1
General Discussion / Re: 2012 Executive Council Members
« on: March 12, 2012, 04:46:41 PM »
Congratulations to all of you! I'm eager to help out with whatever I can.
Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Pages: [1] 2
2
General Discussion / Re: Questions for all EC Candidates
« on: February 23, 2012, 02:41:20 PM »
Thanks for posting this thread, Suzi!
1. "The mission of Poetry Slam Incorporated (PSI) is to promote the performance and creation of poetry while cultivating literary activities and spoken word events in order to build audience participation, stimulate creativity, awaken minds, foster education, inspire mentoring, encourage artistic statement and engage communities worldwide in the revelry of language."
How do you plan to help this organization grow and accomplish this mission? Please be specific.
I believe that this mission must be worked toward from multiple angles, some internal (taking stock of various organizational redundancies, streamlining a year-round volunteer process), and some external. The most important, or certainly the most beneficial in the long term, is an increased focus on creating a professional, engaging internet presence: a quality set of online resources that we can actually direct new poets and audience members to. Along with many other candidates, I believe a quality youtube channel (with a selection of live and produced performances) is a huge part of this. I go into more detail about my specific ideas for this in my bid.
However, I believe that internet presence should not be solely focused on marketing ourselves/our art to new potential audience members, but also on accomplishing the other factors of the mission statement. For example, we could have a workshop forum/area for new/young poets on the redesigned PSI website. I’m sure there are a lot of experienced poets, myself included, who would be able to stop in and give constructive criticism. This would be a great way to help draw new poets into the community, and to foster their creative talents, especially for poets who don’t have access to a nationally associated local slam scene.
In terms of cultivating our regular events, I think we can find ways to increase the quality, profile, and attendance of those events beyond just raising our national profile. For example, if we could find a city in each region in the country that's interested in putting in a longer term bid, so that our major events could rotate between these cities (for example, City A could have NPS one year, IWPS two years later, WOWPS two years after that, then back to NPS...) Creating long-term relationships with those cities would cut down on a huge amount of the organizational work from year to year, and would be a great way to keep steady audiences at our major events while letting other cities focus on regional events, and potentially putting in larger bids after gaining success at the regional level.
2. What experience do you have with non-profit organizations - as an employee, as a volunteer, as a board member? I am especially interested in hearing about experience working with non-profit ARTS organizations, but I do think that all of your professional experience is relevant.
My main volunteer work was with PSI for NPS in Saint Paul, which I will go into later. I don’t have a great deal of previous non-profit experience, though I have worked with numerous other local arts organizations, in leadership and volunteer roles. I founded and currently run the Macalester College Poetry Slam, I am co-president of my college’s sketch comedy troupe, I volunteer my time monthly to the Saint Paul and Minneapolis city slams, and I do internet and other organizational volunteer work for Button Poetry and Poetry Observed. Whether or not I get elected to the EC, I am interested in continuing to volunteer a great deal of my time to PSI projects going forward.
3. How many hours a week do you have available to dedicate to PSI? And what is your typical availability (days/evenings/weekends)?
I am currently finishing up my final semester of undergrad education, so my specific times of availability will shift come summer. That said, I currently have 15-20 hours a week available to dedicate to PSI, largely on weekends though also most evenings and at scattered times throughout the day. After I graduate in early May, I will have even more time available. I already keep a close eye on the forums, and as I said above, I will continue to do so and to dedicate my time to these discussions whether I’m elected to the EC or not.
4. What would you most like to see changed about PSI? What would you most like to see preserved?
Above everything else, I want the sense of community and the sense of communal respect to remain. We are a group of incredibly creative people, and while sometimes our ideas and visions may seem to clash (the unnecessary dichotomy of focusing on the competition vs. focusing on the art), we all ultimately have the same goals and interests in mind: the preservation and progress of this art form, on every level.
I believe the changes I would like to see are largely articulated in my response to the first question, but I’ll summarize here: I would like to help PSI gain a stronger control of its inner workings, both organizational and financial, so that the incredible variety of brilliant ideas proposed by its members can be fully implemented. I would like to see PSI become a model for other arts organizations in terms of internet presence, successful events, education, and community outreach, and for us to investigate other organizations that are already successful in these regards so we can learn from that success.
5. Do you believe that the concept of legacy is important to PSi? If not, why not? If so, how would you see that manifested?
