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Meet The Candidate: Cyn

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    The following is Cyn’s responses to a set of questions given to all candidates by the Minnesota Furs Election Committee. These are the unedited responses given to the committee. The only changes made by the committee was to format them for consistency between the posts.

    Tell us about yourself
    I am originally from the Milwaukee metro area and moved here twenty years ago. While I sometimes find the area a little bit flat-landerish from what I grew up around, the people and culture are the reasons I stay here.

    The part of culture here that I enjoy the most is the volunteering ethic. The Twin Cities leads the nation in volunteering for our favorite organizations (we know this because we report your hours to the IRS who tracks the statistics.). My contributions in volunteering are vast. You have seen me working for Furry Migration, past election committees, Werecamp, and other Minnesota Furs events. I also volunteered through my former employer for national and international vision clinics from Chicago to Thailand, El Salvador, and Chile. I am currently on the Board of Directors for a local Lions Club where I also served as President, Vice President, Convention Delegate, and the Tornado Relief Committee Chairperson. I also served on the Board of Directors for CONvergence Events and held other positions. I continue to work with and for Anime Twin Cities, the parent organization of Anime Detour, and Anime Quad Cities, the parent of Anime Fusion. You could say service to the community is my thing.

    I mentioned eye clinics earlier. I have over 20 years of experience in some form of the optical world from retail stores to manufacturing/wholesale environments. It is there where I really developed the skill of listening to people. To hear the things they were not saying directly.

    Currently, I work in the college regalia world as an account executive for most of my company’s eastern seaboard accounts. My time working for conventions has given me the foundation to walk school through timelines and milestones for planning from their gowns concepts all the way through to delivery for their commencement day.

    I hold an Associate Degree in Jewelry Manufacturing and Design, but spend time learning other things in formal and informal settings. I participated in a Public Relations Certificate program that covers everything from Event Planning to Social Media to Fundraising. Card, board, and Role Playing Games are an avid interest of mine. The mythologies of Japan and Germanic Kingdoms hold my interest and this was even before the Anime, Spice and Wolf, came out.

    My personal belief is that there is always something more to learn, you just have to go look for it. The world is much bigger, and I want to continue to find my place in it as it changes each day.

    What brought you to the furry fandom?
    I came into the Furry Fandom through friends. At the time, I was heavily involved in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Anime conventions. The Furry Fandom dovetailed nicely into my interests and brought a nice mix. Mythology, Anime, music, art, technology all fall into a furry smorgasbord where you can try something new or participate as much or as little as you want. There is almost a fearlessness that some people develop as they can create a fursona to explore avenues that they could not as themselves.

    Here, I found a sense of community that supports, encourages, and develops people in the things that interest them. Everyone who comes into this fandom has their own mostly unique reason to be here. It is a safe place to find that thing which may lead away from the fandom, but having that latitude to explore and experiment can be amazing to watch in another person’s journey.

    To take that one step further, as a social observer, this fandom is amazing to watch. We have four phases where people have had a shared questioning and wrestled with where they see life, fight for their beliefs, and how they actually fit into the resulting society. Where Science Fiction or even comic books tend to have a lot of purists that can stunt the growth of those fandoms, the Furry Fandom has an ability to reinvent itself more easily.

    What do you feel are areas where you want to further develop yourself? Why?
    While we have so much already going for the Minnesota Furs, I want to help it evolve through building stronger relationships with like-minded organizations. Doing this will further develop my skills in being a nonprofit liaison. Some may say that I have a stable base already, but I think that it can flourish and therefore produce an enduring Minnesota Furs.

    As we have gotten to this phase of our organization, I want to bring some of the focus back to the community. We have had many resources go into making a successful convention and that still needs to continue. However, I have always said that I will work on either the board or the convention in high level positions. Now, is the time that I feel I can come to the board and bring my skills along. I want to be an advocate for members of the community and bring the actionable items forward the board, events or whether it needs to be.

    As that advocate for our community, I want to be able to work on crossing into the various groups in our fandom and hear everyone’s opinion, comments and ideas. It is my observation of working in these high levels, leadership tends to become or is viewed as clique-y from all the time they are required to be together working on projects. When also being content providers, it leaves little if any time or energy to be in the community much less being an active listener. We that to change and community engagement will.

    What are two things that you would like to see accomplished/improved during your tenure?
    During my tenure I want to see the expansion of Minnesota Furs through healthy growth. What I mean by this is that we as a community, we want all the things. Seeing what our resources are in manpower, finances and opportunities, I want to shape our MnFurs tree so we can have positive, stable growth in multiple directions. Ways to start moving forward on this is partnering with like minded organizations to share resources. The Teen Program is important to me, they are the future and legacy of our organization. Creating crossover programming with GPS and the Anime conventions lets us do more to reduce our manpower issues while giving the teens a chance to explore.

    And yes, while the teens are important, we still need to look at the rest of our community. What opportunities can we create for adult programming and events outside of the convention? We have the demand from the community for more to do, but we also need content providers. I heard that people want various events, but we need people to step up and help us. My viewpoint is that a board creates opportunities for things to happen within the fiduciary requirements of the organization with an awareness of the limitations of local,state and federal laws.

    We are a community without a required annual monetary fee, so no one is left out of finding their pack. That does not mean that content and events come for free. People strengthen a community by helping out and volunteering for as little as helping cleaning up during a meet or as big as being a conchair. Community is involvement, and is directed by the people who meaningfully engage in it. I want to see more of this and I will do what I can to enable that to happen.

     

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