Committee Positions

President

The President of SpecFicNZ is responsible for the organisation’s strategic activity for the year. You will be primary point of contact for third-party enquiries about the organisation, and oversee the work of other members of the committee to ensure activities track on time and to budget. You must be able to dedicate at least five hours per week to SpecFicNZ work, more during campaign periods such as membership renewal campaigns and major events.

Vice-President

The VP assists the President with their duties and may also be assigned specific projects during the year, such as heading a subcommittee. You must be able to dedicate at least five hours a week to SpecFicNZ work.

Secretary

The secretary’s role is to field incoming emails and parcel them out to the appropriate committee member, update the membership database, write up and send out emails to the membership, and take the minutes of the monthly committee meetings. The secretary also supports the other committee members in their roles, and as the first point of contact for new members and enquiries this involves checking the email account daily. You must be able to dedicate at least five hours a week to SpecFicNZ work.

Benefits:

  • You get to know all of the wonderful and varied people in our membership.
  • You can have a hands-on part in helping SpecFicNZ to continue to grow.
  • As first point of contact, you get to hear all the exciting news from our members.
  • It’s a great way to acquire an overview of spec fic in NZ.
  • You get a warm, fuzzy feeling from knowing you are helping other members in their creative missions.

Treasurer

The main aspect to the Treasurer role is to watch over and report on the accounts – this does not stop the Treasurer being involved in all the other groovy projects of SpecFicNZ! In fact with most activities resulting in prizes, you tend to get involved at the start and at the end of pretty much everything.

To summarise the Treasurer activities:

  •  Monitor the account online, email transaction details to secretary
  •  Buy and supply prizes for some competitions
  •  Collect receipts
  •  Annual tax return (so far always a null return)
  •  Report to the societies commission (activities of the society and amounts spent)
  •  Produce invoices as needed (e.g. NZ book month)
  •  Keep the committee informed of forward expenditures
  •  Encourage cost estimates for all activities

Most of this is managed through a couple of spreadsheets, so confidence with spreadsheets coupled with an ability to add up is helpful.

Publicist

The publicist is responsible for making sure that SpecFicNZ members and the wider community all know about what the organisation is up to – essentially this means posting to the blog regularly with items of interest to the membership – while also helping with other related activities. This might sound like a lot but in reality it probably isn’t a huge amount of work, particularly if you’re already using social media and clued into the New Zealand publishing industry. It’s a great opportunity to be involved in the committee and find out what’s going on around the country, as well as the perfect chance to help promote our fabulous writers.

General Committee Members

There are currently five general committee members. Being a general committee member gives you the opportunity to try your hand at various admin tasks. The following positions are taken up by general members:

SpecFicNZ Grant Subcommittee Head

The Committee representative on the SpecFicNZ Grant Subcommittee is responsible for bringing together the year’s subcommittee, advertising the Grant, selecting Grant recipients as part of the Subcommittee, and ensuring the Grants are delivered and reported on as required. You may also seek additional funding to add to the Grant pool.

Web Person

Skills needed:

  • strong familiarity with WordPress (the site uses BuddyPress and Paid Membership Pro plugins, previous experience not necessary, willingness to learn helpful)
  • experience with ftp and light editing of php files (programming knowledge not necessary, but must be comfortable editing code with instructions)

Tasks:

  • Regular website maintenance
  • spam any spam comments
  • direct any queries in comments to the relevant person/respond to comments as needed.
  • cast your eye over activity area of the site for queries/problems.
  • quality-check any new featured works and approve/contact member responsible if not OK
  • check tags & settings on new blog posts
  • keep an eye on updates for plugins/wordpress site and update as needed

National Convention Representative

This member acts as SpecFic NZ’s liaison with the convention committee planning the upcoming national science fiction and fantasy convention, to ensure that SpecFicNZ is represented at the con, and offer the organization’s assistance with programming for writers. This person should be planning to attend the convention.

Competitions Manager

The Competitions Manager is responsible for the operations of scheduled writing competitions throughout the year. You will be tasked with designing, planning and implementation of all SpecFicNZ related competitions, as well as a liaison to guest judges as required. You will be a point of contact should anyone, internally or externally, approach you for competition organisation. You must also ensure that externally held competitions not run by SpecFicNZ are made aware of to the membership to maintain regular competition activity.

Requirements to be nominated and serve on the SpecFicNZ Core Governing Committee are as follows:

1. You must be a natural person. Corporations, societies, and other organizations cannot hold a committee position.

2.  You must be a current member of SpecFicNZ and continue to be a paid member in the year you intend to serve.

3. You must consent to your nomination and committee appointment.  Someone else can nominate you, but you must agree to that nomination and the subsequent committee position, should you gain it.

4. You must have access to a computer with internet/live chat capabilities, preferably in your home. This is because committee members are often located throughout New Zealand but must still “meet” regularly for discussion, decision making, and voting.

5. You must be committed and able to meet once a month for 90 minutes via an internet meeting (occasionally more often if the committee deems it necessary). This entails carving out uninterrupted, focused, computer time and space in your home for these meetings.

6. You must have the ability and commitment to follow through on positional and occasional extra assigned tasks. In other words, you have to be able and willing to do stuff.

7. You must have the ability to work in a group, listen, think critically, form an educated opinion, and vote on it.

8. You must have a passion for the objects and mission of SpecFicNZ.
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