Having just entered the scene four years ago, I believe the concept of legacy is very important to PSI. I personally want to help preserve a better record of all parts of that legacy. PSI, and through it slam poetry as an art form, has gone through so many changes over the last twenty five years, in terms of style, competition, careers, etc. I want that path to be documented, and in an engaging and publicly available way, hopefully as part of the website redesign (for example, we could have a timeline-like graphic, interviews with and information about previous national champions, both team and individual, a record of workshops from past national events, and links to the poets who ran/run them, etc.)
The knowledge of where you’re coming from and where you’re entering into an art form is important, and would be incredibly helpful for new poets. A deeper sense of what came before will help inspire new writers, and give them ideas for what they can do artistically and organizationally going forward.
In response to Nicole’s questions:
Luckily, I have not had to deal with that on a serious level at my local college slam, though after one slam I did personally talk with a first-time performer who made female members of the audience uncomfortable, and warned him that we wouldn’t tolerate that kind of content in the future. On the national level, I believe that we absolutely have to put the interests of safety first. There are predatory poets who are still extremely successful in our community, because they are well connected and many poets/shows put the interests of publicity and connection over concerns about the poets themselves. It’s a difficult issue, as we don’t want to start witch-hunts after specific people who haven’t been proven guilty of anything, but I think that it needs to be a much more public and prevalent discussion, so that incidents don’t get swept under the table.
As for PSI work, I volunteered as the Street Team Coordinator for NPS in Saint Paul in 2010. I go into more detail about that in my bid, but in summary, I sat in on all of the Host City committee meetings, gave input on marketing and organizational decisions, organized the street level publicity effort and spent a great deal of my own time interacting with local businesses about promoting the event.
If anyone has more specific questions in response to what I said here or in my bid, I’d love to address them. My bid can be found here: http://www.poetryslam.com/forum/index.php?topic=7447.0
1. "The mission of Poetry Slam Incorporated (PSI) is to promote the performance and creation of poetry while cultivating literary activities and spoken word events in order to build audience participation, stimulate creativity, awaken minds, foster education, inspire mentoring, encourage artistic statement and engage communities worldwide in the revelry of language."
How do you plan to help this organization grow and accomplish this mission? Please be specific.
I believe that this mission must be worked toward from multiple angles, some internal (taking stock of various organizational redundancies, streamlining a year-round volunteer process), and some external. The most important, or certainly the most beneficial in the long term, is an increased focus on creating a professional, engaging internet presence: a quality set of online resources that we can actually direct new poets and audience members to. Along with many other candidates, I believe a quality youtube channel (with a selection of live and produced performances) is a huge part of this. I go into more detail about my specific ideas for this in my bid.
However, I believe that internet presence should not be solely focused on marketing ourselves/our art to new potential audience members, but also on accomplishing the other factors of the mission statement. For example, we could have a workshop forum/area for new/young poets on the redesigned PSI website. I’m sure there are a lot of experienced poets, myself included, who would be able to stop in and give constructive criticism. This would be a great way to help draw new poets into the community, and to foster their creative talents, especially for poets who don’t have access to a nationally associated local slam scene.
In terms of cultivating our regular events, I think we can find ways to increase the quality, profile, and attendance of those events beyond just raising our national profile. For example, if we could find a city in each region in the country that's interested in putting in a longer term bid, so that our major events could rotate between these cities (for example, City A could have NPS one year, IWPS two years later, WOWPS two years after that, then back to NPS...) Creating long-term relationships with those cities would cut down on a huge amount of the organizational work from year to year, and would be a great way to keep steady audiences at our major events while letting other cities focus on regional events, and potentially putting in larger bids after gaining success at the regional level.
2. What experience do you have with non-profit organizations - as an employee, as a volunteer, as a board member? I am especially interested in hearing about experience working with non-profit ARTS organizations, but I do think that all of your professional experience is relevant.
My main volunteer work was with PSI for NPS in Saint Paul, which I will go into later. I don’t have a great deal of previous non-profit experience, though I have worked with numerous other local arts organizations, in leadership and volunteer roles. I founded and currently run the Macalester College Poetry Slam, I am co-president of my college’s sketch comedy troupe, I volunteer my time monthly to the Saint Paul and Minneapolis city slams, and I do internet and other organizational volunteer work for Button Poetry and Poetry Observed. Whether or not I get elected to the EC, I am interested in continuing to volunteer a great deal of my time to PSI projects going forward.
