April 2008 Newsletter, vol. 8
Welcome to the second 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.



Accessibility, Design, and Technology Update from Naomi Novik: We've added new members black_samvara and Sarah Heath to the team, working on design and accessibility! And with some help from the awesome Sidra, our test project has been deployed and will be unveiled in a separate announcement as soon as, uh, we have filled it with data. :D

The archive development is going even better than we had hoped, and we have actually rolled the first three internal milestones (Archive Core, 0.1 - 0.3) all into one. We look to be close to finishing this stage up this weekend, at which point we pause to set up some solid regression testing and to kick the tires, make sure we're happy with the core before moving on. We very much need more testers and are always looking for more coders, so if you are interested, please drop a note to volunteers! Meanwhile design is proceeding apace!

You can follow along with our progress at our Google Code project page.

(The really exciting page is the "Changes" area on the Source tab. :D)

Many many kudos to all the awesome coders who have contributed so far: afuna, Alis, Betty, bingeling, Cal, dasbero, Elz, helens, Krytella, Sica, thedeadparrot, tompreuss, velocitygrass, and zooey glass! \o/

Board Update from Naomi Novik: The board has been chugging along, working in particular to put together the new webmasters committee for the transition to a CMS, and doing the usual liaisoning and oversight work!

Community Relations Update from svmadelyn: ComRel is eagerly planning the OTW's very first Online Convention. It will be hosted in May, and will be chock full of entertainment and scintillating panels. Later next week, you'll also be seeing a spotlight on our own fantastic Naomi Novik, so stay tuned.

Content Policy Update from ainsley: In our meeting this past Sunday, we spent 100 minutes discussing, adding, removing, and editing what wound up being 200 words for one section of the draft of the Archive's abuse policy. Good times were had by all present. But more present means more good times, yes? If you're up for wordy good times, debating the merits of small turns of phrase, or just have a strong interest in the Archive's policies, please volunteer when the post goes up in a few days!

Because, really, wordy good times. What more could you want?

Development and Membership Update from ignazwisdom: We've been working quickly to get thank-you notes out to our new members and other recent donors--thanks for your patience! We've also been listening to your feedback and requests, and we're working on ways to improve our membership system and make it even easier to give to the OTW. Some things we'll be working on in the coming months: integration of PayPal and our webform, subscription-style donations (so you can give monthly without having to fill a bunch of stuff out every time), a FAQ update to answer some remaining questions, a public "Friends of OTW" list for organizations who want to support us, and--we hope!--OTW swag.

Elections Update from ellenfremedon: No update at this time.

Financial Update from Sanders: No update at this time:

Journal Update from mafaldastasi: The journal group is communicating official submission deadlines to all committed contributors. We are also continuing prospecting for more potential contributors.

Legal Update from killalla: No update at this time.

Open Doors Update from Francesca Coppa: The Open Doors project now has answered some FAQ questions and is working on getting its splash page up and running.

Public Relations Update from jacquez: Public Relations is working on our processes and ideas for PR at cons.

Systems Update from jadelennox: Systems is still working on the wiki, backups, and improving system status notification. Our big news for the week is that we got a sandbox machine so people can play around with the new code or configurations without risking any damage to production, and so we have a place for trainees to learn.

Translation Update from morganlefae: The translation committee is (currently):

28 translation volunteers - in teams 1 to 5 members - translating in Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. We've elected lian_li as our mascot.

We're going to start posting the translations soon!

Volunteers and Recruiting Update from kinnosuikazura: Continuing internal projects with the volunteer database have kept us busy, as well as emails from enthusiastic new volunteers. Also, congratulations to FX (_fx), the new Marketing & Brand Coordinator!

As always, we welcome volunteers for the Design Pool and Pinch Hitters.

Webmasters Update from Francesca Coppa: We are currently putting together a bigger webmaster team from all the amazing applications we got. Watch this space!

Wiki Update from wickedwords: The wiki committee is still working hard on drafting and discussing policies. We've made enough progress that we are also working in other areas - such as designing a skin for the wiki. We're currently working with OTW's 'brand' expert to develop a style for the org and the wiki's look will incorporate that.

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