Renegade Board Candidates 2024

I got started in the nonprofit world as an office manager 14 years ago. Since then, I have primarily worked in the nonprofit-adjacent world of university administration, but have also volunteered for a number of nonprofits near me and helped to run online fandom communities. I served as Executive Director of a Queer nonprofit fandom convention for three years, and have been a classroom and conference volunteer for a local writers nonprofit for the last 7 years. I also currently serve as a board member at large for my local book arts center. I also have spent much of the last two years helping Renegade with a number of its events and its efforts to move towards becoming a nonprofit. In my time with these organizations, I have managed a number of tasks; organizing events with 25 to 400 people in attendance, leading teams, crafting and following budgets, writing bylaws, developing project plans and timelines, as well as speaking publicly on the goals of these organizations.

In my day job, I run a University PhD program with over 230 students and 120 faculty members. I took on this job a little over two years ago and built up a system of tracking student milestones and degree progress, implemented a communication policies, and am currently working to buildout governance documents for the program policies (basically bylaws for a department) while training my new staff and ensuring that the administrative deadlines of our programs and students are being met. I have worked with the university for over a decade helping to design and implement organizational policies, ensure bureaucratic deadlines have been met, and trying to make the chaos a little bit less daunting for myself and those I work with. A system may be difficult to build up, but once it is there the stress reduction can make a huge long term impact.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

To keep track of all the things I have to do I keep lists, many, many lists. At work I use a digital Kanban board to keep track of my department’s tasks so that everyone on my team can update or keep up with where we are on a given project. Personally, I also keep a detailed to-do list in a paper planner (writing something down and then getting to cross it out makes it feel real and then later complete. It also gives me a record of when something was completed.) And the way I manage the pressure of keeping all of that straight? I work very hard to be clear about my boundaries with myself and others and what sort of space and therefore energy I can give to something in my life. I have worked hard to teach my brain in the last few years the importance of scheduling time for me and what is personally important to me as well as keeping my work schedule in check.

I am not very concerned with being in a more visible position. I have never kept my fanbinding and before that fic writing secret from those around me. I learned fandom was a place that brought me a lot of joy and I have spent many hours trying to advocate for it and helping to encourage others to find joy in the space that works for them. To that end, I have already spoken publicly and have been interviewed for articles and in a podcast about fanbinding and Renegade. So I suspect that I can’t stay hidden even if I wanted to at this point. I am happy to be known as someone who loves fic and makes books.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

I believe the first volunteer work I did with Renegade was late 2021 onward, to help organize a fanbinding panel and table at HavenCon 2022. Since then, I have helped to organize our volunteer team, create the Renegade CoC, and been a mod for the volunteer server. Renegade events wise, I have run 2 years of our FFWAD event, our inaugural Renegade retreat (and we are making good progress on the second one!!), 2 years of Binderary, the Renegade California mini retreat, managed Renegade’s Merch drive in Binderary 2023 so we could raise funds to start us on the journey to file for incorporation, and was team lead for the 501st (the team working to write out the Renegade bylaws and set up this board process).

While I love getting to participate in the events that I have helped to make happen here at Renegade and the wonderful community of friends it has brought me, my absolute favorite thing about getting to work with the Renegade volunteers is working with a volunteer group who are passionate and motivated and get the thing done. I have volunteered with enough organizations over the years to have worked with many people who clearly mean well, but did not have the time or level of interest to really help make the goals of the group move forward. I have seen places fall apart because of that; here, folks are motivated and do make the time to make sure things happen. And equally as important, they are willing to be honest about when they don’t have the time or bandwidth and folks have been so kind and supportive to help step in and fill those gaps when that happens. This has been the best volunteer run organization I have worked with and I am excited to continue to work with everyone in the future, in any role.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

For the short term, the next year to 18 months, my main goal is to help get Renegade’s organizational foundation set up. This first board of directors will need to spend a lot of time doing the work to get Renegade incorporated and set up as a 501c3. And once we have all that paperwork filed and finished, the real work begins. We will need to set up official organizational accounts with online and financial services, as well as determine policies and procedures for how the organizational side of Renegade will be run. Then the board can start looking forward, figuring out Renegade’s first strategic plan and setting up the steps to start moving towards it. All while helping to support and, for many of the potential board members, running the pre-established events and projects of the Renegade community.

Longer term, I would like to help Renegade build ties with other nonprofits and community groups of similar interests so we can help to build an organizational community that Renegade can work with in the future to help spread the word and establish ourselves as a fandom support pillar. I would love for Renegade to someday have a physical location where we teach book craft, and serve as a physical repository of bound fics and other physical fandom ephemera; while that is a long ways off, establishing ourselves in the fandom, bookish, and archival communities is a great place to start.

What is your definition of a “book”?

Merriam-webster defines a book as many things among them “a set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets of wood or ivory”, “ a long written or printed literary composition”, “a major division of a treatise or literary work”. The Oxford English Dictionary has 37 meanings listed under book, noun. None of which I can look at, because I don’t have a subscription to their content, but which, the very “helpful” AI on google will boil down to one definition of “a set of printed pages that are fastened together inside of a cover, allowing you to turn and read them”. While I am very much someone who appreciates the concrete and literal truth all these definitions bring, it almost goes without saying that this is not what a book truly is.

Physically, books can exist in so many ways; big, small, hard, soft, edible (is a book a sandwich?), linear or an ouroboros of information. A book’s physical construction is limited only by the imagination of its creator, and I suppose a few pesky laws of physical matter or some such things. We all know a book is so much more than its physicality. What a book can be in meaning or importance to a person or group of persons, what roles in the self and the social it can play, a comfort to many and a threat to others. How a book can hold a different meaning to every person who is aware of its existence, how this meaning can change over time? Well, having a 300 word limit, this is a thoroughly impossible task, so I guess I’ll just cheat and say… What is a book? It’s Ineffable.

I have been coordinating Renegade’s volunteer efforts from the outset, and enjoyed helping those efforts grow wherever I can. I also brought with me a portfolio of fandom event experience - previous to Renegade and over the course of a decade, I ran three Big Bang writing challenges in various fandoms, a Fic Exchange, and a Remix writing challenge, among other smaller projects and collaborations.

My first volunteer opportunity with Renegade was the Typesetting & Bound Fic Exchange 2021; I’ve assisted with the Renegade Exchange every year since, and helped start/run several new events, including Binderary, the Retreat, and the California Server Mini-Exchange & accompanying Mini-Retreat meetup. I have also been working behind the scenes on many infrastructure projects, such as getting the satellite servers up and running, designing and launching the website, and helping with this election as a proud member of the bylaws team, to name a few.

In my day job, I have run teams of 50+ people and consistently organize deadlines and actionable deliverables as part of my duties. I possess the variety of skills and experience necessary to serve as a productive member of the Renegade Board, if you’ll have me!

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

I began enforcing a cycle of self-care a few years ago, and since then my stress levels have definitely dipped significantly. What I mean by that is slowing down, and taking a bath! Whenever I have pressure or a difficult situation I need to ruminate on, taking a bath helps to de-stress and spin the problem in a new light. I even bought shower crayons, and they’ve been helpful, to sketch out new solutions when the eureka moments hit.

I would be able to serve in a more visible and personally accountable position; at the moment, I am one of the visible volunteers to contact for general Renegade volunteer needs, while we are more loosely organized. At my day job, I am the client-facing point of contact between my company and the projects we work on, as well as the internal point of contact for my team and any other departments they need to interface with.

I’ve often had to handle heavy workloads, especially at my day job; at several points I have been responsible for running up to four projects concurrently. I prioritized effectively, communicated with my team to ensure their needs were met, and on the personal side, carved out time for myself and regulated my personal pressure. During those times, I also notified the Renegade volunteer teams I was serving on about my limitations, to ensure necessary operations were carried out without me holding anything up.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

Established the Renegade Instagram and TikTok.

Facilitated the creation of the other social media accounts, most notably the Dreamwidth.

Worked to establish and currently maintain our Membership list, Bookbinding 101 kit, and other resources still in progress.

Assisted in the creation of our AO3 collections, and personally maintain the Renegade Exchange collection.

Organized the volunteer discord.

Assisted in the creation of the satellite servers.

Assisted in the creation of the CoC and Renegade bylaws.

Set our Renegade events calendar for the past two years, since the creation of our overall Events volunteer team.

I have been part of the Exchange mod team for the past three years, and part of the Binderary and Retreat teams since the inception of the events.

Speaking directly to my events contributions, during the last Exchange, I upgraded our assignment emails to a shiny new email template; I also worked in conjunction with our other powerhouse mods (six and Aether!) to divide and conquer the workload in terms of checking permissions, assigning pinch-hitters, and more. I also created our master spreadsheet, which combined several years of our experience running the event; this massively helped with cutting down on manually searching through each participant submission, at all stages of the event.

With Binderary, I worked with Pip to establish an event checklist, and helped to create the workshop presenter/host pipeline. I created all of the Binderary 2024 social media graphics and was responsible for the creation of the public-facing workshop listings.

For the Retreat, my main task was to handle the volunteer scheduling, and the aggregation of information for the personalized itinerary packets for all Retreat attendees. I also organized the Library both before and during the event.

As for what I enjoy about my work, it remains the same across the board: the community. I do what I do because I love working with our other dynamite volunteers, and I love being able to help facilitate the community bonding that comes along with each new project.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

As Vice President, I would have two distinct functions: overseeing the Events team, and assisting the President in carrying out their organizational vision. In regards to the Events team, my primary goal as VP would be the creation of an Events manual; establishing official guidelines for how Renegade events are created, run, and maintained. This would make it easy for events to continue well into the future, should the current volunteers ever need or want to step down; right now, the only people who know the full ins and outs of the events are the mods themselves. Additionally, by establishing official Renegade events protocols - for example, regulating the collection of personal information, i.e., home addresses for the Exchange or legal names for the Retreat - also serves to protect the community and creates a standard of accountability for the organization.

Part of this endeavor will directly involve collaboration with the other board members, to integrate our processes; how do we promote events such as Binderary on our social media? How are our events run and how are they archived, on the new Renegade website? Where are our statistics submitted, to be kept and maintained by our Renegade Historian team? These are all things I would like to address, with the help of the newly-elected board.

What is your definition of a “book”?

Wikipedia defines a book as “a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images.” I find myself inclined to agree; a book is a vessel to tell a story, in whatever form that may take. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, as I’m sure anyone who looks at the Edible Book Day page on our website would tell you.

As the Doctor would say, “You want weapons? We're in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world.”

This community, and the ability to elevate the stories we think are worthy of it, is the best arsenal we could have.

What kind of events are you hoping to promote and organize during your tenure?

My focus, currently, is the firming of the events we currently run; at the moment, Renegade currently runs 7 events over the course of a year (6, on an even year, due to the Retreat). I would like to get Banned Books Week into a place where it can be a more low-stakes event, depending on support for it; this is an existing event similar to Edible Book Day, the annual celebration of the freedom to read, sponsored by the Banned Books Week Coalition.

However, the Exchange is our longest-running event as it moves into its fifth year, and I believe we are just now hitting our stride; I’d like to help the rest of our events streamline and reach that level of de-stress, for both the mods and participants, as well.

Administration is one of the things I do best. I currently serve as Secretary for the local chapter of my professional organization, taking official minutes at both virtual and hybrid meetings. I am also serving as Project Lead for an upcoming national-level project, where I am responsible for scheduling meetings, keeping notes, and tracking progress. Even in roles where I am not required to take minutes, I keep thorough notes to help make sure everyone is on the same page. I am an archivist by training and a librarian by profession, and I love working with data and organizing things in spreadsheets.

In addition to professional experience, I have been a staff head and run contest registration for various anime and fandom conventions. Because of this I also appreciate the importance of maintaining the separation of “real-life” personal and fannish identities, and this is something that I take very seriously. I’m comfortable working with all different kinds of people, and keep a level head and professional attitude when dealing with any issues or conflicts that may arise.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

Stepping up into a leadership role like this wouldn’t be a new thing for me—and this isn’t a particularly public-facing role, though it is more visible and has more responsibilities than my current Renegade volunteer position(s). As for managing a heavy workload, I’m actually in the middle of a major work project right now that’s set to wrap up next month after six months of training, testing, and meetings. I make lists and have a wall of sticky notes to make sure everything gets done. It’s been a real struggle to get through it mostly on my own, and I wouldn’t have made it this far without the support of my friends and family. It helps me to talk things through periodically to make sure the pressure I feel is something I need to act on or something I can let go of. I am much better at delegating than I used to be, and having a clear organizational structure in place makes my life a lot easier. My goal is to make sure that even if the process was stressful, it’s still something I’m proud to be part of.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

I’ve been part of the Renegade volunteer server since it started. Unfortunately my life got too busy to work on the newsletter as I had originally planned, but I’ve helped with organizing and modding workshops for Binderary for the past two years. I’m also part of the Secretarial Squad on call to take notes during meetings, though I have not yet been called to serve in this role.

Right now, I’m on my second run as mod for the Tiny Books Bang! Organizing a new event like this took a lot of discussion and planning, and it was fun getting to work with others who enjoy making tiny books as much as I do. As we’ve run into hiccups this year, I’ve taken on more responsibilities to keep things going (mostly) on schedule. Working with Lottie and Six and Zhalfirin has been great, and I’m so excited to see everyone’s creativity during all stages.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

One of the things I advocated for when discussing implementing membership dues was the idea of a “hardship” fund to assist guild members who are otherwise eligible but aren’t able to pay dues. Renegade’s freely available, community-oriented resources and emphasis on the viability of using low-cost and no-cost materials (“who needs tools?”) to create book art is extremely important to me, and even keeping the dues nominal can still create a barrier to participation. I would work with the Treasurer, Community Director, and the rest of the board to create a plan and establish a sustainable fund to assist with guild membership.

I would also prioritize working with the rest of the Directors to develop a document retention policy that is appropriate to both the work Renegade does as well as the state in which it is incorporated. My training as an archivist will come into play here, and while it isn’t very exciting work, it’s important to establish these policies early on to avoid future confusion and difficulty. I have worked with too many organizations where this isn’t an initial consideration, and it can lead to very messy recordkeeping and loss of information.

What is your definition of a “book”?

An information object intentionally compiled and contained within a cover of some kind! I am open to and intrigued by abstraction, so to me many different kinds of things can be books if designed and presented as such: a 14th century hand scroll, a trade paperback, a sandwich, a drawer of folded clothes. (Insert the “is this a ___?” meme here.) Books are a very flexible medium, but the intentionality is important—books don’t happen by accident. Book artists like Ben Denzer and Candace Hicks inspire me with the very fun (and very different) things they do with book forms. So far in my own fanbinding, I’ve tended to stick to the case binding structures I learned in grad school, but I’m fascinated by the shapes books have taken throughout the world since their development.

In my non-cyberspace life, I am a public librarian. Two parts of my job highly relevant to the Secretary position would include my secretarial duties for my library workgroup for the past two years and my work on the statistical analysis of item checkouts and how they are affected by season, location, and other merchandising tactics. I hold a bachelor degree in Communication which I bring to bear in a variety of ways including clear and concise communication. Outside of my education and work experience, I also bring a great and long-running love of organization via spreadsheets and a willingness to learn new skills and programs to keep organizational coordination and communication up to date. I have been a part of the Renegade Bindery Discord Mod team for 3.5 years. I am currently the Volunteer Historian Team Lead with a focus on such projects as statistics for participation in events hosted on the Renegade Bindery server and the Annual Renegade Census. I also help with the AO3 volunteer team as archival is very important to me. I attempt to maintain an ongoing archive of the Megamind and UnDeadwood fandoms as a member of those fan communities.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

I have often found that managing pressure is easiest when I have people around to bounce ideas off of. Managing pressure can be difficult when it feels as though all the burden is on your shoulders alone. By externalizing the dialogue that helps me process the decisions involved in higher-pressure situations, I feel as though the burden is shared even if all decisions remain firmly my own.

