Agenda

The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2024 3 July (Wednesday) 1200 - 1330 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:

1200 [5 min] ADMIN

• Who is here?

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 17 July (Wednesday) 1200 UTC

• Review recap from last call

  https://www.loomio.com/d/RtGvSgIJ/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-19-june-wednesday-1200-utc

• Who is note taking?

• 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]

1215 [10 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in progress):

• Wiki follow-up? https://www.loomio.com/d/kuVrqiLv/wiki-page-for-organizing-circle

• Visits to WG (planning)?

• See the different Loomio threads (Organizing Circle Group):

  https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop-organizing-circle/

• Backlog items

• ...

1225 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

• Call a round to check in with people

1230 [5 min] Updates from working circles

• Finance

• Tech

• Community

• Legal - defunct

1235 [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?

1240 [30 min] Items to be consented at the start of the meeting

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

1320 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

Backlog items

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

• Strategically, how do we provide a framework for the Finance WG to budget overall and help manage surplus?

• Communications: should there be a SC newsletter?? (like GEO newsletter)

• 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)

• Compensation log

• Offering bounties $ to support open source projects or coop efforts

• Short term proposal dev

• Develop information flow and organizatoin

• Triad of conversations (Garden/Stream, https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/)

  • stream: Mastodon

  • in between: Loomio

  • permanent: Wiki documentation

• How many people engage in what category/dimension?

• Ask working groups for TWO reps instead of one.

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

• Loomio OC Group private/public https://www.loomio.com/d/Vt7LCaPM/using-loomio-for-our-group

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

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

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

• Decisions to be reviewed in the future: governance definitions published on our Wiki (September 2024), character limit (6 months after the start of the experiment)

Dear All,

You will find above the structure of the agenda and the to-do list for our next OC meeting. The yellow sections are to be consented to at the start of the meeting.

@Kathe TB I've divided the to-do list from the agenda. Is that better for you? What would you recommend? For context, @Matt Noyes had asked for the to-do list to be at the top of the thread, to make it easier to find.

I'll be sending a reminder on Social.Coop on Monday 1 July.

See you next week!

@MarieVC (social.coop/MarieVC) Ok thinking about this a bit since I got the day wrong (again) for our meeting despite your very timely and appreciated messages. (I THINK I got my calendar updated with the right time this week!

This wasn't quite what I was thinking but I actually really like it. What do you think about breaking this into three separate 'comment's: ToDo; Agenda; Backlog items. I like posting the agenda first instead of the ToDo items but I agree now that pulling the ToDo items OUT of the agenda makes the agenda easier to read. I can live with the ToDO items being at the top :)

Thoughts?

@MarieVC (social.coop/MarieVC) Can we add a quick point: to review these diagrams made by Melissa Santos?

Current Loomio threads for OC:

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

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

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

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

• Wiki pages for decision logs https://www.loomio.com/d/kuVrqiLv/wiki-page-for-organizing-circle

Decisions that need to be ported over to wiki:

• ✔️

  https://www.loomio.com/d/ZDEcAJma/decision-making-organizing-circle

I'm going to give a stab at organizing some of the backlog items below

Backlog items

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?

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 to support community moderation?

     • Set up meeting with community working group

  3. How do we support community governance involvement?

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

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

     • 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?

  4. What is our current financial picture?

  5. What is our current volunteer burden?

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

• Process development

  1. Ask working groups for TWO reps instead of one.

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

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

  4. Loomio OC Group private/public https://www.loomio.com/d/Vt7LCaPM/using-loomio-for-our-group

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

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

  7. Wiki pages for decision logs https://www.loomio.com/d/kuVrqiLv/wiki-page-for-organizing-circle

Decisions to be reviewed in the future

1. October 2024 (2 decisions up) - https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy

Notes

1200 [5 min] ADMIN

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

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 17 July (Wednesday) 1200 UTC

  • 17th Marie out, Eduardo maybe out

  • Kathe will send reminder

• Reviewrecapfromlastcall

• https://www.loomio.com/d/RtGvSgIJ/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-19-june-wednesday-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]
1215 [10 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in

progress):

• Wikifollow-up?https://www.loomio.com/d/kuVrqiLv/wiki-page-for-organizing-circle

• Visits to WG (planning)?

• SeethedifferentLoomiothreads(OrganizingCircleGroup):

• https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop-organizing-circle/

• Backlogitemshttps://www.loomio.com/d/xUDqgTRa/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-3-july- wednesday-1200-utc/4

• Review diagrams of social.coop

  Notes:

• meet with working groups • reviewadminonboarding

• do for OC members, communicate via message board

• membership of OC - get new people on board sooner rather than later

• how is the onboarding experience for new SC members? How to make it simpler, more

  interesting?

