Dear All,

I've prepared the agenda for the next meeting. In yellow are the points to be clarified or sharpened up. Your ideas and suggestions are welcome.

Is the return of the meeting to 1200 UTC temporary (time change) or will it stay that way?

@MarieVC (social.coop/MarieVC) The 1200 UTC is here to stay from what I understood.

I'm going to propose a topic on evaluating the process documenting the last two decisions from our 26 March meeting. Two rounds of what works and what didn't work followed by a round on what we should do moving forward to document/consent to decisions. Should probably be a good 20-25 minutes here to give us room to discuss.

A second topic might be roles in this circle. How do we want to formalize note taking, recaps, facilitation, cross-links from other groups, and agenda creation as roles. Are there other roles that we want to formalize?

A standing topic to add might be related to reviewing/adding to the back log with the prompt "What should we talk about in the next 2-4 calls?"

Finally let's make sure to switch out the prompt questions in the opening and closing to encourage a verity of conversations. Something like:

• Check in - What is something that everyone seems to enjoy but you don't? How do you feel about that?

• Feedback - Where would you like more flexibility in this circle? Where would you like more structure?

Dear All,

I've updated the agenda, the structure of which is taken from the agendas generously put together by @Kathe TB previously, as well as her suggestions.

I have published the proposal on decision-making following the 'Social.coop governance scoping' thread, as well as on our wiki. There will be time at our next meeting to evaluate what works and what can be improved around these two decisions (membership aspects and decision-making).

This is how to add a reminder notification to a task on Loomio: https://help.loomio.com/en/user_manual/threads/thread_admin/tasks.html

See you on Tuesday!

Hi all. I'm currently stuck in a meeting. I will join you as soon as I can escape

@John Allsopp DOn't worry! We start at 1200 UTC, you have another hour.

Notes

1200 [5 min] ADMIN

• Who is here? Kathe TB, Caitlin, Marie VC, Matt

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 23 April 1200 UTC

• Review recap from last call https://www.loomio.com/d/roudALiE/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-26-march-tuesday-1200utc

• Who is note taking? Matt

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

1205 [15 min] Check in:

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

• What is something that everyone seems to enjoy but you don't? How do you feel about that?

Start the Recording

1220 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you? Call a round to check in with people

• Kathe did tasks on list, Loomio experimenting, posting notes

• Marie experimenting with Loomio and Wiki, wrote agenda, interesting to do it and think about roles, meet.coop room can be opened by anyone, good to decide main topic for each meeting as well as standing topics; icebreaker questions/closing questions very interesting

• Kathe - loomio agenda thread was helpful, back and forth

• Matt - 

  • link for nextcloud to everyone: https://share.mayfirst.org/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/KG92DPwX3ww442AD?export,

  •  https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Community_Working_Group_Ops_Team

• Caitlin - no tasks this time

1225 [5 min] Updates from working circles

• Finance - budget proposal passed, loomio poll on allocation to each org; community contribution budgeting, using participatory budgeting method! Democratic finance in action. Announcement needed on Mastodon.

• Tech - 

• Community - adding new members, shadowing, reccurent  question around Hometown, etc. > helping to facilitate the discussion

• Legal - dormant ;-)

1230 [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?

• word count discussion

• xy crisis driven by single mantainer, be sure that there is a healthy balance between new ideas and maintance 

• how to support TWG and its members -- important for us to stay on top of this

• "Maintenance care" - topic... SC could innovate in systems care

• Katanova thread on switch to IRC, about community building in general - paused for the moment

1235 [15 min] Review -> ?Decision: Evaluating the process documenting the last two decisions from our 26 March meeting. What went well? What can be improved?

• Kathe liked Loomio consent model, publically posted, got better sense of loomio options and how to incorporate them, going with Loomio consent model and push to Wiki makes sense, Wiki for documentation. How to get notifications for re-opening a topic? Can it be linked to calendar?

• Marie Loomio -> Wiki is right direction, great to have transparency and feedback, great to have other brains stepping in (e.g. Edsu's comment); like the way KTB put into words the context and structure. Tried the reminder, you have to use tick box, add names, option to add deadline (in Sept.). Confusing -- if someone ticks box, lose the notification. How to make the tick box work well -- TODO: Matt ask Rob Guthrie about this, also about how to push Loomio decisions to the Wiki. OC decisions page, i.e.