Becoming a more visible member of fan culture as a whole is something I am excited to do. I have spent a great deal of my time in fan communities as supportive in background ways and, while there are reasonable concerns about being visible in my connection between my online and real-life persona, I believe in and want to support the mission behind Renegade in sharing our skills and furthering the gift economy of fan culture.

My first summer working for the library was as an intern- I assisted at several programs but that was not my primary job. When the second summer arrived, I was a librarian and, for the first time, running daily (to my work schedule) programs for 10 weeks. The change in responsibilities and the rapid pace of summer created a lot of stress. Two weeks into the summer, I received a huge amount of help from my manager’s willingness to talk to me about what to prioritize and which tasks should receive less focus during the summer season. By halfway through the summer I had improved in my ability to handle the number of things on my plate and had a much easier time prioritizing on my own for summer three and beyond.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

I began moderating the Renegade Bindery Discord Server about 3 months into its existence. Moderating a server of (now) over 3000 members means a lot of backreading! Being a part of the moderation team has been a joyous experience in bringing some (but not too much) order to the chaos of a group of creative people working to share skills and express themselves in a little haven from censorship. While I’m a librarian with a communications degree for a reason, I also love spreadsheets a lot and was the person to initiate the Renegade Annual Census to get a snapshot of the Renegade community and a feel for how they see fanbinding as a craft and part of fan culture as a whole. With that in mind, I lead the Historians team on the volunteer server, working to ensure we keep statistics of things like server events such as Binderary and the Exchange. I feel like statistics and archival go hand in hand to some degree because wanting to see the shape of something and wanting a record of something are quite similar! It will likely come as no surprise that I have also contributed to the AO3 volunteer team to archive the fanworks included in events and suggested in the Renegade Bindery server.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

One of my goals is to increase volunteer recruitment from regions outside of North America. By including the voices of more European, Asian, Australian, and South American people in our volunteer pool, we can continue our events across time zones. We increase the accessibility of Renegade as a whole by having more volunteers who may speak languages in addition to English. If even a few of these volunteers would be willing to serve on the Translation team for even a short time, Renegade can expand our mission to share skills to more people worldwide. Having representatives on the Renegade volunteer team from a variety of places helps us reduce western-centric biases and colonialism in our policymaking.

What is your definition of a “book”?

A book is a functional piece of art built to contain, preserve, and transmit ideas across time, space, and culture.

To quote somecunttookmyurl.tumblr.com Jun 30-Jul 2, 2021:

…every human being across history has said, “I was here. I lived. I loved. I made something. I laughed. I cried. Please do not forget me.”

…

I wrote it for you, stranger I will never meet

and if you print it then maybe somebody finds it, somewhere, in the back of a drawer in 100 years and hold it in their hands and love me as I love them

Do not forget about me, please

And to me that is what books are about.

I have a Bachelor’s degree in accounting, worked as a financial auditor for 4 years, and a tax preparer for 6 years. I previously served a 3 year term as Treasurer for a nonprofit organization and managed organization assets of over $130,000. While I am certain there are many things I still need to learn if elected, I think I have a good understanding of the steps we need to take to establish best practices as a new organization to ensure our longevity and service to this community.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

I love hiking and being active. A nightly walk in the neighborhood has been a lifesaver during stressful time. I am an extroverted person, and I draw energy often from being around others and talking to people. In the most stressful time I’ve had so far in life, I made conscious efforts to meet up with friends and be physically active to help myself cope better.

If elected I will do additional research to find the state where board of directors and members are afforded the highest level of privacy.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

I have volunteered on the committee for establishing our 501c3. I am a moderator in the California server since its inception. I have worked with other California server mods to develop the meetup policy we have to protect our members. I have organized a few group orders for California and group buy servers.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

Renegade has always been focused on building inclusive community where anyone can learn to bind books. I have benefited so much from discussions in their server, in person meetups, and retreats, this is the value that sets Renegade apart from most other bookbinding resources. In order to continue fostering an organization to provide more of these types of activities for our members, we need robust financial internal controls to foster trust within our membership. I will support the projects the elected board decides to focus on and develop the processes we will need to safeguard monetary contributions from our members.

What is your definition of a “book”?

The physical book is a cohesive collection of materials that are used for communication.

15 years of experience and participation in fandom community in multiple fandoms, including as a discord moderator (outside Renegade) and participant in fandom exchanges and Big Bang events.

Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology.

7 years of on-the-job leadership experience of organizations ranging in size from 25 to 60 personnel, including goal setting, disciplinary action, and regulatory compliance. This included ensuring HIPAA, DEI/Equal Opportunity, and Privacy Policies were adhered to.

Development of phased training plans to build a team to accomplish a particular goal, or ensure annual certification on required tasks for the organization.

Public speaker experience as a host of official ceremonies, in interviews for ongoing projects in my organization, and for presentations to multinational audiences.

Social media manager for my organization; ensured all published photos were in line with organization public guidelines and that non-organization members and children had agreed to public posting via privacy disclosure forms.

Experience in managing support relationships between my own organization and parent, peer, and external organizations (including foreign government organizations).

