Loomio
Sun 1 Dec 2024 4:10PM

Organizing Circle Meeting: 2024 5 December (Thursday) 1300 UTC

M MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) Public Seen by 5

The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2024 5 December (Thursday) 1300 - 1430 UTC. We will meet here: https://socialcoop.meet.coop/kat-aiw-mpv-6vv

M

MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) Sun 1 Dec 2024 4:11PM

  • Kathe - Schedule legal meeting

  • Kathe - Notes and recap

  • Kathe - Agend for next call

  • Kathe - Loomio thread on using wiki to draft/document onboarding process

  • Matt: communicate with CWG about matrix/Zulip etc - IN PROCESS

  • Matt: Draft and push candidate solicitation

  • Flan: start a thread or book a meeting to discuss next steps in the messaging space cross-WG -> https://social.coop/@flancian/113442146418892106

  • Caitlin: moving our public calendar item meeting date

KT

Kathe TB Wed 4 Dec 2024 12:12AM

Agenda

Tentative agenda, to be revised and consented to at the start of the meeting.

1300 [4 min] ADMIN

  • Who is here?

  • Does anyone need to leave early?

  • Confirm our next call on 19 December

  • Who is note taking?

  • Who is facilitating? Kathe

1304 [5 min] Check in:

1309 [1 min] Recaps

1310 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

  • Kathe - schedule legal meeting

  • Kathe - Loomio thread on using wiki to draft/document onboarding process

  • Matt: communicate with CWG about matrix/Zulip etc - IN PROCESS

  • Matt: Draft and push candidate solicitation

  • Flan: start a thread or book a meeting to discuss next steps in the messaging space cross-WG -> https://social.coop/@flancian/113442146418892106

  • Caitlin: moving our public calendar item meeting date

1315 [5 min] Updates from working circles (quick!)

  • Finance

  • Tech

  • Community

  • Legal

1320 [15 min] Year in review: What did we do this year? (take 5 minutes and review/collect your thoughts https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024- https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle )

1335 [15 min] Hearts: What worked well about how we operated?

1405 [15 min] Deltas: What may need to change about how we operate moving forward?

1420 [5 min] Backlog:

1425 [5 min] Feedback: How are you leaving this call?

KT

Kathe TB Thu 5 Dec 2024 2:31PM

Notes

1300 [4 min] ADMIN

  • Who is here? Kathe, Caitlin, Eduardo

  • Does anyone need to leave early?

  • Confirm our next call on 19 December

  • Who is note taking? Caitlin

  • Who is facilitating? Kathe


1304 [5 min] Check in:


1309 [1 min] Recaps


1310 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

  • Kathe: schedule legal meeting

  • Matt: communicate with CWG about matrix/Zulip etc - IN PROCESS

  • Matt: Draft and push candidate solicitation

  • Flan: start a thread or book a meeting to discuss next steps in the messaging space cross-WG -> https://social.coop/@flancian/113442146418892106

  • Caitlin: moving our public calendar item meeting date

  • Caitlin: Develop proposal for 

  • Eduardo: Loomio thread on using wiki to draft/document onboarding process and schedule meeting


1315 [5 min] Updates from working circles (quick!)

  • Finance - no updates

  • Tech -NA

  • Community -NA

  • Legal -NA


1320 [5 min] Ekuman update

  • started about a year ago when meta started getting into the fediverse via anti-meta fedi-pact => Drives desire to broaden to a common statement of values, rejected at the time. Fedipapers triggered a second discussion on this around moderation

  • Idea is common moderation centered on shared federated values with rules and policies that can propegate bans/limits.

    • Need to develop tools to support this that are platform agnostic

  • Is this relevant for the organizing circle and Social.Coop?

    • Wants feedback from community working group

    • Details really matter here, how will it be governedd and social considerations as well as the underlaying tech.

