Loomio

Organizing Circle Meeting: 2024 17 July (Wednesday) 1200 UTC M

M MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) Wed 10 Jul 2024 11:58AM Public Seen by 6

To-Do List

  • Kathe: Recaps and synthesis

  • Kathe: backlog comment in new agenda

  • Kathe: Move links in wiki

  • Kathe: construct proposals for wiki update and annual rythem agenda item

  • Matt: set up meeting time with CWG people

  • Matt: ask Sam for latest onboarding material and links location

  • Matt: Prepare simple walk through of mastodon admin interface for OC members

  • Matt: work with Caitlin and Flan on workshops idea

  • Matt: write up OC origin story (from original proposal and sortition docs) for wiki

  • Matt: organize meeting with MayFirst on engagement

  • Matt: check with Josh to see what non-OC people can see/access

  • Caitlin: set up meeting between OC and FWG for end-of-summer

  • Caitlin: join meeting with Matt for admin material

  • Flancian: organizing meeting w/the TWG

  • Eduardo: create a proposal for a structure to get info on tasks for each WG

  • Eduardo: work on the wiki reviewing the bylaws and potential changes to the OC page? - support Matt uber task list somehow

  • Marie: Agenda, To-Do List

  • Marie: Reminder

M

MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) Wed 10 Jul 2024 12:01PM

Agenda

The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2024 17 July (Wednesday) 1200 - 1330 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:

1200 [5 min] ADMIN

1205 [10 min] Check in:

1215 [10 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in progress)

1225 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

  • Call a round to check in with people

1230 [5 min] Updates from working circles

  • Finance

  • Tech

  • Community

  • Legal - defunct

1235 [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?

1240 [30 min] Items to be consented at the start of the meeting

1310 [10 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

1320 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

M

MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) Wed 10 Jul 2024 12:08PM

Dear All,

Here's the structure of the agenda and the to-do list for our next meeting.

@Kathe TB I remember you wanted to look at the backlog, this could be covered in another post or you can add it to the agenda post (I think this is technically possible).

I'll be sending a reminder message on Social.Coop on Monday 15 July.

(I'll be able to be there, we've had to postpone our holidays, we both have covid, yeah.)

See you next week!

KT

Kathe TB Wed 17 Jul 2024 11:26AM

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

Decisions to be reviewed in the future

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

KT

Kathe TB Wed 17 Jul 2024 11:46AM

Proposed agenda items:

[10 min] Decision: Meet with CWG: Thursday, August 1st, 8am-10amPT/1500-1600 UTC

  • Who can meet?

  • First reaction to these has main questions to drive the conversation:

    • Describe the work that CWG members do in social.coop. How can OC support your work in CWG? Is there anything else you want us to know?

[15 min] Formulation: Policy decision documentation

  • Context: We need to clearly record decisions made for future reference and track when these decisions come up for review in order to keep the documentation fresh.

  • Proposal:

    • The wiki will be updated when a policy decision is made inside organizing circle. A policy decision is a group agreement that is expected to guide repeated future actions.

    • Policies will have terms for review as well as metrics for success of the policy. The dates of these terms will be added chronologically to the back log and the construction of the agenda will take these dates into consideration.

  • Metrics: There are no stale policy decisions that have not been reviewed in a timely manner

  • Term: 6 months (Feb 2025) with an expectation of 2yrs terms there after

[15 min] Formulation: Annual rhythm

KT

Kathe TB Wed 17 Jul 2024 1:35PM

Notes


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

1200 [5 min] ADMIN

  • Who is here?

  • Caitlin, Kathe, Marie, Matt, Andrew, Eduardo (Flancian)

  • Does anyone need to leave early?

  • Flancian needs to leave after 1h

  • Confirm our next call on 31 July (Wednesday) 1200 UTC

  • Review recap from last call

  • Who is note taking? Matt/Flancian

  • Who is facilitating? Kathe

1205 [10 min] Check in:

1215 [5 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in progress)

(skipped this item)

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

  • Move TWG meeting to Flan

1225 [5 min] Updates from working circles

Finance

  • no recent meeting - Andrew reached out to FWG to set up meeting, 

  • Caitlin initiated conversation on Loomio about OC session, 

  • Community contribution budgeting in process

    Tech

  • One security update took place (goal is to expand circle of people who can do updates, now mostly Calix and Flancian)

  • Dealt with some performance issues, things seem stable now 

  • Progress on setting up alpha.social.coop, to unblock new character limits

  • On potentially moving this meeting 1h later to make it more available to TWG members -- starting at 13 UTC would be ideal -- approved

    • This would unblock Calix joining

    • And also would result in fewer conflicts for Eduardo/Flancian

    Community

  • Usual business continues

  • Holly has been playing a great role

  • Will shadow CWG coordination role!

  • Meeting with the OC being scheduled

  • Will run a poll on Loomio to officially elect new CWG members

  • Andrew: it's good to see how CWG and TWG do this, as Finance has a less structured process

  • would be good to use CWG Ops Team election process as a starting point for more formal process for other WGs

  • Are we a rogue organization? pirates? :D

  • fiscal sponsor - Innovation Co-op (was Platform 6), via OC

  • Andrew: what about merging legal and finance? (discuss this in listening session?)

  • Reactions

  • Kathe: let's save this and add it to the backlog? I like the merge idea.

  • Flancian, Matt: +1

  • Andrew: the mechanics of finance are working well; we have budget and active participation, finances are solid. There's good structure to build on.