• how to make work that keeps SC running more visible?

• how to distribute the work among SC members? (volunteer opportunities)

• kanban for project management for our work?

• wikiupdates

• periodic public workshops on cooperation and cooperative principles and practices

  • how can we bring SC more into co-op status/world -- how can we better cooperate, function as a cooperative?

• FOUR TOPICS for today • meetingswithWGs

  • adminonboardingresources • reviewwikiasitstands

• consider vision/mission/values on wiki
1225 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

• Call a round to check in with people https://www.loomio.com/d/xUDqgTRa/organizing-circle- meeting-2024-3-july-wednesday-1200-utc/0

1230 [5 min] Updates from working circles

• Finance - no updates

• Tech-MIA

• Community - no updates (meeting tomorrow)

• Legal - defunct

1235 [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? - nothing to report

1240 [30 min] Items to be consented at the start of the meeting

• meetings with WGs

• Catilin set up meeting with Finance group, same as OC time slot, if possible

• Matt set up meeting time with CWG people

• Eduardo will ask Flan about update and how to meet with TWG

• aimtohaveallmeetingsbeforeSept.

• Ask each WG to map their work (tasks?) along level of knowledge and time required (in total).

• admin onboarding resources

  • tech--

  • community - Matt ask Sam for latest material and links location...

  • requires walk through

  • Matt, Flan, Caitlin talk about possible tech stack workshop

    • for people with admin roles, for group members as a whole

    • tech stack workshop

  • possibleworkshops:

    • Review of Social.Coop Mastodon interface for OC members

    • how CWG ops people moderate Social.Coop: emphasis on criteria

    • how admins use the Mastodon admin interface

    • the Social.Coop tech stack and how we use it

• admin of each
• make videos that can be used by new people

• reviewwikiasitstands
• https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle • Add

• summary of purpose

• process of membership

• annualrhythmsection

• totend/updateandmaintaintheinformationhere

• othermainlandmarks/events

• do we want links organized at end of para (instead of mixed in text)

• add implicit links

• links to stream items (loomio, matrix)

• annualreport/milestones

• keep

  • recaplinksatthetop

  • agendastructure

  • Good writing style

• consider vision/mission/values on wiki

  • https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Bylaws
  1310 [10 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

  • Kathe:

• Recaps and synthesis

• backlog comment in new agenda

• Move links in wiki

• construct proposals for wiki update and annual rythem agenda item

• meetingremindersout

  • Matt:

• set up meeting time with CWG people

• ask Sam for latest onboarding material and links location

• Prepare simple walk through of mastodon admin interface for OC members

• work with Caitlin and Flan on workshops idea

• write up OC origin story (from original proposal and sortition docs) for wiki

• organize meeting with MayFirst on engagement

• check with Josh to see what non-OC people can see/access

Caitlin:

• set up meeting between OC and FWG for end-of-summer • join meeting with Matt for admin material

EduMerco:
- organizing meeting w/Flancian and the TWG.
- create a proposal for a structure to get info on tasks for each WG.
- work on the wiki reviewing the bylaws and potential changes to the OC page? - support Matt uber task list somehow.

Marie: Agenda, To-do list

1320 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

• middleagendaloosebutgood

• backlogitemslistisgood

• scope size? mission drift/inflation? what is our specific scope? (what are the things that we and

  only we should do?)

• got through our agenda in 30 mins. (wow!)

Recap

Today we focused on clearing some low hanging decisions from our backlog, reviewed some new documentation, and heard updates from the working groups.

We are going to move forward with some listening sessions this summer with the main working groups (Tech, Community, and Financing). These sessions will focus on understanding what the working group currently does and how we can better support them in their work. We hope to have this complete by end of summer.

We are going to schedule some time on calls for a walk through of our 'Admin' access to the mastodon server. We spent a bit of time discussing a possible seminar or workshop series as an outreach/onboarding tool to encourage member engagement with operations. This series feels like a big lift.

We have a wiki page https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle that was overall favoribly seen. Called out specifically was the link to loomio threads and groups, sketch of the agendas, simple language, and layout of the decision log. Suggested revisions are to pull out the links from the text and move them to a list at the bottom of the section, as well as adding an annual rhythm for overall meeting topics that includes regular revision of the wiki.

No circle updates today. Our next call will be on July 17th.