases need for privacy?

Personally, I have no problem mixing my fandom identity with my real life one. But this is not true of everyone. I do not think there should ever be anything that forces the unwilling to ‘out’ themselves.

I do think the in-person stuff has some strong reasons to exist, because can get a lot done together in person. Communication is sometimes easier and faster and being together can bolster productivity, and keep you focused on one task to figure it out faster.

That said, I do not think anyone should be forced to breach someone’s need for privacy. To my knowledge, no one has been forced to go on the retreats or to any other in-person meetings. I would be against anyone trying their fandom/org identity to a real life identity against their will. I believe everyone has the right to privacy—as much or as little as they want. This might mean that someone can’t participate in a certain event, which is a shame, but I respect their choice to protect themselves.

Alex Tischer 2015 Q&A: Election Process

Jenny McDevitt

After a few years of uncontested elections (including one which garnered 0 candidates initially), there are now more candidates than ever before for the smallest number of seats ever up for election. To what do you attribute this sudden surge of candidates, and what would you do during your time on the Board to promote consistent contested elections for Board seats?

I think the sudden surge of candidates is due to the Board making a number of very controversial decisions in recent terms while simultaneously not being open to feedback from any side. This is basically a matter of “if they won’t listen to anyone lower than Board, we’ll have to become Board so they’ll listen”, if you will.

This question is a bit of a Catch 22 in that it is much more likely that there will be enough candidates for a contested election if the Board has done a number of contentious things in the last term, but I wouldn’t want to make controversial decisions just for the sake of promoting contested elections. Basically, a good way to ensure contested elections is making everyone hate you enough to want to replace you. And while I don’t mind making unpopular but necessary choices, I draw the line at mismanaging so people are rattled enough to step up.

While the current election process is more independent than it was in previous years, it is still subject to some decisions made by the Board, which can be passed at any time without input from volunteers. It’s possible for the Board to even change the rules while an election is in progress to exclude some candidates or voters or to punish volunteers for visibly participating in the process. If elected, how would you ensure that each future election is unaffected by interests within the sitting Board?

I would want the Election committee to become much more independent than it is even now. There should be no Board interference in the election process whatsoever. The highest instance on Elections questions should be the Elections committee, not the Board. If the Board has a legitimate complaint about a candidate or volunteer, they should have to resolve it like everyone else, by addressing the Elections committee and awaiting their decision. Elections should be able to request legal counsel in particularly tricky cases, but it should never be the Board that notices the problem, consults on the legal implications and then puts a rule in effect that affects how the elections are run. For me this is the textbook definition of a conflict of interest, especially if there are members of the Board that are running for re-election.

What do you think about the fact that two changes to the bylaws (reduction in size of board from seven to nine [sic], and the ability of two-thirds of the board to vote off another member with or without cause) means the board could dilute the election process? Effectively, the standing board could vote off any candidate who wins and with whom they disagree until they reach a candidate of whom they approve. Are you concerned about this?

I am very concerned about this. While I am willing to believe that both bylaw changes have been made without malicious intent, the net effect is that the Board can now circumvent the Election process and seat people on the Board as they choose. In my opinion, this goes against everything the Elections were set up to achieve.