Community Relations Newsletter: October

Oct 23, 200812 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Oct 23, 2008

4K Views

Director of Community Relations :

1. What is Community Relations
2. What are your Core Values?
3. What are the changes?
4. Are you bringing on new volunteers soon?
5. What is going on with miscats?
6. What about Fallenrox?
7. What took so long?
8. What next?
9. CONTEST!!!!
10. Official deviantART Contests
11. Important and Entertaining Links
12. News from the Galleries

1.What is Community Relations?

deviantART's Community Relations Team provides a unique collective effort that seeks to create and sustain collaborative relationships among deviants and to develop innovative opportunities within the global art industry. These relationships are meant to provide and encourage opportunities to foster creative genius. The CR Team acts as a window of information for the community on how to utilize deviantART in a way that will empower and enable themselves as respected and successful artists.

Our ultimate vision is a community of artists that come together unified and strengthened by sharing the belief that they hold the artistic power to create and shape their own success. In order to realize our vision, our mission must be to exceed the expectations of our community, whom we view as partners, and we will accomplish this by committing to our shared core values.

2. What are your Core Values?</A>

C O M M U N I T Y
We believe that our community is our most important resource and we strive to act in ways that nurture and encourage its growth, development and ultimately its ongoing success. We err on the side of the artist.

R E S P E C T
We treat each other with respect, as we believe that every staff member, volunteer, and member is a contributing factor to deviantART's success.  We acknowledge that even those that challenge our patience offer important lessons we can learn from and strive to do so.

E X C E L L E N C E
We share a passion for excellence, quality and creativity in everything we do and strive to instill these values in our community.

A R T I S T S
We are artists and we reserve time for creative expression.  We recognize the importance of nurturing our inner artist, as not only beneficial to ourselves, but also integral to our connection with the community.

T R U S T
We build trust among ourselves and within the community by being true to our word.  We speak honestly and with integrity and hold ourselves personally accountable to deliver on commitments we've made.

E M P O W E R
We believe in a commitment to continuous learning and improvement, and maintaining open, positive communication that encourages and fosters creative genius.

3.What are the changes?

First of all the department name has changed from Artist Relations to Community Relations. I think this name gives us more clarity and will serve to be more inclusive as opposed to a department focused only on artists. Secondly, Gallery Directors are now Gallery Moderators - again for the sake of clarity. In an internet world, moderator is a more widely recognized term, where gallery director has led to years of confusion. The rest of the changes are:

- Streamlining of the volunteer program to be more concise, offer more support, be more enjoyable and offer opportunities for ingenuity and creativity
- Development of a vision statement, a mission statement and our core values allows us to be consistent in our messaging and provides the entire team with a concrete direction

4.Are you bringing on new volunteers soon?

Yes, once the dust settles from this announcement, I will begin opening up the doors

Please watch my journal this will be happening soon

5. What is going on with miscats?

Effective last week, the Gallery Moderators have begun digging through the galleries. The images reported by you, the community, are being handled by the CEA and HD teams who are working through the backlog at record pace. The galleries are getting cleaner by the second! We're also still developing automated processes to make use of those of you in the community that are just so darn good!

6. What about Fallenrox?

Effective immediately, KariAnnLax is the new Manager of Film Development. This position allows Kari the freedom to develop the film gallery to the greatness I know it's going to be and I'm very excited to be working with her in this new capacity

I don't know who started the rumor that she got demoted but don't you feel like you have egg on your face now

Film is going places!

7. What took so long?

A great question but it was a sensitive project. There were over 80 people affected on the volunteer side (MN@ and Gallery Moderators) and ensuring that the changes I made were within their best interest and better than what they already had was my first priority. Yes, it took a lot longer than I planned but I would rather it take longer because I did it right, then rushed it along and upset a great many devoted people I cared about.

8. What's next?

Now, I bring on new volunteers to fill the gaps, sit down at my desk and start planning the projects and directions that will fill 2009. I have several things planned, including completing streamlining the galleries, a Gallery FAQ type project to better define all of the galleries and what content belongs there, restarting project educate etc. Please check out my forum about 2009 projects and let me know if there's something you want to see us do

There are many references to Gallery Directors and Artist Relations and certainly many support stamps (*coughneednewonescough*). These things will be updated over time, the logo is being redesigned as we speak

We figure you know who we are you won't get lost

9. CONTEST

What's the point of change if there's no contest!

Objective

Present our Core Values (listed above) in a visual way. The Core Values should be written out and legible but how you do that is up to you

- we must be able to read the Core Values within your presentation
- must be submitted as a .jpg or .png
- must have a hi-res version available for print purposes (all print proceeds from this image will be given to the ArtistsForCharity account)

Submit your entries to Contests & Projects -> contests -> 2008 -> C.R.E.A.T.E Contest

Deadline for entries is November 30, 2008

Please note that if your image is chosen as the Grand Prize Winner, the image will become the property of deviantART Inc.

Prizes

Grand Prize - Image will become part of communityrelations and be our official visual representation of our core values, artist will receive a 1 (one) year subscription, 1 (one) deviantWEAR tshirt, and $200 deviantdollars.

Second Prize - 1 (one) deviantWEAR tshirt, 6 (six) month subscription and $50 deviantdollars