April 2008 Newsletter, vol. 7
Welcome to the first April issue of the OTW Newsletter! We're constantly on the lookout for ways to keep fandom up-to-date and informed about what's going on behind the scenes here at OTW, so twice a month, Community Relations compiles updates about what the various committees are working on and we share them here.

All issues of the newsletter will be tagged accordingly, so you can follow our progress chronologically.

Committee Updates

Accessibility, Design, and Technology Update from Naomi Novik

I am being a little perfectionist and not releasing our intro project just yet because we are still knocking out some bugs in the translation tools (which are the same we'll be using in the archive), but soon, and coding has begun on the archive! Version 0.1 is well underway.

Board Update from Naomi Novik

No particular update, we're just running around doing our usual Boardly thing of oversight!

Community Relations Update from shrift

In case you missed it, Community Relations had some fun on April Fool's Day. We hope you enjoyed TEH TRANZFORMATIV KITTEHS as much as we did!

We posted the first Spotlight On... (a behind-the-scenes look at OTW), written by our fabulous mirabile_dictu with assistance by ciderpress. It features the shiny new Translation committee, and the rest of Community Relations consider it a pretty great read. If you haven't looked at it yet, please do!

We've also been assisting other committees in these little projects -- tiny really, hardly any work at all -- like the 2007 OTW Annual Report, the opening of OTW Membership, and the Membership FAQ translations.

Content Policy Update from ainsley

Happy New Year! Or not, unless you're in 16th-century France and still honoring 1 April as the start of a fresh year, or perhaps are part of the 40% of our committee marking the anniversary of their birth this week.

Either way, our April Fool's Day meeting was no joke, as we worked to establish Terms of Service for the Open Doors projects and started lining up our rubber duckies in preparation for...wait for it...more focus groups. But more on that soon.

Until then, I hope you're enjoying the year, whether it started 1 January, 22 March, or another day entirely.

Development and Membership Update from ignazwisdom

On March 24 we launched our first membership drive, and over the course of a week 423 of you became official voting members of the OTW! Our members hail from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Estonia, Belgium, France, New Zealand, Brazil, Austria, Ireland, and Poland. Early donors (before March 24) were granted memberships on the first day of the drive. Many early donors and new members opted to give more than once, and to give above the US$10 membership fee. Official receipts have not been sent yet (our process is not automated, so we hope you'll be patient with us), but we want to thank everyone who contributed and/or joined during this first drive. \o/

In other good news, graphics for supporters are now available in multiple sizes for icons, avatars, buttons, and banners. If you've given to the OTW and would like to show your support on your site or journal, please feel free to download and use one of the lovely graphics here.

If you didn't get around to joining the OTW this week, you haven't missed your chance! Supporters are welcome to donate to and/or join the organization at any time. We always welcome new members! Visit our Membership page for more info.

(Sorry for taking up so much space, but we have a lot of stuff to brag about this week! *g*)

Elections Update from ellen_fremedon

No update at this time.

Financial Update from Sanders

No update at this time.

Journal Update from mafaldastasi

After receiving two inquiries about copyright, the journal group amended the submission guidelines to provide the rationale for the journal, Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), retaining copyright, and not the author. A longer explanatory blog post was written by the editors, Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, here.

TWC's submission guidelines have been amended with the following clarification:

TWC retains copyright for three reasons: (1) because this is standard in the academic journal industry and it streamlines permissions because there is a single point of contact; (2) because we are committed to open access, and our policy ensures that authors cannot abrogate this; and (3) because it permits us the ability to grant reprint requests if the author becomes unreachable.

You can find the guidelines in their entirety here.

Legal Update from killalla

The Legal Committee has been proceeding with review of licenses and has made further progress on researching licensing options, as well as supporting other committees with advice on potential legal issues as they arise. We have been working with the website translation teams to provide better definitions and explanations of US legal concepts for the various foreign language versions of the website, including creating new sections with additional information on fair use and related concepts as they might apply in other countries. We are also hoping to establish contacts with other groups internationally and developing alliances along the lines of our relationship with the Stanford Fair Use Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Meanwhile, we continue working towards making the legal section of the FAQ more comprehensive, and respond promptly to queries from members of the public as they arise.

Public Relations Update from jacquez

Public Relations has had a change of committee chair; our new chair is Iphi (iphi1). We are working on finalizing fliers for fans to print & take to conventions; some people have already used the draft fliers, and have given us feedback on what works and what doesn't! We're also nailing down our procedures for handling interview and information requests, and building a media contacts list.

Systems Update from jadelennox

Did you read the bit of the Development/Membership update where they talked about launching the first membership drive? Well, Systems was one of the many groups of dedicated staffers working behind the scenes to help Development/Membership make that possible. Additionally, Systems staffers have been working very hard on a number of projects, including documentation, wiki installation, and automated trouble ticket tracking. It's been a crazy week for systems!

Translation Update from ciderpress

Translation cmt is busily setting up the committee, translating the website, having discussions on linguistics and welcoming new volunteers. This week, we have Finnish and Portuguese translators joining the team. All this in eleven languages!

Volunteers and Recruiting Update from KellyAnn Bessa

The ongoing arrival of emails from people eager to help the OTW has kept us hopping, as have several internal projects that have us buried up to our eyeballs in the volunteers database. The recent addition of several new staffers has kept us busy, as well.

On the topic of new staffers, we are currently searching for people willing to be part of our Webmaster Team. We have spots for people with various skill levels, so don't be afraid to speak up!

Design Pool and Pinch Hitters are always accepting people.

Wiki update from wickedwords

The Wiki committee has had their mission statement approved, and is moving ahead with further policy clarifications. The sitemap and design of the wiki is under development, with plans for recruiting volunteer testers once the design is approved by the committee. The soft launch is still on target for this year, but it may be after the mid-year mark; the current plan is being revised to reflect the new goal.

What details would you like to know? Please give ComRel a helping hand and let us know! Email us at comrel @ transformativeworks.org.

--femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee