Backlog items

(31 July 2024 version)

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)?

4. How can we learn from other fediverse instances?

   1. Calls with MayFirst and P6

   2. Should we set up a conference or meet up of some flavor to help Federating the fediverse?

   3. Follow up on "Fed paper"

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

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 do we support community governance involvement?

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

   • 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?

   • How do we move people from sign-up to community member to co-op governance and operations?

3. What is our current financial picture?

4. What is our current volunteer burden?

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

Process development

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

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

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

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

5. OC history documentation

   1. still needs review and minor edits. https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle#Origin_of_the_group

6. Can we better highlight how we moderate?

   1. 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-

Decisions to be reviewed in the future

https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy

1. October 2024 (2 decisions up)

2. February 2025 (1 decision up)

Dear All,

Here is the agenda and the backlog (31 July 2024 version) for our next meeting.

I'll be sending out a reminder on Monday 9 September.

See you there!

Revised Agenda

A tentative agenda is to be consented to at the start of the call:

1700 [5 min] ADMIN

• Who is here?

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 25 September (Wednesday) 1700 UTC

• Review recap from last call https://www.loomio.com/d/q2kTbamu/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-28-august-wednesday-1300-utc

• Who is note taking?

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

1705 [5 min] Check in:

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

1710 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

• Call a round to check in with people

1715 [10 min] Updates from working circles

• Finance

• Tech

• Community

• Legal - defunct

1725 [55 min] Scoping: How social.coop makes decisions

Context: There have been several instances this month (bridge, participatory budget, and stipends) that have been flagged by multiple people as moving too quickly or lacking context. Can we identify any similarities across these three problems?

Round: What similarities have you seen across these instances?

Round: What makes these issues different?

Round: From this can we formulate a clear problem statement?

Round: Is there a sense making survey we can start on Loomio to gather input on this and make sure we understand where the pinch points are?

Next steps: Brainstorming solutions

1820 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

1825 [5 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

Dear All,

With the start of my research project, I know more about my new work schedule.

Unfortunately, I'm teaching a seminar on Wednesday evenings during this semester (end September to end December), with a schedule that clashes with the OC meeting, which makes it impossible for me to be available on Wednesdays.

I'm OK with following things up asynchronously if needed, if another schedule isn't possible for the other members.

See you tomorrow!

@MarieVC (social.coop/MarieVC) Time for a scheduling poll. We also need to add another at large member to replace John. Maybe our next meeting should be mainly housekeeping?

I think a scheduling poll is pretty easy to send out after the meeting. We do need another round of selection to replace John. Should we put out another general call on Loomio for nominations now that folks have seen a bit how we operate? I know we've talked through a few options here for expanding the circle.

Notes

1700 [5 min] ADMIN

• Who is here? Kathe, Matt, Marie, Eduardo, Flancian

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 25 September (Wednesday) 1700 UTC

• Review recap from last call https://www.loomio.com/d/q2kTbamu/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-28-august-wednesday-1300-utc

• Who is note taking? Matt

• Who is facilitating? Kathe 

1705 [5 min] Check in:

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

1710 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

• Call a round to check in with people

  • [Eduardo] wiki nav bar idea yet to get moving

  • CWG did add comments to onboarding email

  • Matt: would like to still schedule meeting with Eduardo and Marie to discuss onboarding.

  • Marie: value of task list and periodic reminder to review practices, need to update list for reminders

  • Flan: no tasks from last time it seems; 'organize group to redesign registration' is still pending from two meetings ago.

• Bonfire:

  • Flancian, recent discussion: https://doc.anagora.org/bonfire-socialcoop

  • Mutual support, possibility of using Bonfire for decision-making (possible alternative to Loomio)

  • decision-making: polls...

  • Next steps: updating bonfire and trying it out.

  • Bonfire people can see roles for SC people: tech/coding; UX work; governance

  • create a SC working group?

  • Possibility of using Bonfire to create/adapt a tool tailored to our needs...

1715 [10 min] Updates from working circles

• Finance [skip]

• Tech

  • Received Gandi credentials from Andrew

  • Meeting with the OC is still on for the 23rd ?time ?link

    • 18.30 UTC -> add to calendar

  • We had a ~2h outage due to an unpaid bill

  • Who actually pays the bills?

