Dear All,

As for the previous meeting, I'm starting a new Loomio thread for our next meeting. I have followed the structure of previous meetings.

The part highlighted in yellow relates to the heart of our work and discussions, will welcome your ideas/solutions and is to be built/consent together, so that @Kathe TB can make the elements her own, to facilitate our next meeting.

@Matt Noyes will send a reminder to all OC members closer to the next meeting.

I will incorporate your feedback into the agenda on Monday 22 April.

Hello @Kathe TB,

Do you have enough materials in the above structure to prepare for tomorrow's meeting? Is there anything we can do to help?

Thank you for the time you offer us, which is so important for our meetings!

Hi guys. I really apologise but I am not going to be able to make it. In fact, I have started a new project which is effectively a full-time job, and so I am no longer in control of my time. It is unlikely that I will be able to continue in this role because I would prefer not to let you down.

Notes

1200 [5 min] ADMIN

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

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 7 May (Tuesday) 1200 UTC

• Review recap from last call

• https://www.loomio.com/d/MOtve6Tw/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-9-april-tuesday-1200-utc

• Who is note taking? Matt

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

1205 [10 min] Check in:

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

• Icebreaker Question: What takes a lot of time but is totally worth it? And why?

1215 [5 min] Agenda construction

• reviewed previous recaps, checking the backlog and going over the initial proposal

• John Allsop may not be able to participate

• check in on group condition, engagement level

• Upshot: let's do review of initial proposal and look at moving forward with (a)synchronous engagement

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 not get to the wiki this week, still on TODO list  2) make new decision thread for topic of decision making on circle 3) add NextCloud calendar and experiment with mayfirst log on to edit calendar

• Matt: did not send reminder, did not 

  • 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.

  • transfer CWG coord duties?

• Marie: built structure of agenda, highlighted spaces for agenda, space to build agenda; set deadline for agenda additions and send reminder

  • good to have a core agenda with a 30min space to create at start of meeting

• Caitlin: NA

1225 [5 min] Updates from working circles

• Finance - progress on Community Contribution Budgeting; $ to give to other cooperatives, Step 1: ask for suggestions, not closed yet; proposal format glitches (tool hidden); need to put announcements at top of page asking for action by members; next stage is a follow-up post to invite people to choose orgs; need people to actually transfer the $; follow-up post by next week? Participatory budgeting format is new to all of us -- exciting! Confusing.

  • would it help to write up a context post, short narrative of what FWG is doing?

    • too much right now...

  • same thing for OC?

  • WG updates thread on Loomio?

    • do it on Mastodon, too?

    • do both? Loomio and Mastodon

    • which channel is reaching people best?

    • Metrics of engagement? How to measure it on each platform?

    • FWG looking for recognition/review/oversight from OC, 1st annual budget wrap up and new budget proposal, put this on OC agenda; 

    • IDEA: 

      • create annual patterns; 

      • have a joint meeting with FWG. 

      • Do this with all circles.

• Tech -- open house, very successful, some non-TWG people there, questions

• Community --  Integration of new people (different platforms, training, etc.), trying the processes around report

• Legal - defunct

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?

• disabling images thread: 

  • ask TWG to do this?

  • should OC make decision on this? ask membership to vote?

  • every circle has some tasks and decision-making authority -- tech should have call on this

  • PROPOSAL: OC contact TWG to see about feasibility (Matt)

    • global accessibility awareness and world sight days (May/Oct)

    • good way to test publishing proposals on Loomio and notifying other Mastodon instances

    • Question: is this the kind of thing OC should decide? Political decision  for membership to make?

  • ISSUE: Where are TWG group notes? They should be in a location where others can access.

1235 [10 min] Review of our inital task
https://www.loomio.com/p/OI8kEjVz/social-coop-organizing-circle-proposal: What are your clarifying questions?

• read through proposal together

• key elements to address:

  • four roles

  • compensation and documentation

  • QUESTION: do we want a decision-making matrix?

    • living document, fill in as we go

• In process:

  • decision process

  • budgeting

  • coordination of/with working groups

    • going well but unstable in terms of participation in OC by TWG?

    • ask for a second rep from/to WGs? (sociocracy style)

• hitting strongly:

  • communication and member engagement

• IDEA: seasonal calendar

[[1245 [15 min] What is the problem that this group is trying to solve?]]

1300 [10 min] How do we engage folks asynchronously who can't attend the meetings?

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

• Kathe: write up seasonal topics proposal, e.g. for 

  • finance: annual budget; participatory budgeting votes

  • elections/renewals of WGs

  • Recap thread of OC

• Matt: do previous tasks!! help CWG move on CWG elections; contact TWG about proposal for world sight day

• Marie: Agenda, new Loomio thread for next meeting, reminder to OC members via private mentions

• Caitlin: Invite second member from Finance to attend

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

• lot of flexibility and we managed to work it into structure, facilitation process helped us explore topics, interesting evolution

• end without clear vision of where we are going, makes it harder to figure out where we can go next meeting; like the re-cap of tasks and structure at end of meeting... how to work as a group, how to engage OC member (a)synchronously... 

• working well, good to have open central agenda item.

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

• Exploration

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

• Long term strategy

  • 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 WG to budget overall and help manage surplus?

  • "Maintenance care", how to support TWG and its members (cf. xy crisis driven by single mantainer)

• Short term proposal dev

  • Ask working groups for TWO reps instead of one.

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

  • Annual patterns

  • Contact Finance, and Community for joint meetings topic: How can we help?

Recap

We seem to be settling into a pattern for the agendas in Organizing Circle:

1. Opening with check-ins and agenda co-construction

2. Updates - member ToDo followups and operational circle reports

3. Community discussions - tracking Loomio thread conversations

4. Open agenda items

5. Close out - member ToDos, circle backlog, and feedback on process

Updates

• Finance Working Group is experimenting with participatory budgeting for our donations/support to related FOSS projects. Some glitches getting the right Loomio format set up but learning a lot about this process.

• Tech Working Group had a successful open house! Word is they are considering doing more in the future.

• Community Working Group is mentoring and training new moderators (woho!).

• Legal Working Group is still defunct.

Open items

We are following the Loomio thread on disabling images very closely as a use-case for how to propose action items from the larger community to an operational circle. We'll be following up with Tech Working Group and the Loomio community afterwards for feedback and look into developing guidance. We are curious where the agenda and minutes for the Tech Working Group is? We had some questions on disabling images and realized none of us knew where their minutes were.

We are starting a Loomio thread for these recaps in the open community forum for feedback and transparency.

Several new idea's were discussed including: asking for two rather then one member from each working group to attend Operational Circle, developing annual patterns for regular strategic items, and visiting each working group with the ask "How can we help?".