Each year, we hold elections for the board of directors for Altonimbus Entertainment (the organization that produces and runs the Kumoricon convention). Altonimbus, and thereby Kumoricon, is governed by a board of directors consisting of nine members who each serve annual terms. Terms begin and end at the annual meeting of the body which elects each board member.
Seven of the nine board members are elected by the membership (staff of Kumoricon) at the Annual Meeting of the Membership:
- Chair / President
- Director of Infrastructure
- Director of Membership
- Director of Operations
- Director of Programming
- Director of Publicity
- Director of Relations
The next Annual Meeting of the Membership will be held on December 4, 2021, at 11:00am, online, simulcast on both Kumoricon’s public Discord server and at Kumoricon’s Twitch channel. Official notice was sent to the members on November 4, 2021, and full meeting information is available on the Meetings page:
https://www.kumoricon.org/meetings. We will be performing our elections online. Voting is open to Altonimbus Entertainment members (Kumoricon staff). As with previous meetings of the membership since 2020, the board of directors has authorized, under ORS 65.205, member participation by remote communication for this meeting. If you are a member of Altonimbus Entertainment (Kumoricon staff), you may officially participate in this meeting, using the following procedures. Under these procedures, you will be treated the same as if you were present in person at one of our in-person meetings, including counting toward quorum and ability to vote in director elections.
As with previous years, we are holding online nominations and Q&A prior to elections. Most of our online elections activity will be on our public Discord server. We are also continuing to host a forum thread to nominate and ask questions.
Elections and eligibility are governed by the bylaws of Altonimbus Entertainment (
https://www.kumoricon.org/bylaws) and the meeting process by our Elections Process (
https://www.kumoricon.org/elections-process). The meeting process is almost identical to last year. However, there were significant updates in place starting last year both to clarify the election administration roles as well as to describe an online voting process. We will be using those updated rules for a second year now.
How to officially attend as a member and voteIn order to officially count toward quorum and vote, members (staff) will need to have a personal account on either Discord or Twitch, and register their account identifier by listing it on the staff management personal details form. Other than listing your account in your personal details, you don't need to do anything else in advance. During the meeting, all votes that are held by secret ballot will be conducted on a third-party election platform, ElectionBuddy.
- Participation on Discord will take place in designated channels in the public Discord server (not the staff server), unless an announcement is made that the staff Discord server is being used as an alternate.
- Participation on Twitch will take place in the chat associated with Kumoricon's live video stream.
- In order to participate, members must "sign in" to count for quorum.
- Members may "sign in", vote, and otherwise participate by interacting with the official Kumoricon bot using the instructions provided by the bot or posted in the chat. In the event of technical difficulties with the bot, alternate instructions for participation on each platform will be provided.
- Voting in secret ballot elections will be performed on ElectionBuddy (our chosen third-party election platform). Members who have checked in as present for the meeting will receive an email invitation for each election as it occurs. Members do not need an account on ElectionBuddy in order to vote. Votes cast on ElectionBuddy are secret. The election moderator and tellers can see the total vote count for each candidate, for "no confidence", and for each write-in candidate, in order to determine a winner based on our election rules as well as to include the vote counts in the meeting minutes. But neither they nor any other Kumoricon staff member can see any link between who voted and who they voted for.
- Official participation actions will be verified against registered account listings to ensure the participant is a member.
- As required by ORS 65.205, a record will be kept of voting and other actions of a member. This record will not contain the contents of secret ballots cast using ElectionBuddy.
- If you are unable to use Discord, Twitch, or ElectionBuddy, we will provide an alternate email point of contact to mark yourself present and send votes. Votes sent to this email address will be seen by the election moderator and tellers.
Proxy votingMembers must be present to vote, except for proxy voting. If a member cannot attend the meeting, they may designate another member as their proxy using the online proxy authorization system (
https://www.kumoricon.org/staff-mgmt/proxy-status).
Election rolesThese elections are being run by the following staff:
Nomination moderator: Tracy Creel, Secretary, Emily Vuong, Specialty Registration Manager
Election moderator: Tori Coulombe-Carr, Assistant to the Director of Membership
Teller: Zarek Lee, Assistant Director of Membership
Teller: Jeff Tyrrill, Assistant Secretary / Website Development Coordinator*
Teller: Heather Holland, Director of Relations*Please note that Jeff has opted out of receiving anon questions and will be focusing on other Teller tasks.
The nomination moderator will oversee nominations, and moderate the online questions and comments.
The election moderator will oversee elections at the election meeting.
The election moderator and tellers will receive and moderate anonymous questions and comments that are read at the meeting (see process below).
NominationsNominations are currently open for candidates for the seven positions listed in this message.
Nominations must be seconded to be valid. A person cannot nominate or second themselves. To be listed on the candidate list below and on the ballot, a candidate must be nominated and seconded, and then accept the nomination, by the deadline. Once a candidate is nominated and seconded, they may change their acceptance status at will until the nominations deadline of Friday, December 3, 2021, 11:59pm.
Nominations and seconds can be made, and candidates may respond to nominations, in three ways:
- Reply on Discord
- Reply on the elections forum thread
- Email election.nominations@kumoricon.org
The nominations list will be kept in sync between this pin and the elections forum post. Candidates are listed alphabetically by last name, using the preferred name as set in their official staff registration, which candidates may update at any time, or, alternately, the preferred name as requested to the nomination moderator.
Chair/President* Charmaine Martinez
Director of Infrastructure* Ash Butler
Director of Membership* Charly Youravish
Director of Operations* Yaz W
Director of Programming* Steven Garcia
Director of Publicity* Panda Rushford
Director of Relations* Amber Feldman
If a candidate doesn’t have a nomination listed in this channel separately, then they were nominated, seconded, and accepted at the Rant and Rave session on November 7. In addition, the following people were nominated and seconded at that meeting, but declined:
Brian Mathews for Chair
Ben Riker for Director of Operations (deferred at meeting, declined via email)
Devin Hunter for Director of Programming
Heather Holland (declined 11/30/21)
Questions and commentsThe primary venue for online questions and comments will be the channels for each position on the public Discord server. Please ask your question or make your comment in the channel for that position.
Questions may also be asked in the elections forum thread. One of the election moderators or tellers will copy that question to the appropriate channel here. We ask that candidates respond on Discord, rather than the forum, in order to keep discussion in one place and not fragmented.
Shortly before the election, we will create an exported version of the questions and answers for staff who don’t have a Discord account. We will also continue to hold question-and-comment sessions at the elections meeting.
Anonymous questions and commentsAfter the open question-and-comment period for each candidate, we will host an additional anonymous question-and-comment period. Questions and comments may be submitted in person at the election, or emailed in advance at
election.support@kumoricon.org This process is subject to the following rules:
1. The members of the moderator panel (comprised of the election moderator and tellers) choose anonymous questions and comments to sponsor and read at the meeting, from those submitted.
2. Anonymous questions/comments are anonymous when read at the meeting, but the moderator panel must know the identity of the person commenting. Your message must be signed with the name that you are known by in the Kumoricon community.
3. As part of the moderation process, the panel may request more information from you or request a change to your question/comment, or possibly even reject your question/comment.
4. The moderator panel will reply to you stating whether your comment has been accepted.
5. Questions/comments may be shortened or summarized, and similar questions/comments from multiple people may be combined.
A more detailed explanation of the rules and process around anonymous questions and comments is available in our Elections Process:
https://www.kumoricon.org/elections-process[Edit by JeffT to fix formatting]