    Meta

  • Flancian: I think 5 minutes for this part of the meeting is too little?

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?

  • Matt: saw a post by Emi about reviving the reading group.

  • Caitlin: Ana Ulin and me are talking about contributing to this

1235 [10 min] Decision: Meet with CWG: Thursday, August 1st, 8am-10am Pacific/1500-1700 UTC

Meet during first hour of CWG ops team meeting. https://time.is/UTC. Meeting in first hour 

  • Who can meet?

    • Kathe

    • Flancian probably

    • Matt

    • Caitlin cannot attend.

  • First reaction to these has main questions to drive the conversation:

  1. Quick round of intros

  2. [prep this prior] Describe the work that CWG members do in social.coop. (TASKS: Matt: share onboarding and workflow info beforehand. Matt: share these questions with CWG ops team beore meeting.)

  3. How do you make decisions? 

  4. Including: How is membership determined in CWG ops team? How does CWG handle finances? How do you do onboarding?

  5. How can OC support your work in CWG?

  6. Is there anything else you want us to know?

1245 [15 min] Decision: Policy decision documentation

  • Context: We need to clearly record decisions made for future reference and track when these decisions come up for review in order to keep the documentation fresh.

  • Proposal:

    • The wiki will be updated when a policy decision is made inside organizing circle. A policy decision is a group agreement that is expected to guide repeated future actions.

    • Policies will have terms for review as well as metrics for success of the policy. The dates of these terms will be added chronologically to the back log and the construction of the agenda will take these dates into consideration.

  • Metrics: There are no stale policy decisions that have not been reviewed in a timely manner within one month of review date

  • Term: 6 months (Feb 2025) with an expectation of 1yrs terms there after

  • [tech massage to use templates for polic items on wiki]

  • APPROVED --> TASK: Kathe will add as a policy to OC wiki and remove item from backlog

1300 [15 min] Formulation: Annual rhythm

  • [3 min] solo review: https://www.loomio.com/d/BtVCdq01/annual-rhythms-of-organizing-circle-

    • Clarifying questions: Is this for just this year or each year? Every year

    • Hiostry section: planned microblogs to develope community sense

  • [5 min] What is good about this proposed rhythm?

    • stripped down to three sections

    • Three items reflect past - present - future

    • Covers a lot of things we have already highlighted as "we want to talk about this" - good to keep this in mind so we can revisit during year

    • like visioning the future section, as a co-op we are about member engagement

  • [5 min] What should change?

    • Add calendar to accompany general rhythms

    • Harvest existing deadlines from Working Groups and Circles - tech/finance/organizing

    • break out working group rhythms/deadlines

    • Add budgeting cycles/finance report (like annual report) -- change schedule to have budget plans ready when needed...

    • budgeting to support items in our rhythms?

    • add check-ins with innovation.coop (fiscal sponsor)

    • add check-ins with meet.coop, mayfirst.coop (platforms in which we are members)

    • "doing" parts are important

    • takeaways: 

      • need calendar to accompany this

      • broader than just OC: rhythms of SC WGs and group as a whole

      • OC "seasons" -- three rhythms -- plus Calendar

      • Ask working groups to identify their calendar items -- this needs a person! CHeck!

1315 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

  • Flancian: organize meeting for TWG+OC.

  • Kathe: add as a policy to OC wiki and remove item from backlog

  • Kathe: copy over notes and construct recap

  • Kathe: Add backlog to ageda thread

  • Kathe: add mods to the annual rhythm thread

  • Marie: Agenda (31 July 1300 UTC) + To-Do + Reminder

  • Matt: 

  • share CWG onboarding and workflow info beforehand. 

  • share questions with CWG ops team beore meeting.

  • previous tasks: OC history, meeting with May 1st, Caitlin and Flan on workshops idea, prep walk through of admin

  • ask CWG to identify calendar items

  • ask Eduardo to do same with Tech

1320 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

  • great feedback on rhythms

  • helpful to have Andrew's participation

  • good mix of task-oriented discussion and forward looking disc.

  • diversity of backgrounds and activities very helpful

  • glad we are plugging away at details

  • impressed with how well organized and structured this is... I see a lot of thought went into this

  • Flancian: I think 5 minutes for WG Updates part of the meeting is too little?

KT

Kathe TB Tue 30 Jul 2024 11:02PM

Recap

Decisions:

Policy documentation https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy#Documenting_a_proposal

Formulating discussions:

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

  • Focus less on the how and more on the why. How can change each year.

  • Keep:

    • Past-present-future structure of the year

    • Good reminder to revisit standing topics

    • Visioning as a co-op is especially good, can we pull in more member engagement

  • Change:

    • Add calendar deadlines (budget! and other working group contributions)

    • Add check ins with fincal sponsor (innovation.coop) and member platforms (meet.coop and mayfirst.coop)

    • Expand to include social.coop not just organizing circle

Updates:

  • Finance: No recent meeting to report out. Plan in the works to meet with OC in near future. Still going through community contribution budgeting process.

  • Tech: Security update implemented. Unrelated (?) preformance issues that seem to have stabilized. New Virtual Product Server (VPS) stood up for alpha site. Backup testing on new VPS also under development.

  • Community: Business as usual. Meeting with OC scheduled. Will be running a poll on Loomio to officially elect new CWG members.

  • Legal: Officially defunct but some mutterings about merging with Financial. Not having a legal framework is fine until it's VERY not fine.

Loomio threads tracking: Potential reviving of reading groups?