After a long run Will Chase, Warner Boutin and Timothy Vernor are leaving the STIFF core team but will remain involved as Board Members. Wendy Gonzalez remains on the team and is leading the effort to recruit new members and bring them up to speed. We have several new members already signed up and wanted to introduce them to you. We are still looking for a few more members of the team. If you are interested in joining the Core Team, Submission Screening and Programming Team or just volunteering during the festival you can email Wendy@trueindependent.org or drop by our office on November 9th for our annual Volunteer Appreciation party & Holiday Bash https://www.facebook.com/events/473507226492678/

Here are the new Team Members-

Elliott Lytle is a Seattle filmmaker. He is a veteran of STIFF Bootcamp 2017 and STIFF Festival 2018 where his short sci-fi, comedy Bad Bet was nominated for best narrative short. He frequents groups such as Seattle Minute Movies, Open Screening and Cine-City Monthly Festival. He helped out with LAFF Festival once. He has been producing short films since 2008 and has also worked as a VJ, doing live visuals for touring DJ acts. He also enjoys playing electronic music and writing. Half the time he has it together, the other half he has no clue what is going on. Once when he was 12 he ate a 20 piece Chicken McNugget and has not eaten another since.

Jason Ahlquist's career epitomizes the spirit of transmedia: his story has spanned across multiple communication platforms through turbulent and exciting times. For over 30 years Jason's worked as a designer, journalist and technologist. *** As a designer, he works in a wide

variety of media spanning print design, web design, film production, experience design and virtual reality. As a journalist, he interviewed pop culture figures like George RR Martin, Bruce Campbell, Neil Gaiman and DEVO. As a technologist, he worked with nearly 100 newspapers and magazines during the existential disruption the dot-com boom dropped into the centuries-old publishing industry. The result of these three decades in the trenches has given Jason a perspective on how rapidly developing communication platforms can spawn intense change while still retaining messages that appear to endure any disruption.

Martin Ishihara is a filmmaker who participated in STIFF 2018 and had such a good time he stuck around. Martin enjoys participating in Film Challenges, Hackathons and Technology Related Events.

We will be introducing additional Team Members in upcoming emails.