Organization for Transformative Works News

Our October donations drive has ended, and all we can say is wow: thank you so much. Bellyrubz for everyone!

We raised a grand total of US$10,573, plus that matching challenge grant of US$5000, for a total drive income of US$15,573. Thanks to you, this is our most successful fund drive yet.

We can't thank you enough for your generosity and your support. Knowing that you're behind us gives us renewed energy to dive into the projects we're working on this year -- and inspires us to aim toward even bigger and better things in Year Three.

If you weren't able to donate this week, never fear. We make a special effort to raise funds twice a year, but you're welcome to donate at any time, whether we're having a formal donations / membership drive or not. And our fabulous membership premiums will continue to be available!

We also welcome contributions of time and energy -- that's what the OTW really runs on, and we really want your skills, talents, time, brainpower, and opinions! If you'd like to get involved with the OTW in the coming year, check out the Willing to Serve post and join our community of volunteers.

Thank you for your support and for being a part of the OTW!

Love,
The Development/Membership Committee

The OTW's second annual October donations drive is going strong. It's been an amazing week. We've started offering donor premiums for the first time, which has inspired some truly lovely manips. (Also some icons featuring those manips, free to any good home!)

Plus we've received our first-ever anonymous challenge grant -- an anonymous donor is going to match every dollar we raise during the second half of this donations drive, up to US$5000.

And OMG, fandom: we met our match. Thanks to your incredible generosity, we've raised just over US$5000 since we announced the challenge grant a few days ago. We are humbled and delighted by your generosity. And the drive isn't over yet, so if you haven't yet donated during this drive, there's still time to do so! This donations drive ends at midnight UTC on October 19. (What time is that where you live? Find out here: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=10&day=19&year=2009&hour=0&min=0&sec=0&p1=0)

We've raised almost US$8800 so far during this drive. Our last drive broke US$10,000 -- can you help us top that? If you haven't donated yet, please do! Funds donated during this drive will go toward our ongoing colocation and bandwidth costs (the Archive of Our Own will enter Open Beta soon), building up a safety net for the organization so that we always have funds in-hand to do the work we need to do, and funding the amazing projects we hope to add to our roster in 2010. (Plus: now you can opt to receive stickers and/or a mug!)

As a reminder: we're also always looking for volunteers to help with our various projects. Whether or not you're able to donate at this time, you can always write entries for Fanlore, help out our tag wranglers, or join one of our standing committees -- information on that is available in our recent Willing to Serve post.

Thanks for being a part of the OTW!

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW blog.

Vidding News: The OTW wants to announce its support for the EFF's proposed DMCA exemption for video creators--like vidders--who rip DVDs in order to use clips for fair use remixes. Members of the Board provided the EFF with background information on the petition to the copyright office (.pdf file, right-click and save), which explicitly cites fan vidders as an established creative community that relies on clips from DVDs to make works that are fair use: or what the petition calls "fundamentally transformative visual works."

As the EFF's petition notes, noncommercial videos like vids have good fair use arguments, but they may not have their day in court without an exemption to DMCA circumvention claims. To put it in layman's terms, vids themselves may be legal fair uses, but right now, it's hard to make the argument because copyright owners are able to claim that the DMCA says ripping DVDs to make the vids isn't legal--yes, even if you bought them.* (Capturing, for those of you who still capture, is legal; it takes advantage of a loophole called the 'analog hole'.) The blanket prohibition against ripping short circuits fair use; as the EFF notes, a DMCA exemption will give vidders and noncommercial videographers the chance to make their fair use arguments.

The EFF's petition briefly discusses fan vidders Luminosity, Lim, and here's luck: "A vid like Vogue is a direct exercise in cultural criticism--a stylish attack on the romantic conjunction of violence and male sexuality in a major Hollywood film. Some vids (such as Us by the vidder known as Lim), can be far-reaching commentaries on vidding and fan culture itself, while other vids (like Superstar by the vidder known as here's luck) serve the more modest (but equally fair) purpose of commenting on characters in a favorite TV show." The entire petition is well worth reading for vidders or fans of vidding culture--not to mention those interested in issues of free speech in a Web 2 .0 world.

*(unless you're a film professor: film professors currently have the only fair use exemption.)

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW blog

Today is the last day of our donations drive. Thank you to everyone who has donated! We appreciate your support so much.

Good news: even though the drive is ending, you can keep on giving even without making a direct donation! We have a fabulous new widget to announce:

I Heart OTW Widget

This is a Firefox extension which adds our referral code when you browse on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.ca -- that is, in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. (We're working on adding this functionality in other countries too -- stay tuned!)

Just install the widget, restart Firefox, and when you shop at Amazon (if you haven't clicked through from someone else's referrer page) the OTW will receive a tiny donation each time you shop.

Planning to pick up a copy of Rowling's latest, The Tales of Beedle the Bard? Or maybe you've got textbooks to buy this fall? Or a DVD boxed set to which you've been meaning to treat yourself, or a CD from your favorite band, or the newest volume of that manga or anime you've been following? Now's the time -- and you can support the OTW while you do it. What could be finer?

The Webmasters are pleased to announce the launch of the new website and blog.

http://transformativeworks.org

In addition to a facelift, the website now has several spiffy new features that increase the ease-of-use of the site. The most important of these is the blog, which will be taking over from otw_news as our primary information service. It will also allow all comments to be centralized in one (non-LiveJournal) hosted by OTW itself.

Features

We’ve been working hard to introduce a number of new features for site visitors, including multilingual options (take a look at the language switcher on the left), a new site-based OTW news blog (you’re reading it), and the ability to comment on this blog, with or without creating a site account (or you can use an OpenID).

Feeds

There are several ways to track updates to the site and blog:

A feed for all blog posts is available.

