Solicitation to be considered for the TinkerDifferent Board of Directors

[eric]

TinkerDifferent is beginning the process of filling the Board for our next term that begins (Jan 3rd, 2023) and lasts for one calendar year.

We want all active forum members – active for at least three months on the forums - to be able to raise their hand and be considered for a Board seat.

Note that there are three “official” positions for the Board, and several other seats – all have voting responsibility. The three official positions are President, Treasurer, and Secretary.

To put your hat in the ring for consideration, reply to this thread with your “pitch” which can include why you wish to be on the board, and what issues, projects, governance areas you wish to address.

Other forum members: respond with “likes” indicating your support of proposals. Replies that are not proposals will be removed or moved to keep this thread clean.

At the end of the nomination period the candidates with the highest number of “votes” will be invited to a smaller forum with the existing board to finalize the new board member responsibilities and seats and be transitioned into their new seats and responsibilities.

It’s the feeling of the current Board that this process will allow interested members to volunteer and advocate for their candidacy, and that other members can provide their support in a quantifiable manner.

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Edit: Clarify voting closes date of Jan 3rd, 2023 at midnight UTC to avoid holiday.

 

[Drake]

Hear! sons and daughters of Kahless, VOTE FOR DRAKE!

I've been a TinkerDifferent enthusiast and moderator since the beginning, much to the dismay of others I continue to stick around to foster a positive community atmosphere with bad jokes, useless content and a beige hammer of justice!

I'd like to focus some efforts on community run events and prizes. I've done this here in the past with Christmas and Halloween photo contests and the like.

I graciously accept my position as the new King, all hail.

 

[jdmcs]

My name is Justin D. Morgan. host of Computerized Start™ on YouTube, and I am humbly submitting consideration to join the board of TinkerDifferent.

YouTube is all about the numbers game. And while many YouTubers would be looking at their peer channels seeing that they've managed higher subscriber counts, I look at my subscriber count differently: I have a small but dedicated fan base that makes it fun to livestream when I am able. And while I have to admit that I do get discouraged by my slow subscriber growth, my mindset changes soon after my livestreams start when I again realize that there are more important things than a quick subscriber growth:

I believe that if I put others first, and make what I do about educating and inspiring others first, then that is more important than gaining subscribers quickly. Why? Because I believe that good word-of-mouth advertising is way better than trying to appease "the algorithm".

How does that relate to TinkerDifferent? Easy. If I would assign attributes to the forums that I frequent, I see TinkerDifferent as the forum that seeks to educate and inspire others in the world of retro computing. Do you want to explore retro computing as it was in the day? You fit in. Do you want to upgrade your retro computer to the hilt, something you would have never afforded in the day? You also fit in. You just need help getting the retro computer that landed in your lap an hour ago to boot, and you just found TinkerDifferent a few minutes ago? You, too fit in.

As a board member of TinkerDifferent, I envision TinkerDifferent as the place where we strive to educate and inspire others, and to help them with their retro computing goals, not ours. I would want the "I just want to use this computer the way I did back in the day" folks to feel just as welcome as the "I want to upgrade this computer in ways no one could afford back in the day" folks, And while the former may be less appealing to certain algorithms than the latter, I see that slower organic growth through word-of-mouth recommendations far outweigh the quick hits of short-term growth through appeasing the algorithm.

I would like to thank you for your consideration, and even if I am ultimately not voted onto the TinkerDifferent Board, I look forward to our future interactions to educate and inspire others.

 

[Androda]

Hello all, I would also like to submit for community consideration to join the Tinker Different Board of Directors.

My qualifications in terms of forum maintenance, administration, and so on are effectively none. This would be one of those "let's teach the new guy" sort of situations on those topics. I lean strongly toward being a "jack of all trades" and hope to learn and become useful quickly.

In terms of pitch or platform, my motivation boils down to "being helpful". I'm a pretty basic person, I like vintage computers, and if there are ways I can be helpful to the forum in general then that's what I'd like to do.

 

[eric]

My name is Eric Helgeson. I’m a founder of TinkerDifferent, maintainer of BlueSCSI, avid collector and tinkerer of retro Apple products, and currently serving my first year on the board as the Infrastructure lead. I’d like to put my name in for another year on the board.

I think TinkerDifferent did great in its first year. 1,000 people signed up and joined the conversation on the forum and almost 300 on our Discord which is quite active.

We’ve all learned how hard it can be to have a distributed board across so many time zones. I’ve made a proposals to move the process of minutes, meetings, and proposals to a forum so we can handle business asynchronously and make most of the items public. This is something we’ll continue to discuss and hope to implement in the next term.

The site has had amazing uptime in the first year. We’ve kept things up to date, secure, and validated our backups and everything is running smoothly. Our infrastructure is set up in such a way that it’s flexible, reliable, and as cost efficient as we can make it. Since we’ve opened up donations we want to ensure we’re using your dollars to the best of our ability. Thank you to everyone who’s donated.

Thanks for your consideration and thanks to everyone else who's put their name in to help!

 

[Kai Robinson]

My name is Kai Robinson. I'm a founder of TinkerDifferent and creator of the Macintosh SE Reloaded and Macintosh Classic Reloaded projects.

I currently occupy the position of Director of Admins/Moderators.

Although we launched almost without warning, back in October of 2021, we've amassed an amazing community that's now well over 1000 members large!