3. How many hours a week do you have available to dedicate to PSI? And what is your typical availability (days/evenings/weekends)?
I am currently finishing up my final semester of undergrad education, so my specific times of availability will shift come summer. That said, I currently have 15-20 hours a week available to dedicate to PSI, largely on weekends though also most evenings and at scattered times throughout the day. After I graduate in early May, I will have even more time available. I already keep a close eye on the forums, and as I said above, I will continue to do so and to dedicate my time to these discussions whether I’m elected to the EC or not.
4. What would you most like to see changed about PSI? What would you most like to see preserved?
Above everything else, I want the sense of community and the sense of communal respect to remain. We are a group of incredibly creative people, and while sometimes our ideas and visions may seem to clash (the unnecessary dichotomy of focusing on the competition vs. focusing on the art), we all ultimately have the same goals and interests in mind: the preservation and progress of this art form, on every level.
I believe the changes I would like to see are largely articulated in my response to the first question, but I’ll summarize here: I would like to help PSI gain a stronger control of its inner workings, both organizational and financial, so that the incredible variety of brilliant ideas proposed by its members can be fully implemented. I would like to see PSI become a model for other arts organizations in terms of internet presence, successful events, education, and community outreach, and for us to investigate other organizations that are already successful in these regards so we can learn from that success.
5. Do you believe that the concept of legacy is important to PSi? If not, why not? If so, how would you see that manifested?
Having just entered the scene four years ago, I believe the concept of legacy is very important to PSI. I personally want to help preserve a better record of all parts of that legacy. PSI, and through it slam poetry as an art form, has gone through so many changes over the last twenty five years, in terms of style, competition, careers, etc. I want that path to be documented, and in an engaging and publicly available way, hopefully as part of the website redesign (for example, we could have a timeline-like graphic, interviews with and information about previous national champions, both team and individual, a record of workshops from past national events, and links to the poets who ran/run them, etc.)
The knowledge of where you’re coming from and where you’re entering into an art form is important, and would be incredibly helpful for new poets. A deeper sense of what came before will help inspire new writers, and give them ideas for what they can do artistically and organizationally going forward.
In response to Nicole’s questions:
Luckily, I have not had to deal with that on a serious level at my local college slam, though after one slam I did personally talk with a first-time performer who made female members of the audience uncomfortable, and warned him that we wouldn’t tolerate that kind of content in the future. On the national level, I believe that we absolutely have to put the interests of safety first. There are predatory poets who are still extremely successful in our community, because they are well connected and many poets/shows put the interests of publicity and connection over concerns about the poets themselves. It’s a difficult issue, as we don’t want to start witch-hunts after specific people who haven’t been proven guilty of anything, but I think that it needs to be a much more public and prevalent discussion, so that incidents don’t get swept under the table.
As for PSI work, I volunteered as the Street Team Coordinator for NPS in Saint Paul in 2010. I go into more detail about that in my bid, but in summary, I sat in on all of the Host City committee meetings, gave input on marketing and organizational decisions, organized the street level publicity effort and spent a great deal of my own time interacting with local businesses about promoting the event.
If anyone has more specific questions in response to what I said here or in my bid, I’d love to address them. My bid can be found here: http://www.poetryslam.com/forum/index.php?topic=7447.0
3
General Discussion / Re: NPS Dates?
« on: February 22, 2012, 02:08:22 PM »
Thanks, Henry! Very helpful to a couple of twin cites poets who now know they'll be able to attend...
4
General Discussion / Re: PSi FB Discussion Tab
« on: February 22, 2012, 02:07:42 PM »
Of course they did... because "comments and discussions on walls" are clearly easier to manage and keep track of than an organized, forum-like system... I think Mark Zuckerberg wakes up each day and picks a random idea out of a gold-plated hat next to his bed, and then instructs his minions to implement it just to see what happens.
5
General Discussion / Re: 2012 WoW COMPETITOR LIST
« on: February 20, 2012, 02:37:40 PM »
This is another reason that an objective, transparent, replicable process for picking the storm poets would be to everyone's benefit, and should be a priority for these individual events going forward.
