hope | (no subject)

Well! Now that the new committee list has been posted in

otw_news, I suppose it's worth me "announcing" it here: I'll be chairing the Organization for Transformative Works' Wiki Committee.

I'm aware that this project of the OTW's is one that has the potential to spark a lot of heated discussion, so I would like to say at this juncture that anything I post about the project here in

angstslashhope (comments from me included) is representative of my views and beliefs only, and do not represent those of the OTW as an organisation.

Right. There is some official-ness out of the way :)

When OTW first started up I was pretty excited about it - I work in the nonprofit sector, so I'm very much pro the establishment of nonprofit support organisations for communities. After dipping my toes in fandom academia, too, I'm aware of the other side of things: the way fans are represented to (various) other parts of society.

The mission & vision of OTW excited me from the get-go, as it articulated a lot of my own feelings about fandom, but I was somewhat starstruck to begin with with regards to getting involved.

Obviously I managed to get over that, though, mainly because I wanted to practice what I preach: I believe that OTW is, fundamentally, a support organisation, not a dominating or controlling one. The way it's structured (and the fact that it is structured, even!) means that it'll continue on in perpetuity as it's shaped by a constant flow of fans both working within it and making use of what comes under its umbrella - not just the board and committees, but the volunteers who work on it and the fans that use it every day (contributing to the wiki, uploading their work to the archive).

In other words, I don't word-for-word agree with everything the mission/values/vision says, and I am coming from a different stance than several of those governing it. But because I think the organisation itself has great potential (and I want to reap its benefits, as a fan first and foremost), I wanted to get involved to help shape it into something that can serve me, as a fan. Because I make up part of that "myriad" that is fandom, and want to ensure that OTW effectively supports me by representing myself as part of it. Which OTW is built to do :)

So, yay. I'm really looking forward to working on this project.

Another thing I'm glad of is the administrative support structure of working within an organisation, which gives me more discipline and of course, safety nets (in terms of burning out or struggling with commitments or just dealing with the huge volume of work to be done) which are so valuable when working on such a major project.

Before I agreed to take on the position I evaluated my time & energy commitments (as well as working 4 days a week doing nonprofit web work, I occassionally do pro bono or freelance web work for smaller nonprofit groups, as well as all my fandom shenanigans). I've decided to better manage my time and will be prioritising this project; which means that it pretty much takes over that parcel of time I have for freelance & pro bono work, and I will most likely be doing less personal fandom stuff also (writing, podcasting, vidding, websiting).

The Supernatural Wiki, however, will remain close to the top of the priority list itself, with the aid of my awesome admin team :)

So! Hopefully, by the first half of 2008 there'll be more visibly exciting things happening. Stay tuned!