    • OC could work to develop a sensemaking for Loomio conversation

  • Similar groups


1320 [15 min] Year in review: What did we do this year? (take 5 minutes and review/collect your thoughts https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024- https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle )

  • About the OC

    • We set up OC decision making, mostly sociocractic operations

    • Held regular meetings

    • Develop sense of team as OC

    • Created wiki accounts and updated wiki pages updated; specifically https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle and [[insert second link]]

  • Coordination across working groups

    • Update reports to enable coordiation across working groups

    • Held join meetings with working groups and OC members

  • Started discussion on 

    • How Social.coop decides things

    • Organizing inter-group conversations with MayFirst, expanding commons based infrastructure

    • Socal.Coop compensation

    • onboarding process at social.coop

    • annual rhythms of OC meetings

    • ethical moderation


1335 [15 min] Hearts ("roses"): What worked well about how we operated?

  • agenda/notes/recap cadence of the group

  • highly structured agenda including topic, times, and duration. Following up on individual action items. Working group updates and checkin oportunity

  • Oportunity for each member to speak and the group listens well

  • Good tracking of coop issues both loomio threads and the working group reports. And we recorded this in our recaps/notes

  • Good group of people with skills to contribute to the group work with excellent group dynamics

  • Provided a platform to talk about difficult situations/issues that might not have been resolved but were surfaced --("sensemaking opportunities") - creating "safer spaces"/"brave space" to work with difficult situations 

  • Meetings with the working groups went well


1405 [15 min] Deltas ("thorns"): What may need to change about how we operate moving forward?

  • Identify tech tools, purpose, selection, and training:

    • loomio

    • wiki

    • nextcloud (docs, calendar)

    • matrix?

    • mastodon admin

    • git.coop

    • Figure out how to draft documents together.

  • better resolution of some questions - started lots of discussions without resolving them

  • review and revise original description including domain and aims

  • Resolve compensation tracking and awarding

  • more capacity building for operational roles -- notes, facilitation, agenda construction

  • Clarity around who is on teams of OC and WGs (explicit membership), roles and responsibity and onboarding processes for each. 

  • Clarity on where social.coop sits in the equity economy/world. How is Social.coop doing? We can do a social audit or equity audit and examine our power structures. 

  • Decision making clarity for OC vs WG vs SC

  • Clarity on limits of OC in discussions -- facilitation, proposing, decision-making...? Example: the Loomio discussion of extending the character limits. Is that discussion for the OC to get involved and resolve or does that issue stay in the general membership? 

  • Revise decision-making matrix, for each WG

  • Punt more issues to subgroups... send them questions, then the OC meetings can receive already discussed issues and proposals


-----
1420 [5 min] Backlog:

  • Should SC join IFTAS? 

  • Organization building discussion - Eduardo, example from Chilean research... (Document)

  • 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

  • revisit onboarding documentation

  • 2025 set goals and priorities for social.coop for the next year


1425 [5 min] Feedback: How are you leaving this call?

KT

Kathe TB Thu 5 Dec 2024 3:08PM

Recap

We had an initial retrospective review of 2024 today, we will revisit this next call.

Broadly our activities over 2024 broke down into three categories: how we do things in Organizing Circle, coordination activities across working groups with Social.coop and started broad discussions on various topics. We 1) held regular meetings every other week, 2) developed a sense of team, and 3) decided to operate Organizing Circle mostly following Sociocracy patterns with formal agendas, facilitation, note taking, and documented our discussions/decisions on the wiki and in loomio threads. We facilitated coordination between working groups (Tech, Finance, and Community) by exchanging regular updates in our meetings and setting up meetings between Organizing Circle and each working group during the fall. Finally we started several important discussions on a range of topics including social.coop decision making structures, compensation, and onboarding, as well as collaboration with the external cooperative movement.

We are particularly proud of how we operate as a circle, although there are places to improve. We created a safe/brave space where each member is heard by the rest of the group. Each member has something valuable to offer the group and is missed when someone doesn't attend. Clear agendas (with topics, timings, and durations) make it easier to know how and where to contribute as a member. We are able to hold each other accountable with our todo and update agenda items.

There are some things that have not worked well over the last year. We have started several conversations around big topics that are unresolved and not clear how they would be. The role of Organizing Circle in the broader governance of social.coop is still unclear. We are reliant on 1-2 members of the circle for meeting facilitation and administration duties. How to develop and maintain policy documents still feels tenuous.

We will continue this conversation at our next meeting and open 2025 with goals and motivations for the new year!