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Studio Friction Annual Meeting
Sunday, September 20th, 2026
10am-11:30am
The time has come for our annual members’ meeting. This meeting is an opportunity for us to come together to review the prior year’s achievements and elect new members to the Board of Directors. Our meeting will be virtual in order to make it as accessible as possible for all of our members. Please note that this meeting is for members of Studio Friction only. You can register for the meeting on our website (it is free of charge) to receive the Google Meet link.
To be eligible to vote in the election, you must be a member in good standing and your membership must be active as of Sunday, September 20th, 2026. This is to ensure the board has the time needed to set up the voting software. If you have any questions about your eligibility to vote, or the meeting in general, please reach out to office@studiofriction.com.
This year we have 5 nominees running for the board. Michael (He/Him), Tattooed N Nerdy (She/Her), Claire/GravityBrat (she/her), TheDude (He/Him), Ryan (he/him).
Nominee Bios
TheDude (He/Him) is a rope top who has been a part of the studio since it opened. He has been a part of studio leadership in the past, and has also helped run other rope groups outside of the Studio. He cares about quality education, diverse and inclusive environments, and the safety of those attending the space. His strengths lie in event and educational planning as well as facilities upgrades and maintenance. Big goals of his would be developing more local educators, and facilitating and making improvements to the physical space.
Ryan (he/him) is a rope top, with recent switch tendencies, but don’t tell anyone. Over his year and a half of Studio membership, he has seen a strong and diverse community of passionate individuals who are also a little (or a lot) freaky in the best way. Through the Studio, he has learned amazing things and met fantastic people. He is running for the Board of Directors to strengthen and uphold the values that he has enjoyed at the Studio.
These principles start from the top. If we do not have a Board committed to diversity and equity, then we cannot expect the community to follow. He will work to improve retention in the Board itself and increase community involvement with events. As a volunteer-run space, it is important to make sure that volunteers get the recognition they deserve and that Board members are easily identifiable and approachable by anyone in the community. Through recognition and availability, he will make sure that everyone has a voice, and we can work together to maintain a space that is best for everyone.
He vows to bring all he can to the Board and the community. As a people manager by day, he is already familiar with checking in on the needs of a community and making sure that people with different skills and opinions can work together for a shared purpose. He values data and community-lead decisions and will make sure that we do what is best for the Studio based on where the most pressing needs are.
To do this, we need to maintain the community outside of rope. Ryan sees the value in community events that are not rope based and will make sure that these are maintained and expanded where possible.
As your newest Board member, Ryan will make sure that your voice is heard and that the Studio Friction community as a whole always comes first.
Claire/GravityBrat (she/her) is a bottom-leaning switch who has been kinky as long as she can remember and active in the Studio Friction community since 2023. Power exchange and rope are her primary interests and her favorite scenes are those that are challenging, connective, bring her into her body and are more than a little sassy. As a queer AFAB human existing under patriarchy, she deeply values community spaces that feel safe and welcoming and believes that as risk aware kinksters we should be held to an extremely high standard of communication and consent.
She believes that strong and diverse communities are a collective effort that rely on the knowledge, wisdom and input of community members to grow, learn and repair. These are all very pretty words, but without clear feedback loops in place they will be just that. She is skilled at both dreaming and doing. As a board member, she would bring years of experience creating standard operating procedures and distilling Big Idea chaos into detail-level clarity. In her professional life as a chef turned software engineer, she has spent a lot of time proactively soliciting feedback from employees, customers, and key stakeholders in order to implement and improve systems.
She feels that the studio is currently experiencing some growing pains including high turnover in volunteer positions and lack of clear processes. This turnover places strain on a core group of volunteers who are already burned out. Creating SOPs and documenting information about how committees operate is one step towards clarifying how people can help and improving volunteer/member engagement.
Tattooed N Nerdy (she/her), is a rope bottom who has been part of the Denver scene since 2020. She is a total sex nerd,both personally and professionally, and loves sharing knowledge about kink, sexuality, consensual nonmonogamy, intimacy, desire, trauma recovery, and all the wonderfully complicated ways humans relate to one another.
