Agenda

The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2024 28 August (Wednesday) 1300 - 1430 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:

1300 [5 min] ADMIN

• Who is here?

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 11 September (Wednesday) 1300 UTC

• Review recap from last call https://www.loomio.com/d/k7sxY0Jb/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-14-august-wednesday-1300-utc

• Who is note taking?

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

1305 [10 min] Check in:

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

1315 [5 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in progress)

1320 [10 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

• Call a round to check in with people

1330 [20 min] Updates from working circles

• Finance

• Tech

• Community

• Legal - defunct

1350 [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?

1355 [25 min] Items to be consented at the start of the meeting

1420 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

1425 [5 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

@MarieVC (social.coop/MarieVC) @Kathe TB : It seems likely that I will be 5, or 10 minutes late to our meeting, starting soon.

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)

Notes

1300 [5 min] ADMIN

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

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 11 September (Wednesday) 1300 UTC

• Can we switch to 1700 UTC? -KTB

• APPROVED! Caitlin will update calendar

• Review recap from last call https://www.loomio.com/d/k7sxY0Jb/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-14-august-wednesday-1300-utc

• Eduardo: interested in the side discussion about how to federate moderation

• Who is note taking? Matt

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

1305 [10 min] Check in:

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

1315 [5 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in progress)

• Eduardo's welcoming doc > https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/jsMCRO8vrphpM8ZmZz2Qt5iF/

  • Pass this off to CWG Ops Team (next meeting is this Friday at 12UTC)

• Fediversalist papers and our role there/going forward: https://write.as/fediversalist-papers/

• Stipends

• Upcoming meetings: 

  • 16 sept, 18:00 UTC with TWG, 

  • 26 Sept, 13:00 UTC with FWG

  • Mayfirst meeting (date being settled}

  • Bonfire meeting (tentative)

1320 [10 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?  Tasks are in https://www.loomio.com/d/k7sxY0Jb/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-14-august-wednesday-1300-utc

• Call a round to check in with people

• Kathe T-B: rocked it. Some follow up needed on the community meeting for the (quarterly meeting)

• Caitlin: <report>

• Eduardo: completed the draft. Question about next steps w.r.t the update.

• -> sending the review action to the CWG.

• Matt: still need to talk to Eduardo and Marie. Will try to schedule after this

• Flan: some progress

1330 [20 min] Updates from working circles

• Tech

  • Onboarded new members: Dan Phiffer (sp?), je-ff

  • Received Gandi (domain name provider) credentials from Andrew, now safely in password store

  • Meeting with OC - Sept 16 meeting... Sept 23rd is better,  18.30h UTC -- Flan will communicate the change...

• Community

  • Upcoming vote to approve new members officially!

  • Meeting tomorrow

  • When we posted the anti-racist update, we got good feedback

• Finance - 

  • donations to other groups/projects, poll underway, lots of participation

  • https://www.loomio.com/p/IfnNLueo/please-allocate-funds-for-community-contributions-allocation-poll-from-fwg- 

    • next round in 6 mos.

  • Have to figure out how to disperse funds to non open-collective organizations

  • Announcements on Social.Coop

  • Want WGs to know how to invoice on Open Collective

  • updating wiki on how to submit an expense

  • how to deal with unbudgeted expenses

  • Every working group needs to know who members are and all stipends need to be allocated on a yearly basis (money does not roll over to next year?)

  • 1,000 GBP allocated to each WG per year -- WGs need to decide how to use this, FWG needs to communicate about this with WGs

  • Fiscal sponsorship now in name of Social.Coop (as what type of organization? what legal status? -- fiscally sponsored project?)

  • QUESTION: 

    • who actually pays the bills for each SC expense? How  best to organize this?

    • Do we have an annual transparency report? (never had an annual budget, but now we do, so let's do a report!)

• Legal - update from Caitlin

  • There is a renewed push for a legal working group

  • Legal WG has drifted... 

  • Push by FWG to reconstitute a LWG, there are interested people...

  • You Will Get Tagged!

1350 [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?