• Idea: use this call to formulate proposals and use Loomio for decision-making? Put those votes only in OC subgroup, but visible to whole group? Have all proposal votes on a tri-weekly cycle, with a scheduled check-in. TODO: Kathe will move this to Loomio thread.

  • our motivation is to allow for more participation of OC members who are missing meetings/feedback on decisions; transparency of decision-making for SC members

  • TODO:  Matt check on privacy of threads - can an individual thread be public in a private group? Would that be overwhelming? Make notifications opt-in?

  • to better document decisions made

• Good to set a time on the Wiki, when a decision was made, when it will be re-opened.

• TODO: Kathe restructuring the Wiki to have a log page/book for the circle; add OC to the Wiki governance/operations documentation

• TODO: Kathe will post our recaps - public.

1250 [15 min] Formulation -> ?Decision: 

• How do we want to formalize note taking, recaps, facilitation, cross-links from other groups, and agenda creation as roles? Are there other roles that we want to formalize?

  • Good to build in redundancy and do training so no single point of failure

    • slow us down?

  • We did it this time, with MVC making agenda, KTB facilitating

  • can have each person facilitate different parts

  • code of agreements/code of conduct - do we need this?

    • I KTB find these useful in more open groups without strong relationship

  • importance of rotation to reinforce buy-in and participation, share leadership and burdens

  • learn by doing, do it 3x

  • bandwidth issues: differences in capacity for contributions

  • Matt would like to learn sociocracy protocol 

  • social.coop conversation on common practices would be a good thing to organize

  • cultivating relationships is one way to achieve the same things a code of conduct does for a larger group with people coming in and out. We create norms of practice. 

  • good to plan for conflict to head off conflict

  • helpful to have general vision of process in order to plan agenda

1250 [5 min] Formulation: 

• Reviewing/adding to the backlog items: What should we talk about in the next 2-4 calls?

  • learning sociocracy, sense-making

  • roles (rotating sharing) 

  • code of conduct 

  • generative conflict (Planning for conflict so that we recognize and address interpersonal problems when they arise)

  • compensation for time spent on Org Circle as per OC proposal

    • model on CWG process?

    • share our "money stories" to build trust for that convo? (yes!) 

  • learning how to use admin interface in Mastodon safely

  • Caitlin seeking a facilitation workshop

    • sociocracy for all

    • NVC workshops

    • PeoplesHub

1310 [10 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item? (each of us populate this list)

• Marie: Draft Agenda April 23 1200 UTC and create new thread

• Matt: 

  • check on privacy of threads - can an individual thread be public in a private group? Would that be overwhelming? Make notifications opt-in?

  • ask Rob Guthrie about tick box, also about how to push Loomio decisions to the Wiki. OC decisions page, i.e.

  • meeting reminder DM to OC

• Kathe: 1) copy over notes to thread 2) write recap to thread 3) copy recap over to new Org Circle thread on general 4) make org circle wiki page and log book w/ current decisions 5) make new decision thread for topic of decision making on circle 6) add NextCloud calendar and experiment with mayfirst log on to edit calendar

• everyone: try adding this to your personal calendar software: https://share.mayfirst.org/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/KG92DPwX3ww442AD?export,

• Caitlin: Finance Wkg Gp stuff (ongoing) 

1320 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? [SAVE: Where would you like more flexibility in this circle? Where would you like more structure? Explain why.]

• wish we had been able to get text more coalesced for how do we decide stuff proposal, in the future we could be more deliberate about drafting proposal text

• so essential we have time for each thing, feels steady, we are plugging away

• getting more accustomed to flow of time in meetings

• enjoy the learning process, making decisions and space to learn and improve

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

• SAGE 3 https://sage3.sagecommons.org/?page_id=921

• How do we deal with liability as an organization? Do we need to consider some kind of incorporation or legal entity? If so where?

• Strategically, how do we provide a framework for the Finance circle to help manage surplus?

• Ask for training on 'what it means to be an admin' to orientate new admins.