The on-site Tracker is a way to find updates while using the website.

Finally, there is the Yahoo!Pipe feed, which combines both blog posts and all updates to the website.

How the blog works

The blog will post all the things you've seen in the past on otw_news, such as newsletters, calls for volunteers, spotlights on OTW committees, and updates on our projects. This information will be re-posted on our other news services:

LiveJournal mirror (otw_news)

InsaneJournal mirror

del.icio.us

Follow OTW on Twitter

OTW news Yahoo Group

RSS Feed

Atom Feed

You can leave comments on the blog much as you would on the journaling services, by creating your own account or using OpenID, or simply by providing a name and an email address. The blog operates under the Website Terms of Service, which includes this comment policy:

We may maintain one or more blogs on the site that accept comments. We strive for transparency and will generally post comments we receive, including critical comments. However, by submitting a blog comment, you agree that it is our decision whether or not to post it. If we decide, in our sole discretion, that a blog comment is spam or advertising; reveals the personal information of another person; or contains illegal content or hate speech, we may not post that comment, or we may remove it at any time.

What about otw_news?

Not a lot will change. The big difference is that otw_news will become a feed service for the blog – all the same content will be mirrored there, but commenting won’t be turned on. All comments will be centralized on the blog, which will allow fans from different communities who use different blogging or social networking services to engage on equal footing.

Basically, if you’re subscribed to the feed on LiveJournal or a clone, sorry, we don’t monitor any comments there! Come on over to the blog to reach us – the link to our comment page is given below.

Feedback on the new website

We are very excited to finally be sharing all these new features with you, and we hope you enjoy the added functionality the website and blog offer. We know everything may not be perfect yet – so take a look around and tell us what you think! We’d really love to know if you have ideas for improvements or can point out things that work differently than you expected.

--he Webmasters

If you have questions or feedback for the Webmasters, contact us at OTW Webmasters.

Tags: announcements, blog, website

(This is a mirror of the original LJ post)

EVERYONE STAY TUNED!

September is PROJECT ROLL OUT MONTH here at OTW!

The second half of September will be one of the most exciting times in OTW's history. The Archive of Our Own is in testing and will begin its very first public beta this week! Invites will have to be very limited for a while as we get our first real-world performance results, but all will be welcome to read stories, post comments, and explore the archive. (PS: giving us lots of feedback including those exciting bug reports will be a good way to get an invite. :D)

The first issue of our journal, Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc) is out as of today! (Read the full press release here: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement.) A new version of the OTW website at http://transformativeworks.org will be going live very soon (this new version contains a blog and rss feed that will allow us to move the OTW off Livejournal for good.) And the Fanlore wiki is finalizing its policies and will be ready for a soft launch and population of information.

October is our biannual MEMBERSHIP and VOLUNTEERS Drive!

With all our projects rolled out by October 1, we will then hold our second membership/donations drive. This is your chance to become a member if you aren't already (which will make you eligible to vote in the upcoming Board elections) or to donate money or time to support the OTW and its ongoing projects. We will also be having another volunteer drive, and we hope that you will declare yourself as "Willing To Serve" on one of our committees next year.

November is for ELECTIONS!

All members of the OTW will be able to vote in the Board Elections scheduled for November. After these elections, the OTW will take a brief hiatus to reconstitute itself, and the new Board will appoint or reappoint the next Committee Chairs who will rebuild committees to take us into our second awesome year of projects. Be a part of it!

Mirrored from otw_news on LJ

Welcome to the first July 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! )

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

Mirrored from otw_news on LJ

The Wiki Committee is posting to otw_news for a couple of exciting reasons:

Firstly, we've got around to properly naming this project! The OTW wiki will be known as Fanlore. Our future url will be fanlore.org, and we fully expect to be casually referred to as “the Fanlore wiki” or “Fanlore”. We're extremely happy with our name; it embodies some of the foundations of the policies we've been working on for the wiki over the past 6 months.

Speaking of policy: our second piece of news. We'd like to invite volunteers to help us beta test the Fanlore wiki policies by working with them first hand; helping us not only with the initial population of Fanlore prior to soft launch, but also to hone the admin side of things and shape the wiki's interface.

The job listing itself can be found on otw_news here. Follow the link to get more information about what this position involves and what we'd need from you, should you be interested. We're looking forward to working with you!

- The Wikimittee

Mirrored from otw_news on LJ.

Transformative Works and Cultures, the online academic journal associated with the Organization for Transformative Works, is looking for your meta.

The Symposium section of the journal is a section of concise, thematically contained essays. These short pieces provide insight into current developments and debates surrounding any topic related to fandom or transformative media and cultures. These essays will not go through academic peer review but will be reviewed by the editorial team. We're looking for 1500 to 2500-word essays on any aspect of fandom, transformative works, online culture.Images, music and video can be included.

Symposium pieces will be more polished than a meta post, less detailed than an academic paper: we're imagining them as an archive of fannish and academic meta debates of issues relating to fan cultures, saved for posterity. We hope to continue and expand the work of Lucy Cereta's Fanfic Symposium, which has been doing that for many years.

Here's the full Journal call for papers for your information. Please note that although TWC is a part of OTW's umbrella organization, we are not an organ of OTW. We have editorial independence and are happy to consider pieces that criticize the OTW organization. And we are very much looking for submissions from non-academics.

We are still accepting submissions for the September issue, and we need those by the end of the month. Our loose theme for this issue is online scholarship, the Organization for Transformative Works, and the relationship between criticism and theory from inside and outside the academy, but we're open to more or less anything.

Email us on symposium@transformativeworks.org if you'd like to talk about your ideas.

Alexis Lothian
Julie Levin Russo
Cole Banning
Symposium editors, Transformative Works and Cultures