Entry tags:

birthday celebration, otw_onlinecon, timeline

Happy Birthday, OTW!
Today, May 20th, the Organization For Transformative Works celebrates its birthday - we're one year old! On May 20th, 2007, otw_news was created (originally named fanarchive), and our first call for volunteers was issued.

We thought to ourselves, hey, what can we do to celebrate? We're a year old! We've come so far, and done so much in that short amount of time that we honestly feel its amazing, and we hope you do as well. Sometimes, it can seem like progress is going at a snail's pace, but when you take a closer look at just how much we've gotten accomplished, it's pretty awesome.

So, we thought it'd be fun to put together a small timeline of our bigger accomplishments this year, and invite everyone to take a look at everything we've managed thus far.



First, let's celebrate our over 400 members!

The Development and Membership Committee was kind enough to put together a few visuals for this year's membership drive.

We're in a lot of different places!

Pie Chart OTW Membership by Country

World Map OTW Membership on a map

Or if you are more of a numbers (or actually, a pie) person, you can see more specific breakdowns in .pdf format, including by US Region, country, continents, top 5 countries, top 5 states and regional counts and by Canadian province.

Mmm. Pie. I--sorry, easily distracted here. Timeline now!

OTW's first year, the timeline:

(Note: Most of these events can be found in our 2007 Annual Report.)

May 17 - astolat proposes "An Archive of One’s Own".
May 20 - The Livejournal community "FanArchive" (later changed to otw_news) is created.

June 4 - Organizers issue a "Willing to Serve" call for volunteers. Hundreds respond.
June 22 - Board of Directors holds its first meeting. The name "Organization for Transformative Works" is proposed to be the name of the org that will administer and raise funds for the archive.

Aug. 17 - Committee chairs meet for the first time. The main OTW projects are identified as the archive, legal assistance to fans and a fandom wiki.

Sept. 5 - OTW is incorporated as a nonprofit organization in the U.S. state of Delaware.
Sept. 15 - The board approves the first version of the mission statement.
Sept. 28 - Transformativeworks.org goes live.

Oct. 5 - The archive-related effort to teach more fans how to write their own code kicks off with a Python vs. Ruby deathmatch. (Ruby wins.)

Nov. 12 - OTW is mentioned for the first time in the mainstream press, when noted vidder and OTW supporter Luminosity is profiled by New York magazine.
Nov. 28 - OTW announces it will publish a new journal for fannish-related academic research, to be called Transformative Works and Cultures.

Dec. 11 - Following community feedback, the mission statement is revised. And our very first OTW Newsletter is posted.
Dec. 27 - First OTW online community chat is held.

Jan. 7 - We started posting for our Why I Joined OTW Week.
Jan. 25 - OTW announced its initial International Outreach plans.

Feb. 1 - OTW's Academic Journal issued a Call For Papers.

Mar. 24 - OTW launched our first Membership Drive.
Mar. 27 - ComRel began its monthly Spotlight series so that people can check out a bit more of what people are doing at OTW.

May 20 - After launching our Archive Road Map two months ago, we're into Version 0.4 and we have broken over 200 revisions!

*steps back* Looking at that? I think we all have good reason to celebrate! This post and its comments section are intended to be OTW's 'official' birthday celebration post, but we also wanted to celebrate what's brought all of us together.

Fandom! We love fandom! And to that end, your faithful Community Relations committee has decided to put on OTW's first online convention. By online convention, we're talking - a couple of panels and discussions, a couple of neat events, but mostly - challenges! Fun fannish challenges intended to let people from across different fandoms come in and celebrate fandom's awesome.

The convention is going to get underway tomorrow, and we'd love, love, love to have a lot of participation and interest. We'll be hosting the con on LJ, IJ and JF, so if you'd like to come check us out, we're going to be found at otw_onlinecon. (We'll have the same name on all three journals, so you can join/watch wherever you do your primary posting.)

And like I just said - this convention is going to be a celebration of *fandom*, so absolutely anyone is welcome to participate, whether you're an OTW member or not. If you're in fandom, we want you there.