Agenda

The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2024 31 July (Wednesday) 1300 - 1430 UTC. We will meet here: https://socialcoop.meet.coop/kat-aiw-mpv-6vv (the meeting may or may not be recorded). A tentative agenda is to be consented to at the start of the call:

1300 [5 min] ADMIN

• Who is here?

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 7 August (Wednesday) 1300 UTC

• Review recap from last call

  https://www.loomio.com/d/OgmSvYG7/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-17-july-wednesday-1200-utc-m

• Who is note taking?

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

1305 [10 min] Check in:

• How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://www.nycnvc.org/feelings]

1315 [10 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in progress)

1325 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

• Call a round to check in with people

1330 [5 min] Updates from working circles

• Finance

• Tech

• Community

• Legal - defunct

1335 [5 min] Update: What was said by the group in active Loomio threads. Do we need to respond to anything or integrate something into our discussion?

1340 [30 min] Items to be consented at the start of the meeting

1410 [10 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

1420 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

Backlog items

The items below are not on the active agenda but should be addressed at some point in the future:

Strategy questions

1. Long term goals of operation (growth vs stewardship of mastodon instance vs community building vs ...)

2. Financing priorities and framework for setting these

   • How do we provide a framework for the Finance WG to budget overall and help manage surplus?

3. How do we deal with liability as an organization? Do we need to consider some kind of incorporation or legal entity? If so where? Merging Legal (LWG) and Finance (FWG)?

Operations question

• Maintenance of care

  1. How to support Tech working group and its members (cf. xy crisis driven by single maintainer)?

     • Should we offer bug bounties?

     • Set up meeting with tech working group

  2. How to support community moderation?

     • Set up meeting with community working group

  3. How do we support community governance involvement?

     • Should there be a SC newsletter?? (like GEO newsletter)

     • Inspiration and lessons learned from MayFirst https://www.loomio.com/d/Yxz1ZqPR/conversation-with-mayfirst

     • How many people engage in what category/dimension? https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy#Description_of_social.coop_member_types

     • What do our members expect?

  4. What is our current financial picture?

  5. What is our current volunteer burden?

     • Compensation and effort tracking https://www.loomio.com/d/I1KJoBY4/compensation-in-organizing-circle

• Process development

  1. Ask working groups for TWO reps instead of one.

  2. OC membership and expansion https://www.loomio.com/d/TqwLjKsc/expanding-organizing-circle

  3. Check in on group condition, engagement level, look at moving forward with (a)synchronous engagement

  4. Loomio OC Group private/public https://www.loomio.com/d/Vt7LCaPM/using-loomio-for-our-group

  5. Ask for training on 'what it means to be an admin' to orientate new admins in Organizing Circle

  6. Annual patterns https://www.loomio.com/d/BtVCdq01/annual-rhythms-of-organizing-circle-

  7. Wiki pages for decision logs https://www.loomio.com/d/kuVrqiLv/wiki-page-for-organizing-circle

Decisions to be reviewed in the future

1. October 2024 (2 decisions up) - https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy

Dear all,

Here is the new thread with the elements (to-do, agenda, backlog) for the next meeting.

I won't be there (I can be present on 7 and 21 August), I'll send a reminder this Sunday.

Have a good meeting next week, and with the CWG on 1st August!

New Backlog item (I can't seem to figure out how to edit the comment directly)

Proposal development to merge Legal and Financial Working Groups.

Also update review list to include one for February 2025

CWG ops team background:
Onboarding: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Onboarding_New_Community_Working_Group_Ops_Team_Members

On call: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Guide-for-CWG-Ops-Team-%22On-Call%22

See also: https://www.loomio.com/d/4VJ6DUYx/how-to-respond-to-people-tooting-about-mental-health-crises-

@Eduardo Mercovich Here are the onboarding for the mod team

Eduardo M got in touch with Jamie at Mayfirst. We now need to propose a meeting date or two in September.

Also, Eduardo drafted the OC background summary and I added it to the Wiki -- it still needs review and minor edits. https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle#Origin_of_the_group

@Matt Noyes Selfishly if we could get MayFirst to meet during our regular call time that would be ideal here I think. I'm open to other times but those would be my first choice.

Notes

1300 [5 min] ADMIN

• Who is here? Kathe, Matt, Eduardo, Flan, 

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 7 August (Wednesday) 1300 UTC

• Review recap from last call https://www.loomio.com/d/OgmSvYG7/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-17-july-wednesday-1200-utc-m

• Who is note taking? Matt/Flan

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

1305 [10 min] Check in:

• How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://www.nycnvc.org/feelings]

1315 [10 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in progress)

• + Annual calendar

  • We have expressed an intention to have more/clearer dates set up

• + Effort tracking

• + Dates for Mayfirst meeting

• + Meeting with the CWG Ops Team tomorrow

1325 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you? https://www.loomio.com/d/02Ms4iH8/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-31-july-wednesday-1300-utc 

• Kathe: wrote recap and posted. Updated loomio threads.

• Matt: shared links for the CWG onboarding workflow in the wiki. Worked on thread w.r.t. mental health issues interacting with moderating. Looking for a mind map of the coop.

  • Could it be https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/File:Organizational_map_of_social.coop.png? No, it's not that.

  • Will upload it to the notes thread.

• Matt: met with Eduardo M. One result of that is the origins of the OC piece; it's on the wiki as a draft now.

  • Matt: issue with people not sigining up to all services we provide, the email we send is quite lenghty. Eduardo offered to make it shorter.

