Loomio
Tue 8 Apr 2025 5:21AM

Organizing Circle Meeting: 2025 10 April (Thursday) 1500 UTC

M MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) Public Seen by 6

The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2025 10 April (Thursday) 1500 UTC - 1630 UTC. We will meet here: https://socialcoop.meet.coop/kat-aiw-mpv-6vv

KT

Kathe TB Thu 10 Apr 2025 2:09PM

Agenda

1500 [15 min] Check in [no notes]:

1515 [5 min] ADMIN:

  • Who is here?

  • Does anyone need to leave early?

  • Confirm our next call on 24 April (Thursday) 1500 UTC

  • Who is note taking?

  • Who is facilitating? Does someone want to practice one or two topics?

1520 [5 min] Inform and Decide Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/h5IKL7Td/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-27-march-thursday-1500-utc/3 and consent to the agenda

1520 [10 min] Updates from working circles (We haven't had a full update in a few weeks, bumping this up the priority)

  • Finance

  • Tech

    • Status update from Matt: add Kathe to Git.coop CWG ops group

  • Community

  • Legal - defunct

1530 [15 min] Scoping: What are Big Conversations?

Context: We need to have clearer lines of communication between the working groups and general membership of social.coop both (Loomio and Mastodon users). We want this to facilitate feedback on current operations and spark new directions for the coop. (link to full topic https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf)

Round: What would a successful big conversation look like?

Round: What would a failed big conversation look like?

16:45 [15 min] Scoping: What do we want in a budget report?

Review Kathe's exploratory analysis.

Round: What questions are coming up for you that you want answered?

Round: What else do you need to give FWG budget priorities?

1610 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

  • Call a round to check in with people

1615 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

1620 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

KT

Kathe TB Thu 10 Apr 2025 4:32PM

Notes

1500 [15 min] Check in [no notes]:


1515 [5 min] ADMIN:

  • Who is here? Ammar, Cait, Marie, Kathe, Matt, Edu

  • Does anyone need to leave early? Marie. 1hr. Cait, 10 min. 

  • Confirm our next call on 24 April (Thursday) 1500 UTC

  • Who is note taking? Matt

  • Who is facilitating? Does someone want to practice one or two topics?

    • not this time


1520 [5 min] Inform and Decide Review recap from last call
https://www.loomio.com/d/h5IKL7Td/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-27-march-thursday-1500-utc/3 and consent to the agenda... 

1520 [10 min] Updates from working circles (We haven't had a full update in a few weeks, bumping this up the priority)


1530 [15 min] Scoping: What are Big Conversations?
Context: We need to have clearer lines of communication between the working groups and general membership of social.coop both (Loomio and Mastodon users). We want this to facilitate feedback on current operations and spark new directions for the coop. (link to full topic https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf)
Round: What would a successful big conversation look like?

  • Gathering of topics from all members

  • Time of scoping important, followed by prioritizing; 

  • sense of timeline, phased discussion, so that you know you can comment later... 

  • Training members to participate. 

  • 0all voices heard, all relevant dimensions included, clear scope and impact, process, duration and application criteria and actions. 

  • Two types of conversations

    • Vision conversations

    • Crucial conversations that can be very charged.

  • everyone aware of the question and how to participate

  • no hurt feelings and no blow-ups (generative conflict instead of destrucive conflict)

  • issues with significant impact on our community

  • Clarifying what type of decision we are looking for as result of discussion

  • Topics that OC feels exceed scope of particular WGs

  • feels more generative than Loomio discussion threads

  • efficiency/inclusivity; expediency/buy-in; how to balance

  • how to make decisions in group 300 

  • +1 on wanting to be more generative than loomio discussions; maybe that means that success would look different than loomio threads, e.g. specific meetings about topics. We've had some very good strategy sessions with ~30 participants at a time in the past. 

  • basic sociocracy process, sequence of phases


Round: What would a failed big conversation look like?

  • steamroll people

  • people leave the cooperative

    • particular groups of people leave co-op

  • people feel hurt, injured

  • decision diminishes trust in WGs or the group as a whole

  • effort that does not effect change, time and energy sink that doesn't change anything

  • echo chambers, sarcasm, lack of learning from others, hardening of positions

  • maybe unavoidable, but big discussions that only go halfway into issues; these tend to generate heat but otherwise not contribute meaningfully to advancing

  • feeling drained by emotions and discussions without forward motion

  • people joining the process in a disruptive way, derailing it and undermining trust in the process


16:45 [15 min] Scoping: What do we want in a budget report?
Review Kathe's exploratory analysis.

  • What happened in 2020?

    • Matt: maybe this has to do with a fiscal sponsorhip transfer, and that involved some kind of large expense (that was not really an expense)

  • meet.coop seems expensive, more than we pay for core services for instance? (but much lower than stated fees, quite cheap if calculated per member)

  • Platform 6 cost is for what?

    • for fiscal sponsorship?

    • those fees are already figured into contributions

  • distinguish between essential services/costs

  • would be great to include volunteer hours

  • yearly members more than monthly members, twice as many annual donations


Round: What questions are coming up for you that you want answered?

  • estimate of current and next year income?

  • add category of surplus (break it down: reserves, runway etc.)

  • minimum maintenance cost category

  • encourage yearly contributions

    • add transaction costs for contributions

  • Monthly breakdown

    • interactive graph (requires hosting - but we have servers!)

  • Use this from now on to generate budget numbers?

    • Kathe will put it in Git

    • Flan will add Kathe

  • can we publish this to wiki? 

    • Use this for education -- how a co-op instance operates

  • figures for longevity of contribution - how long do people stick around?

  • Clarify categories of mutual aid and category of inter-cooperation...

  • it seems like it would be useful to pull up how long people stick around; what is our turnover in contributions (as a proxy to participation)?

  • in some discussions about ancillary services (meet.coop, git.coop, etc.) there is the factor that part of the reason we're doing them is to get experience with cross-coop interactions/contributing to the ecosystem.


Round: What else do you need to give FWG budget priorities?


1610 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

  • Call a round to check in with people


1615 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

  • * scheudle onboarding conversation

  • Kathe: Recap and revise budget

  • Flan: 

    • give Kathe Git access

    • pixelfed issue, communication btw working groups needs work -- will bring up the chat topic in the next meeting again :) [hylo.com as interesting option]

  • Matt: add Ammar to next ops team meeting (invited Eduardo M)

  • Eduardo M: draft onboarding documents

    • like to see how mod team onboarding is done


1620 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.