Organization for Transformative Works News

The final project we have time to talk about during this drive is one of the newest and, we think, one of the most exciting. Our Vidding Roadmap. What's that? An economy pack of assorted awesome things -- initiatives that will serve a purpose beyond vidding, and which we believe will educate, advocate, and entertain. It includes a portal for learning about vidding, aimed at the curious, whether they are coming from inside fandom or from outside; a safe, stable place to store vids for the future; a way to share multimedia fanworks; and integration of multimedia into the Archive of Our Own.

The educational Vidding Community Resource Site is in development right now. The Dark Archive is also getting very close to reality. Video embed functionality for the AO3 is being coded and tested as we speak.

The Torrent of Our Own (TO3), however, is a more complex project. We are developing a bittorrent tracker for fair-use transformative fanworks, including fan vids, fic trailers, political remix, AMVs, machinima, and other forms of transformative digital media. This is a way to share our work with each other that isn't an afterthought to someone else's aims. A way that is designed for us, built by us, and owned by us. Running on our servers, with our advocacy behind it. After all, the vidding community has been increasingly disrupted by inaccurate content-filtering systems, the commercial failure of small streaming sites, bullying cease and desist letters, and wrongful DMCA takedowns. The TO3 will provide a stable, scalable home for vids; because torrents work best when there are high levels of collaboration and participation, we can open the network to any and all forms of fair use digital video and audio.

Our Vidding Roadmap, all of its parts, is a big project. It's one we believe there is a pressing need for. Preserving our work, advocating for its legitimacy, and building for the future.

Donate to the OTW now.


Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

There are a lot of reasons Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), the OTW’s international, peer-reviewed academic journal, is worth supporting. First is its role as a home for rigorous examination of transformative works. Published twice a year, TWC explores fanworks, fans, and media studies through diverse lenses and critical approaches. The journal alternates between one themed issue and one general issue each year. The editorial board is comprised of scholars who are engaged in some of the most innovative and engaging work in the field. And the work it publishes is thought-provoking and scholarly.

But TWC is more than this. It pushes the boundaries of what an academic journal can be in the best of ways. In addition to the academic papers and reviews common to journals, TWC also features a Symposium where critical voices can engage transformative works through forms beyond the traditional academic paper, drawing on personal essays and fannish meta. In this spirit, in 2010, TWC launched the Symposium blog to keep the Symposium discussion going on a weekly basis.

TWC embraces the principles of Open Scholarship, which is a movement that supports the idea that research, scholarship, and human knowledge in general are best served by the open sharing of ideas. Towards these aims, TWC is available freely online. It is published under a Creative Commons Attribution—Noncommercial 3.0 license and is a Gold Open Access publication.

Keep an eye on the TWC announcements page to see what’s coming up. In addition to general issues that will cover a variety of topics, the future promises themed issues on race and ethnicity in fandom, fan activism, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and fan/remix video. Check out the archive including this year’s Supernatural-themed issue and the current general issue. And if you’re so inclined, consider submitting your work to the journal.

You can support projects like Transformative Works and Cultures by becoming an OTW member or donating today!

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

The second of our two OTW elections chats was held at 2100 UTC 24 October, 2010. We've posted a transcript and screenshot for any OTW members or supporters who missed the event and would like to catch up.

You can read the transcript or view the screenshot here, on the OTW Elections website.

There's still time to become a member and vote in the upcoming election!


Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

Our second one-hour chat with our Board candidates, open to all of our members and to the public, will begin very soon!

We start at at 9 pm UTC 24 October (What time is that where I live?). If you are unable to attend but have questions for the candidates, we encourage you to submit them via our contact form to our elections officer, Rebecca Tushnet, who will present them on your behalf.

The chat will be held in the OTW public chatroom, accessible at this link: https://fanarchive.campfirenow.com/28473

As a reminder, voting is restricted to current OTW members; this includes anyone who has made a donation of US$10 or more between 1 October 2009 and the end of our current donations drive, to best accommodate all time zones. To renew your membership, visit http://transformativeworks.org/how-you-can-help/support before then (What time is that where I live?).

Further information about the election can be found on the OTW Election website.

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

There are less than 48 hours left in our October Drive! Cool fact: so far, we have 228 donors from 17 countries! We're gratified by all you've done to help us to make this drive a success. If you haven't joined or donated yet, you can do so here, and get some cool stuff, too. But donating isn't the only way you can help: you can talk us up, introduce us to your friends, and spread the word about the OTW. You are our star recruiters, and your experience with everything the OTW can do for fans (and for the world!) is the most convincing testimony.

These fans have given us permission to link to the posts they've made promoting the drive and supporting the OTW. If you've posted something similar and would like to share, leave us a comment with a link!