    • FWG?  TWG?

    • Need to add regular bills to calendar

    • Maybe the FWG could keep track of which bills need to be paid, and who pays them; and each delegate (working group) can pay them

    • Ask FWG to do this "we believe this is yours, if you need help let us know"

    • Andrew as possible second link to FWG.

• Community

  • Going well with new people taking on more tasks

  • On call schedule was fuzzy around beginning of the month but things still worked as people tend to jump on moderation issues

  • Will meet with May 1st on next Monday

• Legal - [pending revival, see Loomio ]

1725 [10 min] Formulation: New members and roles

• How are we replacing John?

  • He was at-large member

  • Informal poll: we want to backfill this roll indeed

  • how: 

    • go back to original nominations/sortition list 

    • Matt: we would want to consider e.g. diversity, etc. as we did that originally also when going through the process

    • Flancian: saves work to go to original list

    • Marie: if we have enough names on original list, more efficient way

    • Eduardo: both can be, but prefer to go to original list for efficiency. 

  • do a new loomio call for nominations

    • Kathe: people know more about OC

  • call on the instance, to reach more of community

    • Kathe: good way to get word out

  • TASK: Matt make a short list of possible OC members from original list, circulate to OC, run an approval poll

• Do we encourage the 2 links/circle? [table to next OC meeting]

  • Proposal: create a chat room? 

• Are we ok with going through a formal sociocracy role review, definition, and selection next time?

  • Role selection: define role tasks and scope, qualifications; two nomination rounds; facilitator proposes someone, seeking consensus

  • Feedback moment: what's working/not as well... individual performance reviews?

  • Four roles:

    • coordination/lead

    • facilitation

    • representation/delegate (no here bc we are GC)

    • secretary/notes/archivist

  •  Bring in someone outside of the circle to play roles but not operate as a member (not suggested, KTB)

  • Q: is the decision making matrix used in sociocracy to assign authority to circles?

    • A: it can be

    • RACI:

    • accountability is held by the circle

    • responsibility is held by an individual usually

    • CI: related experts/people consulting/people interested in the work

    • (After discussion) "Domains and aims" is the sociocracy equivalent

  • Reactions:

    • Matt: happy to use the opportunity to experiment more with sociocracy. Feel like it might be more formal than what is strictly needed. But then again, part of our charter is to up the level of organization within the coop, so it might be good to experiment.

    • Flancian: share Matt's opinion, interesting, rotation might also be good, willing to try it, but not necessarily feeling the need for it

    • Marie: intimidated by new terminology/structures, but curious to try it and think it is good to think about the roles.

    • Eduardo: all for it. Very much like it, and agree that we don't need it but good to learn it when we don't need it (rather than waiting); experiment in how to organize the world in whcih we want to live

    • Kathe: tensions: equitable distribution of power, more structure needed to clarify roles and intentions

    • Matt: one thing that would help: there needs to be a clear way to shift those roles by developing people's abilities. Rotation can enable this.

    • Kathe: we can do training for sociocracy, lots of existing material...

1735 [45 min] Scoping: How social.coop makes decisions

• Recent issues:

  • bridgy

  • consensus vs majority voting

  • participatory budgeting

  • stipends

  • moving too quickly with insufficient context

• Meta:

  • we would like to not focus too much on loomio but rather talk about general processes

• First Reactions:

  • Kathe: everything was fine until suddently it was not :) humming along, suddenly things falling apart; felt jarring; possibility for rifts and disconnection

  • Matt: saw some of the same dynamics but felt more positive about some of them :) it's a long discussion, there is a lot of historical context here.

    • Some of what happened amounted to forgetting things we had "learnt" how to do

    • Was happy to see in some discussions: the way people were able to both express strong feelings and be really nice to each other (despite not being aligned on the issue at hand). So overall it seemed like a good example. And people were able to be flexible.

  • Flan: learned from community about how to poll, previous exchange - strong reaction to a small change -- importance of being inclusive of minority views and also taking into account willingness to do work. Frustrating - can lead to questioning of commitment to the project, is it worth it? Why am I doing this? 

  • Marie: really value our desire to be cooperative, trusting the people to find a solution, outside of SC trying to be conscious of what is an emergency and what is not... How to reach the final goal, while not being on emergency mode, if the context allows it.

