Organizing Circle Meeting: 2025 16 January (Thursday) 1500 UTC
The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2025 16 January (Thursday) 1500 UTC - 1630 UTC. We will meet here: https://socialcoop.meet.coop/kat-aiw-mpv-6vv
Kathe TB Thu 16 Jan 2025 1:10PM
Tentative agenda, to be revised and consented to at the start of the meeting.
1300 [5 min] ADMIN
Who is here?
Does anyone need to leave early?
Confirm our next call date
Who is note taking?
Who is facilitating? Kathe
1305 [15 min] Welcome and Check in:
What do we call you? What background and experience do you bring to this space? What are you hoping to take away? What is something that the new year has brought into your life?
How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://feelingswheel.com/]
1310 [5 min] Recaps
Review recap from last call https://www.loomio.com/d/zbYsQHIt/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-19-december-thursday-1300-utc/6
Consent to 2024 wiki write up https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle#2024_Recap
1315 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?
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Kathe - schedule legal meeting
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Eduardo M - Loomio thread on using wiki to draft/document onboarding process
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Matt: communicate with CWG about matrix/Zulip etc - IN PROCESS
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Flan: start a thread or book a meeting to discuss next steps in the messaging space cross-WG -> https://social.coop/@flancian/113442146418892106
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Caitlin: moving our public calendar item meeting date
1320 [15 min] Updates from working circles
Finance
Tech
Community
Legal
1335 [20 min] Formulation 2025 priorities
What are some priority topics that we might consider in 2025? Be expansive! Round to pass.
Old backlog:
organize a public discussion on how social.coop interacts with corporate presences in the Fediverse
tracking projects of the Organizing Circle (and possibly extending this to collaborations with other working groups) specifically in relationship to managing to-do items
Meeting notes archiving and organizing https://www.loomio.com/d/PIeVbXCH/determine-a-meeting-notes-location-for-oc-and-wgs-
revisit onboarding documentation
1355 [15 min] Decision 2025 priorities
Round: What 1-3 things do you want to prioritize? Can we come up with a common ~12 topics for the year?
1410 [15 min] Decision Calendar of topics
Jan - Setting goals and priorities
Feb -
March -
April -
May -
June -
July -
August - Summer break (?)
September -
October -
Nov -
Dec - Annual close out
1425 [5 min] Feedback: How are you leaving this call?
Kathe TB Thu 16 Jan 2025 4:31PM
Notes
1500 [5 min] ADMIN
Who is here? Marie, Kathe, Matt, Eduardo, Ammar, Flan, Caitlin
Does anyone need to leave early? Matt leaves at the top of the hour
Confirm our next call date: 30 January 1500 UTC
Who is note taking? Matt, Flan
Who is facilitating? Kathe
1505 [15 min] Welcome and Check in:
What do we call you? What background and experience do you bring to this space? What are you hoping to take away? What is something that the new year has brought into your life?
How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://feelingswheel.com/]
(This section usually is not recorded in notes.)
1520 [5 min] Review and consent to the agenda
Round the table
Threads.net and stipends came up as topics we want to get to today, if possible.
1525 [5 min] Recaps
Review recap from last call https://www.loomio.com/d/zbYsQHIt/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-19-december-thursday-1300-utc/6
Consent to 2024 wiki write up https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle#2024_Recap
1530 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?
-
Kathe - schedule legal meeting
will happen
Link to Loomio discussion: https://www.loomio.com/d/qTYHKsoh/comment/3133840
-
Q: how did we get a .coop domain without a legal structure?
A: we had "enough" structure historically, and we operated via a larger coop host
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Eduardo M - Loomio thread on using wiki to draft/document onboarding process
Three-way reaction to Loomio in the coop: hate, love and just not getting it :)
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where best to draft docs? how to control access when drafting?
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can we use wiki for this? - Yes, need to set up namespace and permissions (read and write)
Access :: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Lockdown The Lockdown extension implements a way to restrict access to specific namespaces and special pages to a given set of user groups. This provides a more finely grained security model than the one provided by the default https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:$wgGroupPermissions][$wgGroupPermissions] and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:$wgNamespaceProtection][$wgNamespaceProtection settings.
Edición: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgNamespaceProtection This configuration parameter allows a wiki to require special permissions to edit some namespaces. By default, the only restriction is that the MediaWiki namespace can only be edited by users with the 'editinterface' permission (by default: sysops).
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Matt: communicate with CWG about matrix/Zulip etc - IN PROCESS, initiative by Mickey Metts using community bridge (Freescholar)- https://social.coop/@FreeScholar/113738276244589904
-
Flan: start a thread or book a meeting to discuss next steps in the messaging space cross-WG
Also incorporated into the TWG 2025 roadmap as an item (see below)
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Caitlin: moving our public calendar item meeting date; making our meeting location a neutral location: https://meet.mayfirst.org/socialcoop-OC ; get control for making an announcement at the top of Social.Coop; having a place to co-create shared documents (i.e. for onboarding doc and equity planning)
This could become a todo item about discussing how to use our tech stack for these purposes
1535 [15 min] Updates from working circles
-
Finance
community contribution budgeting, 12/30 update: https://www.loomio.com/d/xTmPqphN/community-contributions-budgeting-an-end-of-year-short-update-from-finance-working-group
2025
-
quarterly meetings... documentation problem
-
Options:
https://share.mayfirst.org/apps/files/files then create a file there (new -> document)
Flan runs doc.anagora.org which is a free pad that is not ephemeral in case that helps (fully public)
-
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Tech
-
Our draft roadmap: https://doc.anagora.org/twg-2025
add to Wiki
-
Salient topics:
data stewardship: backups, restores
new features: character limits +,
new services: messaging, chat, pixelfed hosting?
contributing back to the Fediverse - pushing features to Mastodon or hometown...