As an educator and therapist, she teaches and facilitates conversations locally and nationally. At Studio Friction, she runs Pleasure Seekers, a free monthly education event, and the Consent Series, a monthly community conversation exploring consent, communication, repair, and recovery. She also serves as Chair of Studio Friction’s Incident Response Team and volunteers with the Equity, Diversity, and Belonging Committee.
When she thinks about the future of Studio Friction, she sees a space that continues to grow as a leader in education, equity, and community care. She would love to see greater access to classes and resources, more diverse educational offerings, and continued attention to the different needs and experiences of our members. She believes Studio Friction can help people build skills that go beyond rope, including communication, negotiation, consent, conflict resolution, and repair, and that improving our collective knowledge makes the entire community
stronger.
She brings a lot of knowledge to those areas, but perhaps more importantly, she really, really loves sharing information. She describes knowledge as “shiny little pebbles” and will happily hand them to anyone who is interested. Her other superpower, according to people who know her, is making people feel safe enough to open up. She takes that trust seriously and genuinely enjoys being a listening ear when someone needs one.
Tattooed N Nerdy believes Studio Friction has an opportunity to keep building something pretty special: a community where people can learn, make mistakes, repair, grow, and develop the skills to navigate kink and relationships with more confidence, care, and intention. She would love to help make that future happen.
Michael (he/him) is a top-leaning rope switch, educator, and performer who has been part of Studio Friction since its opening day. He was the Studio's first paying member, served on its first Board of Directors, and has twice served as board president. He currently serves on the IT and
Finance committees. He comes to rope from a BDSM background and enjoys the dynamic interplay between a top and bottom. He likes rope because it enables him to express himself both artistically and sensually, and he also enjoys the spiritual transcendence that can emerge through particularly powerful scenes. He is passionate about Studio Friction because it provides a home for the rope community. Having traveled extensively, he understands the incredible impact on quality of life that communities like this bring to their members, and knows not to take it for granted.
More broadly, Michael has been active in Denver's kink and rope communities since 2008. He founded Denver Rope Bite in 2012 and led it until 2020, and he is the co-founder and executive producer of Rope in the Rockies, which is produced in collaboration with Studio Friction. Through these roles, he has been involved in everything from teaching and performing to event production, community building, organizational leadership, and the decidedly less glamorous work that keeps volunteer organizations running.
Outside of the community, Michael has degrees in Civil Engineering and Business Administration and more than 25 years of professional experience. Most recently, he was a senior manager leading an international team of approximately 15 people. He brings experience in managing teams, budgets and technology, evaluating competing priorities, working through disagreement, and turning ideas into projects that can actually be executed.
Michael believes a diverse and equitable Studio Friction is one where people with different identities, backgrounds, bodies, experience levels, interests, and perspectives can participate meaningfully and feel a sense of ownership in the community. Diversity isn't only about who comes through the door; it's also about whose voices are heard, and who ultimately becomes engaged.
Michael believes Studio Friction has reached an exciting point in its development. Years of work by its boards and volunteers have created a financially stable organization with increasingly mature policies and operations. He believes what the Studio needs most now is greater
community engagement and thoughtful investment in its future. That means building on its strong foundation by attracting new people, engaging members who aren't already highly involved, and help more people see that Studio Friction is something they can actively help shape, not simply a place they attend.
Board Election Information
Since 2021, all current members in good standing are eligible to vote in the election. Each member will be emailed a voting link (to the email attached to their Studio Friction member account) on the day of the Annual Meeting. After the Annual Meeting, members will have one week, until October 6th at noon, to cast their vote. This is to ensure that folks are fully informed before voting and to give time to those who were unable to attend the Annual Meeting to vote. After the voting has closed, votes will be tallied and we will announce the results via a member email announcement. To be elected to the board, a nominee must receive votes from at least 51% of the ballots cast.
As always, you can send additional feedback via the Community Feedback Form.