@T Miller: The fact that the number of poets interested in competing at IWPS and WOWPS is now regularly and substantially exceeding the limit is definitely something that should be considered and planned for going forward. That said, though you're right that more poets could just be added to each venue, a prelims bout with 15 poets is a completely different competition than with 12 poets , and one that the current format doesn't really support. Issues of score creep, luck, etc. all get exponentially compounded the more poets you add to an indie bout, and that seems like an unfair change to spring on all of the competitors a couple of weeks before the event.
@T Miller: The fact that the number of poets interested in competing at IWPS and WOWPS is now regularly and substantially exceeding the limit is definitely something that should be considered and planned for going forward. That said, though you're right that more poets could just be added to each venue, a prelims bout with 15 poets is a completely different competition than with 12 poets , and one that the current format doesn't really support. Issues of score creep, luck, etc. all get exponentially compounded the more poets you add to an indie bout, and that seems like an unfair change to spring on all of the competitors a couple of weeks before the event.
7
General Discussion / Re: Logic, running for EC
« on: February 20, 2012, 02:07:16 PM »
Anyway---I love your database suggestion, marking all the ideas that work AND fail.
Shrimp bisque, man...I'm curious!
I often see ideas bandies about on here, that have good intentions, but they have already been tried, tested, and failed. I think if we had some place where people could go and see (sort of like a idea FAQ), because we have this constant turnover and infusion of new blood on a yearly basis, I think it may help.
Additionally the flipside to that is, if that database also contains the"WHY" portion of how some of the ideas failed, we may be able to revisit them, (if it were a case of funding, or manpower, or lack of technology, or lack of demand) we could see how to fix them for the future.
I'll back channel you the recipe for the soup
I really like this. I think this could go along well with a more in-depth annual report... information about what worked and didn't work (and why) on both the event-level and the larger national organizational level. We're a community with an incredible amount of passion, ideas and drive, so avoiding this kind of circling/backtracking is really important for us to reach our full potential. Glad to see so many people with good ideas and vision throwing their names in for the EC, I'm excited for March!
8
General Discussion / NPS Dates?
« on: February 20, 2012, 01:39:33 PM »
Are the dates for NPS 2012 decided/posted anywhere? A couple of twin cities poets need to know them ASAP so they can figure out potential scheduling conflicts. Thanks!
9
General Discussion / Re: Questions for all EC Candidates
« on: February 20, 2012, 03:01:55 AM »
Also writing up responses to these, I'll post in the next day or two!
10
General Discussion / Re: Dylan Garity - Running for the EC
« on: February 13, 2012, 06:22:16 PM »
Also, that's great to hear that a lot of the work is already being done! I'm excited about this, I think it'll be a really important step for PSI.
11
General Discussion / Re: Dylan Garity - Running for the EC
« on: February 13, 2012, 04:29:16 PM »
@Erik: I don't personally have that experience, but I have a friend who does and who has expressed interest in volunteering his time to help with the design of the site. We've talked about a lot of these ideas already, and I could definitely put you in touch with him if you're interested.
Additionally, I'd be interested in learning some/all of this, and volunteering my time to help with the daily upkeep of the website, whether I'm elected to the EC or not.
Additionally, I'd be interested in learning some/all of this, and volunteering my time to help with the daily upkeep of the website, whether I'm elected to the EC or not.
12
General Discussion / Re: Dylan Garity - Running for the EC
« on: February 11, 2012, 01:44:20 PM »
Thanks for the bump, Sam! Good to have all of these together. Looking forward to seeing everyone in Denver!
13
General Discussion / Re: Dylan Garity - Running for the EC
« on: February 11, 2012, 01:41:12 PM »
Cynthia: I absolutely agree that a traditional blog as a front page is a poor choice, mainly because ideally, all the content on the front page of a website should be visible without scrolling. I was using the word to mean "regularly updated". For example, if we're releasing videos regularly, then a portion of the front page could be the newest video, another portion could be the current or upcoming events, etc. New content keeps people coming back. And honestly, I don't think that what I posted about in December is a reason to have a "static" front page, I think it's a reason to fight for the opposite. There needs to be more actual energy and time put into the website, not into hiding its flaws.
14
General Discussion / Re: Poetry Observed
« on: February 01, 2012, 06:14:52 PM »
To elaborate: This is a high-quality video project that started in the twin cities this summer, but the videographers are hoping to make more videos with poets from around the country. I think projects like this are really important for slam: there isn't enough high quality, original video out there. Any help sharing and increasing the exposure of Poetry Observed will increase their ability to make more of these with poets around the nation in the future.
Pages: [1] 2