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

I work in a fairly high pressure and visible real life job, wherein I am legally liable for both persons and property. It’s not something I am unfamiliar with. When you have a heavy workload, it is key to identify your priorities - what things have hard deadlines, what things can be shifted to a later date, and what things can be delegated. Additionally, you must communicate those priorities and potential conflicts and shifts in timeline and responsibility to the other members of your team. Seeking advice from other members of the team can defuse some of the pressure and help you see other avenues to accomplish tasks or address problems.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

As a Renegade volunteer, I’ve worked as a member of the discord mod team for both the main server and the Renegade Asia satellite server, and I enjoy the way it both encourages me to interact with the community at large and allows me to assist in the framework that protects and supports it. I was the organizer and moderator for Renegade’s first in-person panel at HavenCon 2022 with Tiffo, Robin, and ASH, and have organized and moderated each Renegade Year in Review for Binderary since then. HavenCon was a ton of fun, and I think we had a great time running the panel; I really enjoyed how it drove us to more firmly articulate some of the desires, goals, and ethos of Renegade. Related to that and HavenCon, I served as the team lead for the development of the Renegade Manifesto, working with Teo, Laura, and Robert off of ASH’s iconic “I am a Guerilla Publisher” post. It was so fun to hand out flyers of that work at HavenCon. I do think my best work has been with regards to the Code of Conduct. I suggested that we formalize some of our discussed ethics given how loud and large fanbinding was becoming, and it turned into a fantastic collaborative effort with lots of really productive debate. Since then, I’ve run the annual review and update to the Code of Conduct.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

I think the most important goal during my term will be the establishment of policies, resources, and processes for Renegade’s start as a non-profit organization. I really value Renegade’s educational mission and the resources and community it provides; I love how open every member of Renegade is to sharing tips and techniques, and I love that our resources aren’t locked behind a paywall. Securing a firm foundation in support of that goal will be critical in our first few years. This will require our first board of directors to work together to ensure we are developing policies that support and reinforce Renegade’s goals and ethics. I would approach this through a combination of research into what Renegade must legally abide by and best practices in the field, and seeking feedback and review from other members of the board and community volunteers.

What is your definition of a “book”?

I think that the definition of a “book” has been shifting and will continue to shift alongside changes and developments in technology, and it’s hard to lock down any one definition; you could describe physical attributes - pages gathered together into a unit - but that excludes audio books and ebooks, which I believe most still consider to be books. It’s ultimately a vessel for communication, whether past or future, of either art or words. In that sense I suppose there are things which have the likeness of a book; things which have the spirit of a book; and things which have the function of a book, and it’s some nebulous combination where you find the answer.

In my non-cyberspace life, I am a public librarian. Two parts of my job highly relevant to the Volunteer Director position would include my coordination of the Teen Summer Volunteers since 2018 and advocating for use of brand identity within company promotional materials systemwide. I have participated in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training, including additional optional trainings provided by my workplace. I hold a bachelor degree in Communication which I bring to bear in a variety of ways including clear and concise communication. Outside of my education and work experience, I also bring a great and long-running love of organization via spreadsheets and a willingness to learn new skills and programs to keep organizational coordination and communication up to date. I have been a part of the Renegade Bindery Discord Mod team for 3.5 years. I am currently the Volunteer Historian Team Lead with a focus on such projects as statistics for participation in events hosted on the Renegade Bindery server and the Annual Renegade Census. I also help with the AO3 volunteer team as archival is very important to me. I attempt to maintain an ongoing archive of the Megamind and UnDeadwood fandoms as a member of those fan communities.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

I have often found that managing pressure is easiest when I have people around to bounce ideas off of. Managing pressure can be difficult when it feels as though all the burden is on your shoulders alone. By externalizing the dialogue that helps me process the decisions involved in higher-pressure situations, I feel as though the burden is shared even if all decisions remain firmly my own.

Becoming a more visible member of fan culture as a whole is something I am excited to do. I have spent a great deal of my time in fan communities as supportive in background ways and, while there are reasonable concerns about being visible in my connection between my online and real-life persona, I believe in and want to support the mission behind Renegade in sharing our skills and furthering the gift economy of fan culture.

My first summer working for the library was as an intern- I assisted at several programs but that was not my primary job. When the second summer arrived, I was a librarian and, for the first time, running daily (to my work schedule) programs for 10 weeks. The change in responsibilities and the rapid pace of summer created a lot of stress. Two weeks into the summer, I received a huge amount of help from my manager’s willingness to talk to me about what to prioritize and which tasks should receive less focus during the summer season. By halfway through the summer I had improved in my ability to handle the number of things on my plate and had a much easier time prioritizing on my own for summer three and beyond.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

I began moderating the Renegade Bindery Discord Server about 3 months into its existence. Moderating a server of (now) over 3000 members means a lot of backreading! Being a part of the moderation team has been a joyous experience in bringing some (but not too much) order to the chaos of a group of creative people working to share skills and express themselves in a little haven from censorship. While I’m a librarian with a communications degree for a reason, I also love spreadsheets a lot and was the person to initiate the Renegade Annual Census to get a snapshot of the Renegade community and a feel for how they see fanbinding as a craft and part of fan culture as a whole. With that in mind, I lead the Historians team on the volunteer server, working to ensure we keep statistics of things like server events such as Binderary and the Exchange. I feel like statistics and archival go hand in hand to some degree because wanting to see the shape of something and wanting a record of something are quite similar! It will likely come as no surprise that I have also contributed to the AO3 volunteer team to archive the fanworks included in events and suggested in the Renegade Bindery server.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

One of my goals is to increase volunteer recruitment from regions outside of North America. By including the voices of more European, Asian, Australian, and South American people in our volunteer pool, we can continue our events across time zones. We increase the accessibility of Renegade as a whole by having more volunteers who may speak languages in addition to English. If even a few of these volunteers would be willing to serve on the Translation team for even a short time, Renegade can expand our mission to share skills to more people worldwide. Having representatives on the Renegade volunteer team from a variety of places helps us reduce western-centric biases and colonialism in our policymaking.