  • Eduardo: 

    • didn't have time to read everything, just to reply to direct mentions, 

    • incredible level of civility that we have here...

    • unfortunate that some people feel bad, mostly about not understanding, complex situations, conflicting forces, conflict and confusion is to be expected; keep refining how we suggest to approach problems.. personal and cultural differences (written literacy is key here, but not everyone favors this; POV - aka positionality - how we see/experience problems; levels of skill, familiarity, knowledge, habit...

    • how to distill our learnings into suggested procedures? 

We will continue this conversation next time.

Context: There have been several instances this month (bridge, participatory budget, and stipends) that have been flagged by multiple people as moving too quickly or lacking context. Can we identify any similarities across these three problems?

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

  • [flancian] reviewed these recently in light of what happened with some recent proposals, some thoughts

  • Also: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Make_a_proposal

• sociocracy and other approaches

  • integrative consent (https://www.loomio.com/d/lDiAVCsd/should-we-use-integrative-consent-for-decision-making-in-social-coop-)

1820 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

• ✔️

  Matt: 

  schedule meeting with Eduardo and Marie to discuss onboarding.

•  

  Matt: make a short list of possible OC members from original list, circulate to OC, run an approval poll

• ✔️

  Matt: get on CWG calendar

• ✔️

  Flancian: set up calendar entry for the 23rd meeting with the OC

•  

  Flancian: document how to create a calendar entry

•  

  Kathe: Copy of notes

•  

  Kathe: Create recap

•  

  Kathe: Create agenda items

•  

  Kathe: Whentomeet poll for rescheduling call  --

  Flancian: FYI https://crab.fit/ is nice for this kind of poll, we used it in TWG

  https://share.mayfirst.org/apps/calendar/ is our calendar [Eduardo and Flan for access permissions]

•  

  edumerco:

  check email/wiki onboarding comments from the CWG. 

•  

  edumerco: help to organize the onboarding process review and facilitate a modelling session. 

•  

  Marie: Agenda, To-do list, backlog (> check deadlines, cf. Loomio Reminder)

Backlog:

    + Conversations on the federating the fediverse ("Ekumen" proposal) Ecumene ("Ekumen") idea (Eduardo & Eduardo)

    + Bonfire exploration

    + Identify bills, billing cycle, and point of contact for payment

    + May first calendaring

    + review (with whom?) the proposal for wiki nav bar.

1825 [5 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

...

Regarding the nominees from the previous round of OC elections for at large positions, four of the remaining nominees are currently on the CWG ops team: Dan, Django, Melissa, Hollie, and one was but dropped off (Katanova). The rest appear to be men. Perhaps it makes sense to open a new round of nominations?

Recap

How Social.coop decides was a major topic of conversation this call. There were several recent issues that came up around bridgy, consensus vs majority voting, participatory budgeting, stipends, and moving quickly with insufficient context. Generally we rely on an incredibly level of civility among our members (truly the community here is amazing!). We noticed patterns where past good practices needed to be relearned (how to pose a proposal on Loomio) and things needing to reach a boil (emergency) before they are dealt with by someone, often too rapidly for full buy in from the group. We have the bylaws (https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Bylaws) and past guidence on proposal making (https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Make_a_proposal) as well as integrative consent (https://www.loomio.com/d/lDiAVCsd/should-we-use-integrative-consent-for-decision-making-in-social-coop-) that we can work from. We will continue this conversation in the future.

Membership and rolls in Organizing Circle: We are going to go back to the Sortition List to replace our last At-Large member. We are talking about possibly encouraging a double link to the working groups (ie two WG representatives instead of one). We had a brief breakdown of sociocracy roles to talk about possibility of adoption on this circle, but will likely need to review this again in the future.

Updates from Working Groups:

• Finance [skipped]

• Tech WG: Is meeting with OC in the future. Reported a 2 hour outage due to an unpaid bill. Currently working with Finance WG to sort out who is responsible and how to avoid this in the future. There has been some discussion around exploring Bonfire as a Loomio alternative (https://doc.anagora.org/bonfire-socialcoop).

• Community WG: Going well with new people taking on more tasks. Schedule got a little fuzzy around the begining of September but folks generally jumped in when a mod issue came up so the gap wasn't too noticeable.

• Legal [pending]