briar_pipe
Hi everyone, and welcome to our final Candidate Chat of 2018!
Once again you’ll have the opportunity to speak with all 4 Candidates: Michelle Schroeder, Natalia Gruber, Lex de Leon, and C. Ryan Smith.
My name is briar_pipe, and I’ll be hosting the candidate side today. On the audience/open_chat side, your host will be my fellow Elections Committee member Jenny.
briar_pipe
Hi everyone, and welcome to our First Candidate Chat of 2018!
In today’s chat you’ll have the opportunity to speak with all 4 Candidates: C. Ryan Smith, Lex de Leon, Michelle Schroeder, and Natalia Gruber.
My name is briar_pipe, and I’ll be hosting the candidate side today. On the audience /open_chat side, your host will be Judy. We’re both members of the Elections Committee.
[Note: Candidates were limited to 300 words for each answer.]
9. What is something nice that you can say about your colleagues that you’re running with/against?
To be quite honest, I have too many nice things to say about all of them to limit it to 300 words! They have all been wonderful co-candidates and it’s been truly great getting to know each of them more. On our private chat platform, we all have a private room that we can talk to each other and discuss the election or any questions we have with our Elections Committee liaisons. It has also been a good place to find encouragement to continue working towards the end of the election season. We have had several light hearted conversations about procrastination and how we promise to do better the next week (spoiler alert: we haven’t yet). We’ve also had serious discussions about the questions that we have answered over the past three weeks. Overall, it has just been a great experience running with each of them and I’m happy to say that I’ve made three new friendships with the organization. I am also very happy to say that I am confident the OTW in great hands no matter who among us is elected.
[Note: Candidates were limited to 300 words for each answer.]
5. What are a couple of major issues that you know the OTW board struggles or has struggled with, and how would you personally act to avoid them if elected?
Personally, I have always felt the biggest issue the Board has struggled with is the disconnect that could arise between them and the organization as a whole. Take a look at the next question (#6) for more about that! Another thing that I feel the Board has struggled within the past is managing their workload. While each position within the OTW generally has a commitment of only a few hours per week, it can quickly add up once you begin to work within multiple committees. The previous structure of the Board did not help matters either, as each individual Board member would serve as a dedicated liaison to a handful of committees (thereby increasing the workload more). In order to compensate for this high workload, some directors would retire from their various positions within the OTW in order to devote themselves to their Board work, which increased in the disconnect between them and the rest of the OTW.
[Note: Candidates were limited to 300 words for each answer.]
1. What do you hope to learn in your time on Board?
I would like to learn more about the individual projects that we are responsible for as an organization. While our internal wiki has a lot of information about the technical details behind these projects, as a Board member I would hope to really immerse myself in dialogue with the relevant committees. I feel the best way to learn about each project and each committee’s mission is to talk to them and hear it directly from them (only second to actually volunteering with them directly). The relationship between the Board and the rest of the organization is, by necessity, symbiotic—we must be able to learn and support each other in order for the organization as a whole to thrive.
C. Ryan Smith: Ryan’s earliest memories of being in fandom stem from watching Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! in the early morning hours before school with his dad. He can remember talking about the shows and games with other children in his class and feeling that familiar sense of camaraderie that we all feel today. If asked though, he would point out that his first true encounter with fandom at large wouldn’t occur until years later in 2008. It was at this point that he was able to access the internet without restrictions and began interacting with other fans on the likes of Bulbagarden and Fanfiction.net. Ryan first started volunteering for the OTW during his first year in university in 2013; due to personal circumstances, he left the OTW for a while before returning to service in 2015. He’s also attending university again, working towards a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology.