Loomio
Thu 11 Sep 2025 2:12PM

Organizing Circle Meeting: 2025 September 11 (1500 UTC)

KT Kathe TB Public Seen by 13

The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2025 September 11 (Thursday) 1500 - 1630 UTC. We will meet here: https://socialcoop.meet.coop/kat-aiw-mpv-6vv

KT

Kathe TB Thu 11 Sep 2025 2:21PM

Agenda

Tentative agenda to be agreed on at the start of the meeting?

1500 [20 min] Opening

Check in [no notes]:

ADMIN:

  • Who is here?

  • Does anyone need to leave early? 

  • Confirm our next call on September 25 1500 UTC

  • Who is note taking?

  • Who is facilitating?

Inform and Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/v48u6JoI/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-august-28-1500-utc-

PRIORITIES (as identified at the meeting on 14 August): 

  • Start with what can do 

  • Budgeting process (supports and is recurring)

  • Doing some experiments to be reviewed and will help to define the ones for 2026 

  • At large member selection and onboarding: time sensitive

  • Organizing Circle operations: how do we track tasks (and more, as described in the priorities doc) 

  • Forming a Legal Working Group: critical 

  • Membership involvement, member participation 

 "Perfection is the enemy of the good." 

https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf?openfile=true

1525 [15 min] Updates from working circles 

  • Finance

  • Tech

  • Community

  • Legal - defunct-ish

1540 [15 min] At-large member selection

Context: The two year term for At-Large members are up at the end of this year. We need to develop a plan to select and on-board new members.

This topic needs a formulating discussion to decide how best to go about doing this.

-From https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf?openfile=true

Who is doing what? Where does it sit? What threads should we be tracking?

1615 [15 min] Close out

Tasks

Feedback

  • What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

CWF

Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC Thu 11 Sep 2025 4:35PM

Yall, I took meeting notes, and they are not very good. We did decide on how to proceed to call for the 3 new at-large members. However, I am reading the notes, and they aren't clear at all. I will re-write a new summary.

KT

Kathe TB Thu 11 Sep 2025 4:39PM

Notes

1500 [20 min] Opening

Check in [no notes]:

ADMIN:

  • Who is here? Ammar, Kathe, Caitlin, Melissa

  • Does anyone need to leave early? Nope

  • Confirm our next call on September 25 1500 UTC

  • Who is note taking? Caitlin

  • Who is facilitating? Kathe


Inform and Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/v48u6JoI/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-august-28-1500-utc-
Andrew had an update on fiannces and the meeting mostly focused on this. Some quick updates from the working groups.

PRIORITIES (as identified at the meeting on 14 August, revised 11 September): 

  • Budgeting process (supports and is recurring)

  • Doing some experiments to be reviewed and will help to define the ones for 2026 

    • What exactly is this?? Difference between this a member involvement/participation?

  • At large member selection and onboarding: time sensitive

  • Organizing Circle operations: how do we track tasks (and more, as described in the priorities doc) 

    • Balance between process and progress

  • Forming a Legal Working Group: critical 

  • Membership involvement, member participation 

"Start with what can do" and "Perfection is the enemy of the good." 
https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf?openfile=true

1525 [15 min] Updates from working circles 

  • Finance

  • Tech

    • Met last Tuesday.

    • Mastodon and package update (security patches)

    • alpha.socioal.coop is still in progress - useufl for developing features

    • rss.social.coop to announce meetings automatically

  • Community

    • Spam wave

    • Harrasment instant resulting in suspension

    • High feelings with polticis

    • Rough week for moderators

    • Community call update

      • Established volunteers showed up and had a lovely chat

      • Planning to rotate host and that will shift times

      • Market/promotion of the call: ... admin boosted post on Melissa's feed. It was not announced on Loomio. 

      • Dan will organize the next one: late September/early October

      • Community needs new members (and to draw them from the membership not already on working groups)

    • Zulip conversations: invitation for us to join 

    • Legal - defunct-ish (See below)

1540 [15 min] At-large member selection


Context: The two year term for At-Large members are up at the end of this year. We need to develop a plan to select and on-board new members.
This topic needs a formulating discussion to decide how best to go about doing this.
-From https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf?openfile=true

1) Pick Jury (i.e. Selection Group/Search Committee)

  • - 9 random selection 

  • - vote on candidates

  • - Kathe will find 9 folks for the jury group

  • - Ammar will facilitate meetings for canidate selection

  • - Melissa to start a Zulip thread for what the meetings look like

2) Gether pool of candidates (open solicitation and random asks from active Mastondon roll)
3) Select 3 at large members to replace (Kathe, Eduardo M, and Marie) (random?)
4) ?Put to Loomio vote if needed? - maybe develope 2-3 slates of canidates.

Staying on: Ammar (until when - through 2026?) 

Comments: 
From our July 17th meeting: Review: At Large Member Selection
Round: How have we done this in the past?


Who is doing what? Where does it sit? What threads should we be tracking? 
- Future likely member: Alex Rodrigquez (new father now, tap in future) ... 
- This topic is "particularly risky, but not particularly urgent." 🤪🤓🙃 
- New laws about social media may not affect us. 

  • + Can we make the legal case that since we aren't algorithm driven, it doensn't apply? Who knows?

- Should we pay for this? Maybe but we need a working group to track this. Maybe seek consultation as needed? Give them a budget for said consultations?
- Past attempt- November 2022: https://www.loomio.com/d/qk32LA6y/time-to-revive-the-legal-working-group- 
- Past attempt- August 2024:  https://www.loomio.com/d/qTYHKsoh/legal-working-group-lwg-reactivate-tasks-for-the-organizing-circle- 

Proposal: We will solicit 6 working group members in October with our OC call for a new Legal working group, prioritizing folks who have tried to move this forward in the past. Two of these members will be OC working group members as well. This group will be tasked with 1) Aggregating concerns from members around legal issues 2) tracking international developments to regulate social media and 3) develop a legal structure to sheild volunteers from law suites and other impact. This working group will be stood up in January 2026 or sooner. Consent! to proposal by all in attendence.
-> When we have the call for the Jury Sortition, we will call for OC members and LWG members and for all WGs.... perhaps using a form on NextCloud (not Google) to solicit specific interests (Loomio perhaps doesn't have this capacity). 
-> Melissa will draft an example form for the Jury. The form will go to the members who check boxes: please consider me for these working groups, and people can check multiple boxes using ranked choices. 
-> How do we get this Jury? Kathe look at "active Mastodon" roles: she will message individual people until she gets 9 people to say Yes!, and she will ask for 2-3 backups. The understanding, from the bylaws, is that the jury will meet 3 times, and Ammar will facilitate the meeting discussion. Kathe will get those names to Ammar. Additional filter: We ask that Ammar choose the 3 meeting date/times and get them to Kathe by Saturday. 
-- Jury will meet 3 times in October and (early) November. By December 1st, the new members have been selected and have agreed to serve 2-year terms. 
- We will as an OC create a candy-coated version of OC accomplishments and processes to provide to the Jury. 

1615 [15 min] Close out

Tasks

  • What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

  • Kathe: Follow up on Big Conversation https://www.loomio.com/d/FtIG6kQ0/big-conversations - start discussion on governance and how decisions are made

  • Kathe: will post recaps

  • Ammar will get times for Jury meeting to Kathe tomorrow

  • Kathe will invite 9-12 random people from the randomized mastodon rolls to join

  • Melissa will develop form on next cloud for nomioations for all working groups (including legal)

  • Melissa will start a Zulip thread for what the jury meeting agendas look like... let people weigh in on the Jury 

  • Deferred- Caitlin- for next meeting: We will as an OC create a candy-coated version of OC accomplishments and processes to provide to the Jury. 

Feedback

  • What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

    • Two clear goals that we DID! YEAY!

    • Wish that last meeting had recaps to catch up on

    • We have tasks to do. 

    • Happy campers. 

CWF

Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC Thu 11 Sep 2025 5:18PM

2025 Process for Selection New At-large members for the Organizing Circle

  • Draft written by Caitlin W., 11 September 2025

WG=Working Group

(1) A Jury (aka a Selection Group/Search Committee) will be handpicked by Kathe with an eye for a diverse group. She will go through the active Mastodon users (available in the Mastodon admin panel) and find 9 people who are willing to serve on this Jury, based partly on their availability for the specific 3 Jury meeting dates. She will solicit these individuals directly on behalf of the OC. (For care, Kathe will find 2 alternates in case some person backs out.)

(2) Ammar will select the 3 Jury meeting dates and give the dates to Kathe by end of Saturday. Ammar will contact the 9 Jury members and tell them when and where to meet and what their purpose is. Ammar will facilitate the discussions for the Jury’s 3 meetings. [3 meetings are specified in the bylaws; each with a defined purpose.]

(3) Melissa will create a discussion on Zulip to figure out possible agendas for the 3 meetings of the Jury. Melissa will create a form to call for new members for the 3 at-large OC members and other WG members with a ranking option for candidates.

The Jury, under Ammar’s facilitation, will have these agendas and this form to use as examples to develop their own agendas and actual form.

(4) Over the 3 meetings, the Jury will put out a call for the new members that includes a submission form for people to proclaim their interest in joining OC and WGs. The Jury will randomly select 3 people from the pool of interested candidates for the at-large OC members and vet them generally to make sure they are capable of serving their terms. The Jury will re-confirm with the candidates that they still want to serve, then the Jury will announce the new at-large members to all SC cooperators via Loomio and Social.Coop post and announcements.

(5) TIMELINE: The Jury will meet 3 times in October and (early) November. By December 1st, the new members will have been selected and will have agreed to serve 2-year terms, which begin on January 1st.  

(6) READINESS…  As support, the OC will create a candy-coated version of OC accomplishments and processes to provide to the Jury to share with membership, to make joining the OC sound welcoming and wonderful.  AND, the OC will review onboarding procedures before the announcement of the new members.

(7) Ammar, with the help of others, will share the pool of WG candidates who were solicited by the call for nominations with the WGs who can reach out to people and get new members.

CWF

Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC Thu 11 Sep 2025 5:40PM

@Melissa Santos @Eduardo Mercovich @Ammar @MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) @Hollie Butler @Matt Noyes @Kathe TB @Flancian. @Dan Phiffer ... I was unhappy with the notes that I took during the meeting, so I wrote the above summary of what I think we are doing to recruit new members for the 3 at-large members of the OC, whose terms will start January 1st. The new writing also betrays my Lyme-addled brain, as I struggled to describe the steps that we are taking. ... When you read this description: is it what we agreed to do in today's meeting? ... If you weren't there, what questions do you have?

KT

Kathe TB Sat 13 Sep 2025 12:14PM

@Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC I got you! Working up a general recap below and then I'll start a thread on the sortition process with a formal proposal write up proposal. I'll leave it up for 48 hours for a vote to make sure I didn't miss anything but we should move forward with the solicitation for the jury sooner rather then later.

KT

Kathe TB Sat 13 Sep 2025 1:10PM

I think I'm just going to move forward with the summary below instead of drawing out the decision process. Does this look good?

KT

Kathe TB Sat 13 Sep 2025 1:09PM

Recap

This meeting covered updates from the working groups as well as decisions on the member selection for Organizing Circle and a new Legal Working Group, and an action plan for call for volunteers for Tech and Community working groups.

Operational (Working Group) Member Selection:

Context: Social.coop is a volunteer run organization. To both avoid burn out of our operational volunteers and the reduce our 'bus-factor' (ie have many people know how to do the things that keep us going), we need to rotate and renew membership on our operational working groups. As we grow as an organization we are evolving a more formalized selection process for some of our working groups (Organizing Circle - OC and Legal Working Group - LWG), and are looking for less formal volunteers for others (Community Working Group - CWG and Tech Working Group - TWB). OC was stood up in 2023 via a sortition process that forms the bases for the policy below.

Briefly here is the purpose of the current (and anticipated) working groups:

  • Community Working Group moderates our Mastodon instance and new member joins. This group generally maintains a budget for moderator stipends.

  • Tech Working Group maintains our instances and generally tends our tech stack. This group generally maintains a budget for tech services.

  • Organizing Circle coordinates efforts between the working groups and catches anything that does not cleanly fall into work group domains.

  • Legal Working Group mitigates legal risk to our volunteers and organization. Specifically this new group will be tasked with 1) aggregating concerns from members around legal issues 2) tracking international developments to regulate social media and 3) develop a organizational structure to shield volunteers from legal risk. This group will maintain a budget for legal and professional consultations.

Policy: We will convene for a random committee (Selection Committee - SC) of 6-9 active Mastodon users. Before SC meets, OC will call for volunteers for working groups and circles that will include CWG and TWG. From this pool, SC will then select members for the empty At-large OC seats and any new working groups that are standing up (e.g. in 2025 we have 3 At-large OC seats and are standing up a new Legal Working Group).

Timeline and who:

  • @Ammar will select the three meeting dates for the Selection Committee and pass them to @Kathe TB to be included in the invitation

    📅 2025-09-13

  • @Kathe TB will select users from the active mastodon rolls for the Selection Committee using a random subset of users from the past month with a filter excluding users with empty profiles/posts.

    📅 2025-09-24

  • @Melissa Santos will start a Tulip thread to generate agenda guidance for the three Selection Committee meetings

    📅 2025-09-24

  • OC decides on recruitment strategy to advertise volunteer opertunities.

  • @Ammar will facilitate three meetings in October of the Selection Committee

    📅 2025-10-29

  • New members start service January 2026

Updates:

  • Community working group: It's been a rough week for the moderation team. There was a large spam wave and political tensions are high. The open community call had a small attendance of existing volunteers; a smaller and narrower turn out then was hoped for but fun conversation none the less. There is a need for new members in the working group.

  • Tech working group: The Mastodon instance was updated including security patches. The alpha instance continues to move forward to social.coop specific features/modifications. There is an rss instance(?) under development to allow better broadcasting of the operational announcements on the server including meeting announcements.

  • Finance working group: We now have a core budget and have identified non-core expenses. Open collective does not have a way any longer for organizations to pay expense directly (e.g. a 'corporate' credit card) but is looking into it as a long term project.

  • Legal working group: Efforts to stand up a legal working group seem to have gone silent again. Organizing Circle will add a stand up action to the member selection jury mandate (see above).

KT

Kathe TB Sat 13 Sep 2025 1:12PM

@Social.coop - Organizing Circle There is a pretty big decision in this recap. Please let me know if this throws any red flags for your ASAP.

M

MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) Sun 14 Sep 2025 5:57AM

I was unable to attend the last meeting, but the information available here sounds good to me. Thank you all for your contributions.