What is your definition of a “book”?

A book is a functional piece of art built to contain, preserve, and transmit ideas across time, space, and culture.

To quote somecunttookmyurl.tumblr.com Jun 30-Jul 2, 2021:

…every human being across history has said, “I was here. I lived. I loved. I made something. I laughed. I cried. Please do not forget me.”

…

I wrote it for you, stranger I will never meet

and if you print it then maybe somebody finds it, somewhere, in the back of a drawer in 100 years and hold it in their hands and love me as I love them

Do not forget about me, please

And to me that is what books are about.

As Volunteer Director, what policies would you advocate for to protect volunteers from harassment?

As Volunteer Director, any policies could only protect volunteers from harassment from within Renegade spaces, either within the Renegade Bindery Discord Server or from fellow volunteers. I would want to make clear to volunteers how much information about themselves as volunteers is or would be visible to others outside of the volunteer sphere for what they create or do on Renegade Bookbinding Guild’s behalf. The Renegade Bindery Discord has a warning and ban system in place to reduce the chances of harassment but I would like to take this further by illustrating for volunteers a flowchart of what would be harassment and necessitate involving the Volunteer Director, the mods of the Renegade Bindery Discord, or both. The Renegade Bookbinding Guild has a system in place for removing Guild members for Guild-level misconduct. To remove volunteers from their positions, I think it would be wise to implement and use a similar system with a ruleset specific to volunteers, following the future volunteer code of conduct’s implementation.

I bring a very particular set of meticulous skills. I’m medicated for them, in fact. As a very pragmatic, detail-oriented person I find myself best suited for tasks that require organization, methodicalness, and candor. When I’m done, administrative tasks don’t know what hit them. I am currently the Director of my public library, a job that delivers many of the same tasks as the positions I’m running for–maintaining and reviewing policies/procedures, public relations, community organization, equitable access to collections and resources, and nice cardigan sweaters.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

Through my most recent work as a library Director I’ve inherited a very challenging workload. There was a lot of neglect, and inappropriate decisions that prioritized ultimate personal comforts over public service. To manage this I keep detailed calendars, notes both digital and physical, and has also involved a rewrite of all of our policies. With this role has also come a jacked increase in public responsibility, though I’ve always embraced that; my work as one of the community discord server’s moderators has hopefully preceded me, and proven that I have these skills.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

My ongoing volunteer work with Renegade includes moderating the community Discord server; however I did not join the team until March of 2022. I took on the more administrative tasks of unifying our server, as it wasn’t necessarily created with thousands of people in mind. I worked to establish bots, as well as the method new members must take to gain access to the server, in the interest of protecting people’s privacy. I work in the background coordinating with volunteer event moderators to make sure they have the resources they need to run their events smoothly, such as: dedicated channels, those channel’s permissions settings, appropriate roles, and protection of people’s private or sensitive information. This all requires timeliness, and specificity. All of this I enjoy greatly, and find myself suited for.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

Personally, my deepest love about Renegade is the sharing of information with no strings attached. I would like to nurture this by minding ways in which members can more easily do so, while also protecting their educational messages and materials from exploitative people. Tailoring our guild’s policies towards the protection of personal information, as well as the consent of the originator, will be a priority of mine. This will also involve working with misconduct reviews boards of fellow members to make sure appropriate action is taken should those boundaries be crossed, and it’s in those times that thorough, deliberate policies will protect members from potentially compromising situations.

What is your definition of a “book”?

I usually keep very few requirements. Can I put a bookmark in it? Does it look nice on my shelf? Behold: he’s a book!

As Volunteer Director, what policies would you advocate for to protect volunteers from harassment?

In these scenarios I feel adaptive policies are vital. A policy so inflexible as brick is not helpful to anyone. As each situation will be unique it is important that the policies ultimately have room in which misconduct boards can wiggle. I believe the terms of harassment and conflict are fluid, and just like any other interaction between two people, is sometimes inevitable, so guaranteeing we have the tools for recourse is also important. By holding the privileges of membership in confidence, we can do our best to discourage bad behavior. This said though I do believe there are also places where hard lines must be drawn, where a violation is an immediate expulsion. Policies against doxing and general consent of information are a priority, and would require a careful curation of evidence and testimony.