It is, however, ostensibly Apple based - not a bad thing, but I believe we should be branching out a little wider. I'd like to concentrate on driving diversity and community engagement to the non-apple and non-computer side of things a little more.

Despite a steep learning curve and several very late nights in board meetings, I've had an immense amount of fun during my time as a board member and i'd like to think I take my role quite seriously, making members experience here a good one.

I'm incredibly proud of this community and want to see it develop even further.

Thank you all for your consideration, I wish all candidates the best of luck!

 

[Ron's Computer Videos]

Hey, gang. It's Ron's from Ron's Computer Videos.

Just throwing my hat in the ring for whatever position I can perform that benefits the membership of Tinker Different best.

While I may not have the same level of technical knowhow of many of the candidates you'll hear from in the coming posts, my strengths lie mainly in marketing, team/community building, and being a empathic voice of reason when tensions run high.

If given the opportunity to serve, my goal would be to listen first and act second. The only way a community thrives is to be helmed by those whose first interest is service and the desire to be an impartial advocate for that community's membership. I believe that has been what sets Tinker Different apart from other online communities, and any contributions I could make to that would be my honor to provide.

Thank you,

Ron

 

[Branchus]

Hi all, my name is Bruce Rayne from Branchus Creations. I am one of the founding members of Tinker Different and have been keeping the President's seat warm for the past 12 months. I was extremely humbled to have been voted as the president of the first Tinker Different board.

I would like to be considered as a nominee for the up coming Tinker Different board for the following reasons:

• I am a web developer by day, so my skills have been valuable in the setup and maintenance of the visual aspects of the Tinker Different forum. I have been able to alter the forum web templates to suit our specific needs and respond to a number of change requests from the Tinker Different board and members.
• I have good written and verbal communication skills. I write in a clear, concise way and ensure my message is unambiguous.
• I have a tech-based YouTube channel with nearly 35k subscribers, which allows me the opportunity to promote the Tinker Different forum to a wide audience.
• I always try and find diplomatic ways of resolving disputes or disagreements.
• I worked in the design/print industry for 15 years, and have quite competent design skills.

Since becoming involved in the Tinker Different forum and board, I have enjoyed the company of some of the nicest, smartest and most genuine people I have ever met. I do hope to be able to continue working with these people in some capacity.

Thanks for your consideration,
Bruce

 

[AmigaOfRochester]

Good day. Why should you elect me? I'd love to have a better reason than my love for the community. I have resurrected and restored an uncountable number of apple and Amiga computers. I've worked to help encourage others to learn and do things for themselves.

Some personal information about me:
I work as a quality assurance and software engineer by trade. In my personal and work life I put quality before anything. I would work to better the community by offering my expertise and ability.

 

[techknight]

I am willing to throw my name in the hat. why not?

I used to manage forums software back in the day, but I haven't since 2008. Back then it was IPB 2.X and Vbulletin 3 i believe.

Outside of that, I typically spend most of my days on Discord versus the forum itself, but I try to be there and help where I can especially if its a troubleshooting issue, as I was born and bred an electronics repair tech.

It would be awesome if something like this would happen to me though hehe.

Thanks for yalls time, and good luck to everyone involved!

 

[CrazyTechReviews]

Hello and thank you for taking your time to read my message.

My name is Logan and I have been a member of the vintage mac community for several years, really enjoy tinkering and learning about these machines, and love to benefit the community surrounding them in any way I can.

I've been running a small tech channel sharing information I've learned on these computers and doing the best I can to help both existing and newer members of this community learn about these machines and how to operate and repair them and have also actively participated in the retro computing community at large.

I first joined TinkerDifferent in November of 2021 around the time it was initially launched, and have been able to watch it grow into the sizeable platform that it has become today; and as a member of this community, I feel like I could offer some valuable input and feedback towards making the platform even better and making sure that everyone has a good experience here.

Anyway, I wanted to thank you all for reading this message, and I hope that you feel I would be a good fit for this role.

 

[Mac84]

Hello everyone,

I'm Steve,

I'm one of the founding members of Tinker Different and was the initial President during our forming. For our first full term I held the title of Vice President. I was quite glad to be a part of this community from the start and I hope I can continue to service in some capacity (not necessarily President or VP).
I'm quite proud to say that my name and logo submissions won the contest to name this community what it is today, Tinker Different! So it's clear I have a strong passion for this place.

I've seen this community flourish and grow into something beyond my imagination. It makes my truly proud to see something that I was a part of evolve in this way. I hope that my involvement can continue to help Tinker Different thrive in the future.

What I can bring to the table:

• Excellent communication skills. Proven ability to condense multiple points into concise announcements. Strong experience with being a mediator and bringing others together, even with opposing opinions.

• Multimedia experience. My graphic, video, and audio skill sets are at your disposal!

• My social media presence (via Mac84) gives me the opportunity to promote Tinker Different in a decent way. ( 13k+ subscribers on YouTube, ~4,500 followers on Twitter and ~2,000 followers on Instagram)

• A burning passion of teaching others about technology and how things work. Especially how people can get started with vintage machines and getting them up and running again. It brings me a great deal of joy to share the spark with others that has been passed down to me.

• I can do a live stream for 10 hours without losing my sanity... oh wait, never mind.

Being involved with the forming and running of Tinker Different for the past year was a great experience. I honestly believe this community has some of the best and brightest people I've ever met. It would be an honor to work alongside this awesome group and continue to grow and serve this community.

Thanks you kindly for your consideration,
- Steve (Mac84)