1355 [10 min] Formulation: Reaction round to Eduardo's welcoming doc

• https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/jsMCRO8vrphpM8ZmZz2Qt5iF/

• MOVED THIS DISCUSSION TO CWG OPS TEAM

1405 [10 min] Stipends

Stipends: Each Working Group has an amount budgeted for stipends, and they decide how to spend it among its own members.  (See Toward an Annual Budget 

https://www.loomio.com/d/xqw7FtUT/comment/3054707 ) 

* 1,000 GBP allocated for stipends per working group 

Proposed: This total amount shared equally among members regardless of time

— divided by 6 people: 166.66 GBP/person 

— divided by 5:  200 GMP/person

— divided by 4:  250 GMP/person 

* 3 Options for a person: ACCEPT, DONATE TO GROUP, DONATE TO SOCIAL.COOP 

* ACCEPT:: An OC member commits to invoice (or not) the amount via Open Collective 

* An OC member decides not to take it, then either offer it for everyone else or donate it back… 

* [Future option: An OC member might select an alternative payment, such as a Gift Card]

Question: add labor time tracking?

Bring it up with FWG either on Loomio or at meeting with FWG in September 

ROUND:

    Kathe donate back to OC

    Caitlin - accept it

    Eduardo - donate 50% to Social.Coop/accept a part (to pay fees) - is this possible?

    Matt: Accept portion. (Some thoughts. Whatever we decide should be the simplest possible for the FWG, because each scenario adds complexity for them. Would accept; it's easy for people to 'donate forward' as needed.)

    Marie: Undecided currently, need to think about it. Would like to raise a question: how can we be sure that our current decision (with a 'whitish' group) will not have an impact on the desired future diversity of our group? Lack of diversity - group is quite whitish - decision being made by us, how do we know it will be good for another group? Hope we can have a more diverse group. Will accept stipend if it does not cause tax issues. Problem for people in different countries.

    Flancian: Donate back to Social.Coop. Would be good to add option to donate to a specific organization? 

TENTATIVE RESULTS OF ROUND:     

Kathe: donation to OC group  … Thus, the total amount is now divided by 5 people: 200 GBP/person. 

Caitlin will invoice: 200 GBP  

Matt will invoice: 200 GBP 

Eduardo will invoice: 100 GBP 

Eduardo, donation to Social.Coop: 100 GBP 

Flancian, donation to Social.Coop: 200 GBP 

    PAUSE THIS DISCUSSION, no need to rush

    LANGUAGE concern: using English only is a burden on people who are using English as a second, third, etc. language. Especially true of technical, financial, issues.

    Eduardo: Can we get a general introduction to how we are currently handling finances? -- Add to next agenda?

    All finances are open to public, via OC... Still need to think about making the information easily accessible to members.

    Livestream a call about this topic -- to share with members? Other ways of documenting.

    How to invoice your portion (stale text: will be updated this week): https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Finance_Working_Group#Submitting_expenses 

1415 [5 min] Upcoming meetings

• 16 sept with TWG, 

• 26 Sept, 13:00 UTC with FWG

• Mayfirst meeting (date being settled)

• Bonfire meeting (tentative)

1420 [15 min] Sensemaking:

Fediversalist papers and our role there/going forward: https://write.as/fediversalist-papers/

1420 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

• Matt Noyes: 

  • share info on CWG Ops Team with Eduardo (maybe have a call?), @MarieVC (social.coop/MarieVC) also interested in supporting onboarding conversations

  • Follow up on gathering calendar events with CWG ops team

  • Add quarterly follow-up with OC to CWG Ops Calendar

  • CWG budget/stipends discussion at next CWG meeting

  • Invoice on OC

  • "Proceeding at the speed of trust" is key

• Kathe

  • Copy over notes

  • Post a recap

  • Update backlog on new agenda

1425 [5 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

@Kathe TB @Matt Noyes @Eduardo Mercovich @Flancian @MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) Expanded from above meeting notes. The Organizing Circle allocated their 1,0000 GBP stipends, which passed in this year's annual budget. Today’s decision, 28 August 2024:

Kathe: donation to OC group … Thus, the total amount is now divided by 5 people, which is 200 GBP/person

Caitlin will invoice: 200 GBP

Matt will invoice: 200 GBP

Marie will invoice: 200 GBP

Eduardo will invoice: 100 GBP

Eduardo, donation to Social.Coop: 100 GBP

Flancian (Eduardo) , donation to Social.Coop: 200 GBP

Amount of OC Stipends to be invoiced: 700 GBP

Amount to return to main budget for Social.Coop: 300 GBP

How to invoice your portion (stale text: will be updated this week): https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Finance_Working_Group#Submitting_expenses 

@Caitlin Waddick, Finance Working Group for Social.Coop and Organizing Circle

Hi Caitlin,

I would like some time to think about it, I haven't made my decision yet. As I said, I'd like to know how the invoice system works so that I can make an informed decision. And I don't know how long the decision will stand. Is it for 2024? When will it be revisited? (As a French speaker, for whom English is not my first language, it's easier to read the proposals in writing first, to make sure I've understood what they're talking about). If I make a donation to Social.Coop, the money will go back into the common pot, with a surplus that will have to be spent in 2025 (?), so I have the impression that we're going back to square one.

Many thanks for the work already done by the FWG. I hope we can find a fair and sustainable (long-term) way to reward the voluntary work of the co-operators.

@MarieVC (social.coop/MarieVC) Social.Coop uses the Open Collective app. You already use this app to make contributions to Social.Coop. (Your contributions are transparent and viewable to everyone.). You could use the app to submit an Expense and create an invoice. Open Collective works in many countries and uses multiple currencies (GBP, USD, Francs, Euros). FWG is revising the wiki on how to submit an Expense or invoice, and that new description will be at the wiki soon: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Finance_Working_Group#Submitting_expenses  (Again, the older, stale instructions are displayed now.) You can try it anytime: I believe you would figure it out easily in under 10 minutes the first time; then, another year, you would already know what to do.

You were asking about long-term decisions and "informed decisions," and I am thinking that maybe you already understand the situation now. The Social.Coop membership passed the Annual Budget, which has a significant surplus, and stipends to working group members are part of it. Past working group members have received similar stipends. A choice to donate one's amount back to Social.Coop is not significant since the Social.Coop already has a surplus; if you donate it to the Organizing Circle, then others in the Organizing Circle will get to share your stipend. If you accept it, then it is your money to spend as you want. It is taxable (probably). You just need to submit it as an Expense/Invoice in order to receive it.

@Caitlin Waddick, Finance Working Group for Social.Coop and Organizing Circle @MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) We are NOT move forward here at this time, this was not a decision that was made on the call. There is a standing objection here that needs to be addressed so we do not have consent at this time. Apologies to FWG for the delay in making this decision but we do need more time.

@Kathe TB Please confirm that you understand what we are doing here. We are not making a new policy decision. We are not discussing a policy decision. We are implementing a decision that was passed by Social.Coop membership and that continues established practice. Stipends are not complicated nor controversial. I feel disappointment that this decision point has become a lengthy, multi-meeting discussion.

@MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) : If you want to take your stipend, or don't want to take your stipend, fine. If you have questions, ask them! Your earlier questions suggested that you did not understand what we are trying to do. We are not evaluating some new "Proposal" with devastating, far-reaching consequences to future generations . Your decision only impacts you and the members of the OC. And, the OC, when our members accept the stipend, helps to set the precedent that Working Group members can get a stipend, or honorarium, ... a small amount of money as one way of recognizing the volunteers who make this coop possible.

@Caitlin Waddick, Finance Working Group for Social.Coop and Organizing Circle

This amount of money is not insignificant for people from certain parts of the world.

This sets a precedent, since it will be more difficult to find a solution outside what was proposed at the last minute, at yesterday's meeting.

If our situation is privileged enough to give the money back to Social.Coop, the surplus will remain. The problem is postponed until next year's budget.

I understand the frustration that things haven't been sorted out quickly, but this is the first time the processes have been tested, which means delays and taking into account what we learn in the process. Thank you for your perseverance.