I have over a decade of hands-on project management experience, leading my team and collaborating with outside contractors and project stakeholders. I determine scheduling, workload, and sticking points on the critical path of projects, and communicate the issues and facilitate solutions to, and with, all affected parties to ensure we all stay on schedule. I also write detailed reports of a technical subject, after interpreting code and client standards, for review by executives and other non technical personnel, presenting information in a clear and concise manner.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

I routinely work 50+ hour weeks, dealing with multi-million dollar projects with strict deadlines. Pressure is always there, you just have to keep making progress, and you’ll be through to the other side before you know it. I’m not sure how any more personally accountable my volunteering could get, it’s always been my name on my work, and nothing will change in that regard. As for visibility, inside Renegade I don’t think I could say I have a household name, but I like to think I’m plenty visible. Outside of Renegade, there will always be naysayers and detractors looking down on us, but with the community and support we give each other, I’m not worried about it.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

I first joined Renegade’s volunteer crew when the server put out a call during Binderary, 2023. I joined specifically as part of the Historians under Aliya, helping with the censuses and post-Binderary surveys. Rhi, you have my eternal thanks for sorting and organizing the 117 separate fandoms.

Six led the way with our first Edible Book Day in April of that year and I was completely enamored with the idea. We had a great turnout for the inaugural year, with several cookalongs and hangouts in the craftchat. We just celebrated our second EBD with even more community engagement and wonderful end results, and I'm pleased that the 2023 EBD Spatulas were received to universal love and adoration by the winners of the vote. All of you who participated this year, be on the lookout for the vote for the winners leading up to the kickoff of EBD 2025.

I would love to engage the community on a more regular basis with smaller, lower stakes and even lower barrier of entry events. Renegade’s ability to take an idea and run with it further than you would have thought possible is one of my favorite things about this community.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

The first Volunteer Director will have to have a particular focus in laying down initial policies and guidelines whose precedents will shape the way Volunteers work together. For people to follow policies it has to be easy and there has to be a self reinforcing culture promoting them to ensure they last through several waves of new volunteers joining our team.

My goal would be to grow that culture to foster communication between teams without stifling the freeform creativity that independent volunteers enjoy. It would allow those teams to tackle tasks of greater scope by collaborative efforts between volunteers with different skill sets while allowing accountability and mutual goal setting, without having to rely on personal relationships between groups that may not otherwise interact on a regular basis.

What is your definition of a “book”?

A Book is a heavy, leather bound, thick-volumed tome that can leave a dent in a coffee table and break a toe, or a lightweight paperback with the most delightful hidden fore-edge painting you've ever seen. Something you desperately share with friends and delight in when they read and something so deeply personal that you can't bear to lend out your own copy. Capable of reaching to the very core of your being, that decades later, you are still under its sway. A book is what you make it. Isn't it wonderful to be making them?

As Volunteer Director, what policies would you advocate for to protect volunteers from harassment?

A comprehensive anti-harassment policy is multifaceted, and is not just a sheet of paper that gets passed around once a year for everyone to sign off on. It is a culture that understands that harassment is not to be tolerated, with a clear and easily understood anti-harassment policy, that includes both a safe and confidential way to report harassment and a prompt, consistent response to objectionable conduct when a report is made. It also must encourage those in leadership positions to take an active role in preventing harassment through training and communication.

Communication: I am comfortable communicating with others about goals and expectations, and ensuring that it suits the tone of what is being said. Being open, friendly and professional (to an extent) I have found ensures that the other person is comfortable communicating with you, as well.

Teamwork: I have enjoyed working with the Renegade Volunteers as long as I have, and I believe that my experience in working with other team members (specifically in Renegade: communicating about events information for the Tumblr, with the other Discord mods) would be an invaluable part of being a Community Director.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

Techniques for managing pressure on myself comes down to a few things, and mostly it is making sure there’s clear communication with others involved in projects, and finding a balance by having clear things I can do which would ease that pressure, such as reading or bookbinding. Communication for me is key - I need to have clear expectations and boundaries set so that I am aware of what the goal is, as that typically helps with any pressure I may feel. Having time to do the things I love is also important, as having time for yourself is usually a great way to reset, and come at things from a different angle as it puts those pressures on a back burner.

Stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position would increase the pressure, a bit, but I would be so excited to participate in helping Renegade’s goals come to fruition.

Currently, I am studying at university, working part time, renovating my house and have a (somewhat ;v) involved social life. Managing heavy workloads, for me, mostly comes down to time management. It helps me to visualise things by planning things out with a calendar, and ensuring that everything has a fair amount of time dedicated to it. During busy times of the year this can obviously become harder, however having a great support system in place (including family, friends, work colleagues) and communicating with people in a clear and concise manner helps with heavy workloads enormously in my experience.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

Tumblr: I have been the team lead on the Tumblr team. This has mostly involved getting to add everyone’s beautiful binds to the Tumblr queue, but has also included liaising with events team people to ensure that graphics/information about events has been posted on Tumblr; updating the Tumblr to reflect new and updated information about Renegade Guild, such as the pinned posts, the about, FAQ, and resources pages; answering asks both publicly and privately; other general blog maintenance. I enjoy doing this, as it is the face of what a lot of people first see Renegade as, and sharing everyone’s binds and enthusiasm is such a delight! Also, it’s very satisfying adding all the tags to the posts haha.

Discord Mod: I have been a discord mod for the Renegade Bindery Discord for a couple of years now, and I enjoy working with the whole mod team - we chat about all the decisions made, and it makes you feel very involved and like your contribution matters. Mostly I have contributed to discussions about decisions to be made when they have been brought up, and am involved with general moderating of the server. That being said, the Renegade Bindery Discord is probably the chillest server I have ever been apart of, which makes the job very easy and not stressful.

