Various notes

[jennyst]

I feel like this week has been all fire-fighting, and I desperately want to take a step back and see where it fits into the bigger picture, but I haven't yet had time for that. So, in lieu of the proper post that has to wait until my day job work and the AO3 deploy have calmed down a bit, here are some quick notes. I'd be happy to expand on any of these in comments if people want to know more - each paragraph could easily have been a post in itself.

The AO3 deploy has been a rush and a big deal. Support have done an amazing job. There are things I strongly disagree with about how this deploy was handled, but I've said the key things internally and I don't think there's anything to be gained by going over it here. Suffice it to say that the people who made mistakes have also been doing sterling work helping to clean up the mess, and I want to give full credit for that. I know some of the changes and the way we dealt with them have annoyed and upset people, and I'm sorry for that. I'm also looking forward to all the underlying improvements, and enjoying the benefit of them once the dust has settled. I hope that some day we can regain the trust we've lost.

I am sad about Lucy's resignation. I was looking forward to working with her on the Board if either of us got elected. I understand the need for self-care, and I look forward to continuing to work with her in various areas of the org. I'm also looking forward to implementing some of her suggestions - the things we've all mentioned in the chats can be put forward as proposals, regardless of who gets elected.

I want to link to lim's post about her work. I have really appreciated working with lim over the past few years, and I am very upset that she is leaving. From my point of view as a member of AD&T, the bad aspects of this deploy have not all been her fault - there are several other stages where the backlash could have been prevented. I want to extend a huge thank you for all the work she's done on accessibility. I hope we can finish the code off in such a way that people can see the benefits of the work she's done.

I'd also like to link to akamine_chan's post about Fandom, because this bit of it gave me heart-eyes.

Because Fandom is not just about writing fics and posting them to an archive. In fact, that's not really Fandom at all. Fandom, in its most basic form, is about interacting with other fans, sharing your love of something with someone else. That something can be a television show, a book, a movie, a song, a band, a painting, a commercial, anything you can imagine.

Fandom is about sharing your love with someone else.

Fandom is a community of people who love just a little too much. And because we love, we create. We tell stories, writing them down and speaking them aloud. We make art, using pen and pencil, paints, markers, cameras, computers, chalks, sand, cloth, yarn and anything else we can get our hands on. We sing. We dance. We imagine. We repurpose items in ways the original creators had no clue we would even think to do. We analyze and collate, extrapolate and Venn diagram. We contextualize, criticize, subvert, and explore. We 'zine. We exploit technology and pervert it to our desires: mailing lists, email, text, phone, VoIP, chat, Skype, Tweet, Tumblr, LJ, DW, IJ, WordPress, Blogger, Delicious, Pinboard, RSS feeds and so much more. We queer the text, we genderbend, we cast chromatically, we explore our sexuality, we try out new kinks just for the hell of it.

Fandom is a community of people who love each other just a little too much. We support each other through personal crises, job problems, the losses of friends and family and beloved pets, we hand-hold, we hug, we send holiday cards and random wacky gifts through the mail. We listen, we're a shoulder to cry on, we pick each other up when we fall down. We tell you when you're wrong, we tell you when you fuck up and we accept your apology with a hug and a kiss. We love over the internet and in real life. We have conventions and we drink and dance and we go home sad because we already miss everyone. We are love memes and hate memes and fandomfail memes. We are Porn Battles and wish lists and random call outs. We are spread out across the spectrum in age, in sexuality, in ability. We try hard to be aware of the mistakes we make and try to keep others from making the same mistakes.

We never, ever let distance conquer us.

Sanders, Tanaqui and others have already said pretty much all the key things about the strategic plan, so I won't go on about that.

I want to make sure that we come out of this election in a shape to step forward for the future. I am thinking about ways in which we can ensure that experienced members of the OTW and emeritus chairs can find roles that suit them, that use and respect their experience and ideas. At the end of this election, there will be a person without a seat, and I want to make sure their skills get appreciated, whoever they are. At the moment we don't have many ex-chairs who are still in the org, not burned-out. I'd like that to change, and I'm thinking about how we can support that change. An important part of sustainability is not just helping new people to step up, but helping people to step down gracefully, either when they need a break, or if they've burned out, or if they want to make space for others to grow.

And lastly - a giant thank you to everyone who's supported me in this election. I am reading, even when I don't have the energy to comment, and I appreciate hearing all your views. The encouragement, both for me and for my colleagues, is a big help when we're all doing our best for the OTW.

♥ fandom ♥

Comments

[aruna7]

I know that I didn't post as much as others about why I'm behind you and all the topic of OTW elections, but once again I'd like to take the time to thank you for all your hard work and hope that you'll be elected. I'd love to see you on the board. The OTW needs it.

Thank you again. <3

[jennyst]

Thank you.

Not saying you're wrong, but I wanted to point it out

[staranise]

I've said the key things internally and I don't think there's anything to be gained by going over it here

What about transparency?

Re: Not saying you're wrong, but I wanted to point it out

[jennyst]

This is a good question, and thank you for calling me on it. Transparency doesn't mean everything needs to be public, necessarily, but it does mean the important stuff has to be clear to the public. So I need to clarify why my views and what I've said in this case do or don't need to be public.

To be honest, there are a few different reasons I didn't write it all there, which vary in their implications.

Part of the reason is that I'm still scared to criticise publicly. That's something I'm working on personally, to have courage, and this kind of discussion is helpful towards it. But it also ties in to the organisational culture, and that won't change quickly, however much I would like to lead by example. Too much too soon will also put people's backs up, but please keep challenging me on this.

Part of it is that I don't want to hurt the people I'd be criticising. They've suffered enough over the past few days - it's better to let everyone calm down a little first.

But then I need to explain how I will give that transparency later, after things have calmed down. The most obvious thing here is Hele's post on the OTW blog - I need to make sure I support her and that the lessons we learn go public in the end. I'll add that to my to-do list now to make sure it happens at some point.

Part of it is that I don't have the energy to write down the important bits tactfully, and spend the time to edit it and make sure I'm not hinting at anything confidential or anything like that.

Those are the main reasons, and thank you for asking, because the important bit about transparency is being able to say why when people ask.

As far as the confidential parts go, I'd need to look back at what happened where. Some of it is public record, in Github or Google code, but some things said on the AD&T list or in coders chat are in the expectation that those are internal spaces. So taking that and putting it public is like breaking friendslock - needs permission from the person first, unless there's a really exceptional reason. It's friends-lock with a pretty big flist in some cases, but still flock.

It may be that if I look, all the important stuff is public, but it would take time to check, hence me saying each paragraph could be an entry in itself and take a week to post it all.

Doing an extensive postmortem on who messed up what isn't necessary - the focus needs to be on how to fix it. We need to do enough postmortem analysis to prevent a repeat, but we don't need to rake someone over the coals again after having done that. Or, indeed, sometimes, enough postmortem to understand how we would prevent a repeat, and decide whether or not the costs are worth it - because sometimes, things break, it's beta, that's life and it sucks. In this case, there are clear mistakes that should not be repeated, but even if we hadn't made those, there would still have been some backlash.

[unjapanologist]

I want to make sure that we come out of this election in a shape to step forward for the future.

I'm very confident that we can. Thank you for all the hard work (especially the past couple of days)