Some action required by the TWG before we suspend Threads.net if we do that (see item below)
-
We became members of iocoop.org, which allows us to spin up virtual servers that are coop hosted
need to post an announcement about this
-
all are welcome to join TWG meetings, on calendar:
-
-
Community
Matt: next meeting on the 23rd will include people from CoSocial
-
Threads.net status
We're at limit
With the moderation changes, the community is working on moving that to suspend
How do we manage consent when there is no solution that [meets all needs?]. E.g., people losing threads relationships when instance is blocked...
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Flan: https://www.loomio.com/d/u1OkUA6M/clarity-on-stance-with-regards-to-threads/30 and context (e.g. https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Federation_with_Threads) might warrant discussion here
The OC might or might not want to take a more active role in this kind of process.
Matt: overall despite friction the process has been working well
Edu: this is a good moment to go back and review processes and documentation in light of the disconnects/misunderstandings that arose.
Edu: on what is up to interpretation here and might need clearing up for future opportunities.
Kathe: clarity around governance and decision making in the coop is still fuzzy (formalized as needed). Slower processes with more deliberation seem preferrable.
Flan: read the "fediversalist papers" (Daris and Erin's report) and took notes, tried to call out opportunities for Social Coop in particular. Available at https://anagora.org/fediversalist-papers (scroll down a bit once it loads).
Flan: left the CWG
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How to make a proposal in Loomio: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/When_and_how_to_use_Threads,_Polls,_and_Proposals
How does this differ from/complement https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Make_a_proposal
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Legal
No updates
1550 [20 min] Formulation 2025 priorities
What are some priority topics that we might consider in 2025? Be expansive! Round to pass.
Old backlog (new items appended to the bottom):
-
organize a public discussion on how social.coop interacts with ¿corporate presences in the Fediverse
added: (Threads, Instagram, etc.). How can we make the policy better/ clearer? What are the relevant dimensions to take a desicion? How can we make better proposals (in loomio)?
tracking projects of the Organizing Circle (and possibly extending this to collaborations with other working groups) specifically in relationship to managing to-do items
Meeting notes archiving and organizing https://www.loomio.com/d/PIeVbXCH/determine-a-meeting-notes-location-for-oc-and-wgs-
revisit onboarding process and documentation
Stipends
Equity Planning -- a new committee to report to OC that works toward reflective practices of power or specifically an equity audit https://www.loomio.com/d/AsBv2ckV/proposal-to-post-to-membership-for-equity-audit-committee-as-a-short-term-working-group- [2018 history: https://www.loomio.com/d/I53Omaes/comment/1708683]
Review and update wiki
Co-op Education on how to make proposals, etc. (the wiki could be useful here).
Organize public discussion events -- on Meet.coop on big questions
General governance - How are decisions made in social.coop
+ how to think about decisions (or pressure to make a decision) that have an impact on the various working groups (e.g. technical decision, more work for TWG, care of the people who deal with it)
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Shared governance of OC - horizontal leadership: we rotate roles: facilitating meetings, announcing the meeting, notestaker, writing recaps.
Proposal: quarterly we reassign roles, thus building capacity within groups and reducing over-reliance on individual members.
New services (e.g. messaging): OC can work with WGs and drive cost/benefit analysis and make decisions.
-
Equity planning (belonging, including, diversity, care, justice, etc.); as part of that, we could have some 'breakout groups' (subgroups of the OC) that run for a limited number of months and report back with suggestions.
We want to make sure we have reflective practices about power.
We want to include people in the coop that have experience in these practices.
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Portability and templating
How do we document and package Social.coop so other groups can use it as a base for their activities?
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(Adding to general governance above)
How do we hear all voices on a decision and gather feedback from those impacted
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Idea: if we want to be more participatory, and we already work sort-of-sociocratically -- should we onboard more formally onto sociocracy?
Likely some tension between sociocracy delegated-power and democracy camps, but interesting.
Working group updates to end
Proposal:
Next time we will move updates to end and maybe skip
Focus on 1. Stipends and 2. Setting priorities for 2025.
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(reactions)
We could move updates to the end of the agenda instead
-
Q about Stipends: is it about 2024 or 2025?
We're punting this distinction in itself to the next meeting.
please invoice your stipend in Open Collective: https://opencollective.com/socialcoop/expenses/new
+1 to moving updates instead of skipping and writing them before.
-- (We got this far!) --
Check outs
(round the table)
1610 [10 min] [We didn't get here on 2025-01-16] Decision 2025 priorities
Round: What 1-3 things do you want to prioritize? Can we come up with a common ~12 topics for the year?
Jan - Setting goals and priorities
Feb -
March -
April -
May - [request for only one meeting this month]
June -
July -
August - Summer break (?) [request for no meeting or only one meeting this month]
September - [request for only one meeting this month]
October -
Nov -
Dec - Annual close out [request for only one meeting this month]
1620 [5 min] Feedback: How are you leaving this call?
Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC · Tue 31 Dec 2024 12:03AM
I would like to see us do more collaboration between meetings in shared space, such as Loomio.