[Friends of IFTF] IFTF Monthly Update: January 2017

[Flourish Klink]

Dear IFTF supporters,

It's been a big month for IFTF, as we rounded out our first calendar year
of existence and began preparing for what's next. We're planning on
emailing you updates each month, but for this first update, it seems
appropriate to do a broad summary: what have we done up to this point?

In 2016, as well as doing the work of getting IFTF up and running, we put
together a committee on Twine (details:
http://blog.iftechfoundation.org/2016-12-15-twine.html) and a committee on
accessibility (details:
http://blog.iftechfoundation.org/2016-11-03-access-comm.html
<http://blog.iftechfoundation.org/2016-11-03-access-comm.html)>). We felt
our way through our first involvement with IFComp, including organizing
volunteers and moving it over to IFTF servers, and we're looking forward to
doing more come summer. And we began the process of matching up
potentially-orphaned IF projects with people who want to help out, even if
those projects don't fall under our remit.

So far in 2017, our main accomplishment has been to put together our
first-ever transparency report (
http://iftechfoundation.org/documents/2016-iftf-transparency-report.pdf).
However, we also have further concrete plans for 2017:

   - Continue our work helping IF projects find volunteers.
   - Improve the documentation available for Twine.
   - Find ways to help preserve works created in Twine.
   - Explore migrating the infrastructure supporting Twine to the IFTF
   umbrella, probably starting with the website.
   - Running a "testathon" for IF software, helping identify the ways that
   it could be made more accessible.
   - Consider the possibility of running a proper conference on interactive
   fiction. This conference might not take *place* in 2017 (in fact, it's
   unlikely to), but we intend to explore how to make it happen.
   - To support all of this, engage in our first full-scale fundraising,
   encouraging institutional as well as individual donations.
   - And, of course, apply for grants for each of these particular projects.

Whew! What a list. It's a lot to do. If, on that list, there's anything you
think you could personally help us with, please get in touch! Right now,
we're still such a young organization that we need everything—volunteers as
well as donations.

That concludes your January 2017 update. We'll look forward to sharing our
progress with you next month!

Best,
Flourish Klink (on behalf of the IFTF board)
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