rossetti: Fans and fanworks exist. And they exist in a long, literary, remixy creative tradition.
celli: go OTW!
devildoll: OTW Happenings
aethel: Fanlore and the Organization for Transformative Works
kate: News of the OTW
juniperphoenix: OTW membership drive and election
franzeska: Cons, Fandom Involvement, and Why You Should Join the OTW
velveteenrabbi: Supporting transformative works
alexandrakingsley: Fan culture and the transformation of everything
astolat: vid embedding and AO3! and OTW!
renay: Why should Final Fantasy fans care about OTW, anyway? (Because we're awesome.)
justira: This is fanwork; this is fan WORK; fandom is my fandom.
starlady: OTW drive! With a Matching Grant!
akamine-chan: the otw
Rebecca Tushnet: Organization for Transformative Works fundraising drive
sage: random bits and pieces
rivkat: In which I use many exclamation points
kass: The OTW, Which I Dig
erda: It's October
cesperanza: Weak for a Good Cause
zooey-glass: OMG OTW YEAY!
tanaqui: OTW October Donations Drive and First Contested Elections
minervacat: [yes, you!]
DarkEmeralds: Why I Contribute Cashy Money to the OTW
Natacha Guyot: Pourquoi je soutiens l’OTW | Why I support the OTW
lian: that org I volunteer for. you know.
watersword: i live in a hall of mirrors
Elizabeth Yalkut: October 2010: this is an awesome place
allison morris: i just want to stick them all under my ribcage.
juniperphoenix: Inspiring OTW supporters are inspiring

Donate, and help support our work!

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

Fanlore, our fandom wiki, is devoted to preserving the history of transformative fanworks and the fandoms from which they have arisen. Fanlore is where we preserve our stories, our memories, our conversations. Because it's a wiki, Fanlore is a site to which anyone can contribute -- and we welcome contributions by anyone who considers themselves to be a part of fandom, whether your fandom is media or anime or gaming or RPF or something else entirely!

At Fanlore, we want to preserve our fannish heritage, and we also want to celebrate and document what's happening in fandom today. If you think something is noteworthy enough to remember, then it's worth adding to Fanlore. We believe that every fannish voice is valid and valuable; our goal isn't to tell "the story," but to tell our many and varied stories.

As of October 20, 2010, Fanlore has 13,396 articles -- on subjects ranging from classic Highlander zines to a partial overview of fanart -- which have undergone 192,842 edits by 2,613 registered users. And this is just the beginning! The Wiki committee has been hard at work on polishing our policies and our FAQ pages, and we hope to move out of Open Beta by the end of 2010. We can't wait to see what fans choose to write about from here on out.

Fanlore's sister project is Open Doors, which is dedicated to offering shelter to at-risk fannish projects. Open Doors collaborated with Fanlore and the Archive of Our Own on the GeoCities Rescue Project, a project aimed at preserving the cross-section of fandom which used to be hosted on (now-defunct) homepage provider GeoCities. Open Doors has also worked with the University of Iowa to create the Fan Culture Preservation Project, a partnership that involves brokering the donations of thousands of fanzines into a special collection in order to ensure that these printed or ephemeral pieces of our fannish history aren't lost. Open Doors also maintains a variety of Special Collections -- fannish multimedia projects and historically important fansites which can't yet be hosted on the AO3 but which we want to ensure are around now and in the future.

Help us preserve our history and celebrate our art, our voices, and our culture -- lend your voice to the documentation of our culture in Fanlore, and to the preservation of our creations within Open Doors, and support the OTW so that these projects can continue to flourish!

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

We don't even know what to say to this. It's astounding. The donation challenge was issued at 8:20pm UTC. Between the time we hit save on that post, and 1:17am UTC, only four hours and fifty-seven minutes later, we raised US$2,065.

This means that every one of the dollars donated during that time was matched at 110%. In less than five hours, you secured US$4,265 that will go toward all of our projects -- including the servers, power, and bandwidth necessary to keep us strong and stable and self-sustaining.

Thank you. The speed at which you answered the call was amazing and humbling. You are amazing. Our anonymous donor, when we told her, was floored. Thank you for meeting her generosity, and matching it.


Donate, and continue to push our work forward.

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

Okay, so this is where we really want to say, "You will never guess what just showed up in the OTW DevMem inbox!"

Except we put a spoiler in the title, there. So we'll cut to the chase!

We have a second anonymous donor. And that donor was inspired by the first grant, and...caught the spirit of competition. :p So they are issuing a challenge! They have US$2,000 that says we can do it again, and do it just as fast! Or faster. Can we make another set of donations count double?

Here's our challenge, and our deadline: US$2,000 donated in the next 24 hours, and they double it. US$2,000 donated within the next eighteen hours and eighteen minutes, and they will kick in an extra US$200.

GO TEAM OTW!

Donate now! (edited because we got so excited we forgot the link. sorry!)

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

It's that time again! As the end of the OTW's third term approaches, we are in search of people who are willing to serve on our committees. We have accomplished amazing things during this term, and we have big plans on the horizon for the next one! Many of our current committee members will be returning, and we are looking for enthusiastic and dedicated people to join them.

We've provided descriptions of the committees and their jobs below. Please note that while we're taking information now, we will be forming the committees when we come back from our break in mid-January.
( Read more... )

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

How wonderful are OTW members and supporters? Pretty wonderful.

The OTW Development & Membership committee is THRILLED to announce that you, our donors, have successfully secured the funds from our matching grant donor. You have turned US$2,000 into US$4,000!

And that's not the only wonderful news. WE DID IT IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS. We're all flailing over here. Flails of great joy and gratitude! We announced the matching grant at 23:40 UTC last night; we hit US$2,027.76 at exactly 17:59 UTC today. That's eighteen hours and nineteen minutes!

Thank you. Thank you for meeting our anonymous donor's generosity, and for making their money, and your own money, really count for fandom. You are amazing, and we want to say that, and to tell you all that it is a privilege to work to achieve all your dreams for the OTW.

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.