Meet The Candidate Dei

[MnFurs Election Committee]

The following is Dei’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

Well, people tend to call me Dei for short, so can you too.
I have been a fur for quite a while, since 5th or 6th grade. I was first active online in the early AIM, ICQ, and IRC chat groups for the first six or so years. It isn’t until about 2013 that I started getting active in real life furry.
I have been active since in staffing all years of Furry Migration to date, helped run several picnics. When Kurst was appointed to the be Migration con chair I was appointed to fill his seat then ran for re-election the next cycle. I was lucky enough to have been selected by the community to remain on for a full two year term and am running for the second full term.
Aside from that I am still a silly show white (cha)kat online and try to remain active.
Outside of furry. I work in a Fortune 200 company as a technology specialist and architect. I have degrees in Information & Telecommunications Technology along with Business Administration.

What brought you to the furry fandom?

Honestly, it was mostly a fun place to hang out online with a lot of creativity and an open environment. It was nice to know that the same interests and character that we grew up with could be developed, improved, and expanded all through an entire lifetime and not just childhood as western culture usually has it. Luckily this is changing and is growing in acceptance. I remember feeling awkward in late Elementary or Middle School still enjoying things that I was concerned would make others think I was odd or to old for. Now there is such a better cultural understanding and I like that MNFurs can be a part of that working with the greater fandom.

How will you continue to volunteer in the community after being elected to the board?

Well, I have to admit right now the primary method I volunteer is through the board and acting as staffing admin for the Furry Migration Organization. It takes a lot of time to carry out both the board positions as they exist now, plus help out with the con, and balancing real life. There is plenty even should I not be elected to do and help out, plus I am sure anyone who replaced me would still want advice or to ask me to keep helping. After all there is always the next picnic to schedule and line up. So don’t worry, elected or not I will still be busily working away to help our community.

How do you view events like Furry Migration and Werecamp impact Minnesota Furs community today and tomorrow?

Furry Migration is our single largest event we have. It has a large impact today but we need to grow the convention regionally. I don’t ever expect it to be a national or international con, however I do want to see it grow to be a draw in its own unique blend of different things. Its not just a hang out con, its not just a programing con, its not just a unique theme con, its a little blend of everything with a Minnesota taste. Werecamp is like a smaller more intimate affair. It has its own unique draw like a bit of a hang out session with a large group of friends… kind of scouting like but not as structured. Honestly I think it is a great draw for awareness, community bonding, and are more independent then most conventions/events.

What do you feel are areas where you want to further develop yourself? Why?

I have several areas I need to work in. From handling stress and my time better, to working on communicating with people. I am a bit of a pessimist, and so I tend to think concerning contingencies and playing out what will go wrong in my head. While this can be useful in planning, it isn’t always a good use of my time nor a healthy one.
Combining that with the more stream of thought first draft of my responses, it can often cause concern not to have the clarity I intend.
Also, I run off of a regular supply of cookies and code red. ^.~

How can Minnesota Furs reach out to other communities local and national in furry and other fandoms?

Several ways. MNF and FM are already active in the FCLR which is a multi-national group of Furry Cons. We can learn from mistakes others make, share tips on things like what went wrong at x con plus share thoughts, and of course there is the sharing of resources. For local conventions I do think there needs to be a FCLR style system in place for our area. Its hard when its national to share things like resources and staff.
MN Furs and Migration already have some smaller groups reaching out to us asking about how we are set up. Sharing our experience in starting a con, creating a non-profit, starting smaller events, etc is a huge boon to fandoms all over. This is part of the reason we encourage people to start up some smaller events or activities with our without our help. We have guidelines and issues we have to follow, but are more then happy to give a few minutes when we can to help share our experience. If there is good alignment and a track record we might even consider helping more actively or even make it an official event. This is actually how Werecamp kind of got started. That being said you would be surprised how many hotels reach out and ask if we can run an event at their location.

What are two things that you would like to see accomplished/improved during your tenure?

We need more staff and volunteers period. I know this wont be popular but unless we can get more then the dozen or so regulars helping out the society and con will most likely need to scale down our ambitions. I may jump up and down cheering on how great we are for having these huge year round ambitions, but few if any do what we do with a thousand plus con and constant year round programing. We need to train people and we need to get a good pattern going of bringing people in so we can let those that are overworked and overstressed take a break.

The expectations we have on ourselves and what we do is also a problem. Often when we have had people step up and offer to assist we haven’t had the time or resources to support them. Good enough is sometimes all we need, and we need to focus on just a few tasks within a position or a job being trained to instead of trying to train a complete replacement on day one. That being said, if someone or something isn’t working I do think we need to be better at addressing the issue instead of delaying confrontation or action. Most of the time its a lot easier to solve this with earlier constructive feedback or a conversation then waiting until things are already starting to pile up.

To give you an idea the society has fewer then a dozen real staff (including board members pulling double to triple duty). As for the con we have fewer then 80 staff pulling the duty of over 150. This isn’t a problem with us either, almost all of our partner organizations and fellow cons have similar issues. This is why burn out is so high and why there often isn’t as much visible progress being made as we would hope. I am not running on saying I have the easy fix for this problem, I am re-running to try and bring more visibility to this issue in a frank and open discussion.

One goal of MNFurs is to promote education. How do you intend on helping promote education

Panels, room parties at events, answering questions, and letting the youth program be awesome. There are so many ways to do this. Sometimes the simplest things can be the most powerful in our education mission. Like a chill and relax room party where a kid can sit down and their parents can ask questions to a fur that went through what their kid did a decade or two back. I already plan on seeing if we can get a regular panel at a con or two about community building. Also, I plan on trying to help inform the community more about what we do and why we need help. I don’t think many members realize what is being done and often more see a lack of action or progress being made. We have our newsletter and other resources starting to come back after a few rough patches but I still think we need to go that extra step. Small community meetings have worked in the past but I think we might be past that now. I have some ideas but I would love to hear yours.

After all, if we cant teach why we are here and what we do, it is hard to say we can be completely effective in our message of furry has places almost everywhere.

Photo was requested of the candidate by the election committee but no photo was provided

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