  • EM: the idea would be to move more information to the wiki and link that.

  • Wiki question:

    • How to navigate more easily? Keep going back to the root to navigate.

    • Kathe: you can use 'all pages' -> https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Special:AllPages

    • Eduardo: we can add a navbar.

• Flancian: 

  • organize a meeting with TWG: Aug 26, 6pm (or 7pm?) UTC?

  • Kathe: can make that

  • EM: can

  • Matt can-ish

  • TO DO: Flancian: will try to move this to 7pm for Matt, will report back

• Kathe: do we have a link for the CWG meeting that is scheduled?

  • Matt: UTC 15:00 - 17:00 https://socialcoop.meet.coop/mat-ivs-47b-bbp

• Call a round to check in with people

1330 [30 min] Updates from working circles

• Finance/Legal

  • no updates next meeting scheduled but still pending meeting with OC

  • Kathe, Matt, Eduardo, Flancian? 

  • This could be called "Real World Group" :) RWG

  • Kathe: Questions for FWG:

    • rough outline of budget, finances?

    • scope and charter of FWG?

    • risks to social.coop? domain etc

    • how can OC support your work?

• Tech

  • Flancian: recap of last meeting(s) and open topics

  • Notes at https://doc.anagora.org/social-coop-tech-group?edit as usual

  • Date for OC meeting with the OG: August 26 at 18 UTC (possibly 19 UTC) 

    • Will report back on 19 UTC

  • Status of char limit project

    • alpha.social.coop still on the blocking path, making progress

    • some update on https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/30091#issuecomment-2241565907, even if negative

• Single sign on coordination (ETA Q4)

  • Might warrant planning/discussion with the CWG and/or the OC

  • Eduardo: would love to help here

  • TODO: add this to the backlog for this WG

• Registrations issue

  • need better feedback to user

  • Probably requires reworking the server for this

  • spam filter problem

  • can't use Mastodon registration form/process bc of our registration process (affects how we show up in Mastodon listing of instances) 

  • Eduardo: would love to help design this

    • TODO: (Flan) Make a registration and member onboarding process reform circle?

  • Kathe: tech/time burden involved?

  • Good to include someone from CWG along with Eduardo M, bring in Nathan S for feedback

• Nathan's Loomio cross posting to Mastodon proposal https://git.coop/social.coop/tech/operations/-/issues/81

  • question: what loomio content to cross-post?

  • everything is too much

  • involving members in operations is the goal

  • set up a social.coop loomio feeds account to post everything

  • instance only toots would be great

• Matt: co-op+ fedi fedi -- how to organize fellow cooperative (democratic, friendly, aligned...?) Mastodon instances to coordinate policies and push for Mastodon changes...?

  • Flancian: [[fediversalist papers]] might help here

  • Mastodon development operates with a closed model, stable but hard to penetrate/influence

  • "Friendly instances"

  • Organize a symposium on democratic fediverse...

  • Previous initiatives: fedipact, meeting of co-op and democratic instances...

  • do a landscape analysis to begin with...

• Community

  • Dealing with the fallout from some "flat-footed" responses on controversial threads about safety within the Fediverse for minorities. 

  • Simple changes in the interface would make a huge difference

    • default exclusive vs inclusive federations

    • This IS techically possible right now but doesn't work well for many purposes

  • Risk to social.coop - reputation and possible defederation by other instances

  • Eduardo: it would be so good to have more workshops for non-violent communication :)

    • Mastodon Covenant and alternatives to e.g. Fedipact-like approaches

      • "We commit to federating with anyone who signs this" would be a good alternative approach

      • Flancian: +1

  • Kathe: on the risk to social.coop reputation. What would 'feel safe' to people who are concerned about us not taking strong enough action against racism? Do they have specific requests?

    • Matt: there is a wide range of♡ reports. Some are very high quality and follow NVC, some are dogpile-like.

    • Hollie has been handling a lot of these.

    • CoC and Conflict Resolution Guidelines are very useful.

      • In the wiki.

    • Eduardo: sharing these materials with reporters might help convince them we're taking things seriously/serve as Proof of Work.

• Legal - defunct/to be merged with FWG?

1400 [5 min] Update: What was said by the group in active Loomio threads. Do we need to respond to anything or integrate something into our discussion?

1400 [15 min] Annual rythms https://www.loomio.com/d/BtVCdq01/annual-rhythms-of-organizing-circle-

• What needs a date? What has a date?

1415 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

• Kathe

  • Copy over notes

  • Recap of call

  • Agenda for next call

  • Backlog updates - add in Fedi the Fediverse conference planning; single sign on asks; follow up on registration restructuring

• Flan: 

  • Make a registration and member onboarding process reform circle?

  • Will probably start with a bug and share that.

  • report back on 7pm or 6pm for the Aug 26 meeting.

  • ask Darius and Erin if we can have a preprint of the Fed Paper.

• Matt:

  • share questions with CWG ops team before tomorrow!

  • Collect CWG calendar items

  • admin interface walkthrough

• @andrewe (Andres) on mute:

  • takeaway: this structure is appreciated as always

  • poll OC+FWG 

  • FC+TWG: hertz billing, domain handoff (not mentioned today)

  • Schedule innovation coop or P6 joint meeting with OC (carry over). YES!

• @edumerco

  • work on the onboarding mail/wiki information/communication.

  • help designing the sign form (part of onboarding)

  • help with a positive fedi initiative

  • Calendar entry for this meeting seems like it has to be moved to 1pm UTC

1420 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.