A huge reason why I would love to join the Board, is that I would like to be more involved in Renegade as a whole!

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

Community engagement is something both I and Renegade value quite highly. It has been seen in the types of volunteer work that I have already participated in, and I would love to continue that work as a potential Community Director. An organisation like Renegade would not exist without the community that has grown with it, and I strongly believe that it’s because of the accepting community, great events and passion of everyone involved, that I believe this is truly the best fandom experience that I have had. I believe that working towards this long-term goal as a group would be best done by having open communication and clearly setting goals for everyone so that everyone is aware of the expectations.

What is your definition of a “book”?

Anything that’s been bound together to form a group of pages to convey some kind of information, whether that is through images or words or both. I enjoy how versatile book making truly is - it’s only limited by our resources, skillset and imagination!

Thank you for reading through this!

I bring a very particular set of meticulous skills. I’m medicated for them, in fact. As a very pragmatic, detail-oriented person I find myself best suited for tasks that require organization, methodicalness, and candor. When I’m done, administrative tasks don’t know what hit them. I am currently the Director of my public library, a job that delivers many of the same tasks as the positions I’m running for–maintaining and reviewing policies/procedures, public relations, community organization, equitable access to collections and resources, and nice cardigan sweaters.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

Through my most recent work as a library Director I’ve inherited a very challenging workload. There was a lot of neglect, and inappropriate decisions that prioritized ultimate personal comforts over public service. To manage this I keep detailed calendars, notes both digital and physical, and has also involved a rewrite of all of our policies. With this role has also come a jacked increase in public responsibility, though I’ve always embraced that; my work as one of the community discord server’s moderators has hopefully preceded me, and proven that I have these skills.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

My ongoing volunteer work with Renegade includes moderating the community Discord server; however I did not join the team until March of 2022. I took on the more administrative tasks of unifying our server, as it wasn’t necessarily created with thousands of people in mind. I worked to establish bots, as well as the method new members must take to gain access to the server, in the interest of protecting people’s privacy. I work in the background coordinating with volunteer event moderators to make sure they have the resources they need to run their events smoothly, such as: dedicated channels, those channel’s permissions settings, appropriate roles, and protection of people’s private or sensitive information. This all requires timeliness, and specificity. All of this I enjoy greatly, and find myself suited for.

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

Personally, my deepest love about Renegade is the sharing of information with no strings attached. I would like to nurture this by minding ways in which members can more easily do so, while also protecting their educational messages and materials from exploitative people. Tailoring our guild’s policies towards the protection of personal information, as well as the consent of the originator, will be a priority of mine. This will also involve working with misconduct reviews boards of fellow members to make sure appropriate action is taken should those boundaries be crossed, and it’s in those times that thorough, deliberate policies will protect members from potentially compromising situations.

What is your definition of a “book”?

I usually keep very few requirements. Can I put a bookmark in it? Does it look nice on my shelf? Behold: he’s a book!

As a forerunner in pioneering the Renegade satellite servers, I got to see firsthand the rapid growth the community experienced and the needs that arose with that growth. This involved a lot of learning including, but not limited to: managing a bustling online community, mediating conflicts between members, establishing guidelines, and appointing/working closely with fellow moderators to assure everything flows smoothly. I feel the position of Community Director would be a natural extension of these roles I currently play.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell us about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

I am a big proponent of making lists. I have two within line of sight as I write this. Simply writing down the things I need to do alleviates a lot of pressure and allows me to move forward to organizing my game plan. I always make sure to include things I enjoy amongst the necessary duties. Even something as simple as scheduling a walk outside can change the mood of the day and refresh me for the next thing. The nature of my career is that I will often be given a sudden, heavy workload. Alternatively, I’ve found that while my lists help, this is an instance where you only get better by doing. Communication and flexibility are how I approach handling complex and heavy workloads. Through communication I have been able to prioritize tasks and through flexibility I have adapted to accept the input of others and change as the situation dictates.

Please provide a brief history of your volunteer work with Renegade. What projects and teams have you worked on, what have you enjoyed about them, and how would you describe your contributions? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.

Establishing the Renegade California satellite server as well as the Renegade Group Buy server (formerly, lovingly, referred to as the Duo FOMO server). I moderate for both groups and serve as the point of contact for Renegade members that wish to join the California satellite. In the California server I have run two holiday competitions with prizes. Most recently I have joined the team of Retreat volunteers where I hope to help make this upcoming Retreat the best yet!

Choose one or two goals for Renegade that are important to you and that you would like to prioritize during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?

I would like to work towards creating incentives to increase guild membership. As it is, many bindery members are not aware of the distinction between the discord and the guild. The distinction is important, because while the discord members share a common interest, guild membership unites under shared values with respect to the tradition of fandom ethics. For example, once incorporated we would be in position to reach out to businesses for potential discount codes and guild rates on bookbinding supplies. Working alongside the resource team, this is an avenue we can pursue to further this goal of increasing guild membership.

What is your definition of a “book”?

Boy howdy has this answer changed since finding Renegade. To put a more precise pin on it, since discovering Edible Book Day and my world being turned upside down with possibilities — both delicious and decidedly not so. When I used to print out fanfiction and hole punch each sheet for a 3-ring binder (which I would decorate with questionable sense of decorum), that would function as a book for me. A book is what you make it.