Kirsten Wright 2019 Q&A: Group 1

What is your strategy to raise awareness of OTW’s projects, aims and goals in future?

I’d like to see the OTW have more of a presence overall in fandom. Right now, a lot of people know about AO3, and that’s great! But not as many are able to connect AO3 to OTW, and fewer still are aware that we have other projects.

I think Comms is doing a great job with this right now! We’ve upped our engagement across our social media platforms, and we are also looking into expanding to new platforms as they become more popular.

In the past, we’ve been a mostly reactive committee, answering questions when press comes to us, and pitching potential stories to outlets. We’re recently begun exploring pitching already fully written pieces, and I think this will be great for us. Writing our own articles in house will mean talking about things that might get overlooked and bringing in mainstream awareness to what we’ve got going on.

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Morgan Schroeder 2019 Q&A: Group 1

What is your strategy to raise awareness of OTW’s projects, aims and goals in future?

I feel that an important part of being a member of the Board is to be there to support all the committees as needed, and help them to coordinate efforts between themselves whenever possible. With that in mind, my strategy would start with turning to our Communication committee and our Development and Membership committee, since they produce the means with which we provide outreach to the general public. Another committee that I’d want to offer assistance to would be the Translation committee, since they would be able to help get awareness out to the general public on a more international level.

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Rebecca Sentance 2019 Q&A: Group 1

What is your strategy to raise awareness of OTW’s projects, aims and goals in future?

In large part, my strategy would be to support and continue the excellent work already being carried out by our Communications committee, and outreach projects like Fanhackers, to raise awareness of the Organization for Transformative Works’ mission and goals. In recent years, the OTW has had increasing amounts of attention and coverage from various media outlets as mainstream awareness of fandom, and our part in it, grows, and Communications does a brilliant job of fielding those requests, responding to them and putting the right people forward to represent the OTW.

When it comes to raising awareness of individual projects like Fanlore, Transformative Works and Cultures, Open Doors, and our Legal advocacy, I intend to work with each committee to generate ideas about how to promote what they do. These committees will know best who they want to reach and what kind of message they want to put out there, so as a member of the Board, mine would be a support role: providing them with the resources that they need, and helping them to achieve their goals with regard to outreach.

One other thing I would like to do to raise broader awareness of the OTW is to facilitate in-person outreach at conventions and fan events that our volunteers are attending. In my experience, being an OTW volunteer at a fan event and talking about what I do can lead to some incredibly valuable conversations. It’s one of the best ways to convey what we do day-to-day – and show that we are ordinary fans pouring our time and energy into fandom. I would support having an official presence at more events where feasible, but also arm OTW volunteers with the resources they need to engage in informal conversations about the OTW, if they feel comfortable doing so.

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