2026 Organizing Circle Mid-year Recap

The Organizing Circle (OC) has continued to meet biweekly in 2026, with new at-large members brought on board starting in January (@loppear and @pjw, with @edumerco continuing) and regular attendance by representatives from the Working Groups (WGs): Community WG, Tech WG, and Finance WG (@CaitlinWaddick @dphiffer @ansate @3wordchant).

Our meeting process continues to reflect a Sociocracy-inspired “Circle of Circles” centered on updates from Working Groups, but we have slipped from posting regular updates from the OC on Loomio (last update Dec 2025 https://www.loomio.com/d/p40K6Nfq/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-december-18-1500-utc- ).

Themes from meeting agendas this year have been:

• Accountability and recognition for Working Group progress.

  • Community Contributions 2026 ( https://www.loomio.com/d/fCnIgULm/2026-member-vote-community-contributions-by-social-coop ) by Finance Working Group.

  • Mastodon server upgrades and announcements by Tech Working Group.

  • Meet.coop service restoration & coordination by Tech Working Group

• Mediating & coordinating between Working Groups for disagreements on effort, timing, or direction.

  • Processes for supporting new platforms operationally for TWG & CWG on e.g. Bonfire, Zulip.

  • A member of the TWG & OC ultimately decided to step back amicably following discussion of CWG moderation. ( https://www.loomio.com/d/HOiDp4sA/moderation-update-from-cwg )

• Reviewing the Finance Working Group annual budget report and forecast.

  • https://www.loomio.com/d/4TYcaADF/2026-oc-approved-budget-plus-some-responses-to-the-sense-check

• Keeping an eye on concerns that fall between existing Working Groups and attempting to make headway on larger strategic considerations, such as

  • Legal considerations & risks for organizational and hosting jurisdictions, providing support to the re-formation of the Legal Working Group.

  • Evaluation of new platforms such as Bonfire, ATProto (https://www.loomio.com/d/IF5MGpyU/would-social-coop-want-to-experiment-with-running-a-bluesky-pds- )

  • LLM-related policy ( https://www.loomio.com/d/4fBiolG8/should-we-plan-some-intentional-discussion-on-llms-

  • Organizational capacity and continuity in recruiting, onboarding, and thanking members for participation in WGs and OC.

Strategic decisions for Social.coop are made by overall membership on Loomio as described in the Bylaws, and operational decisions are made within Working Groups. Our role continues to be coordination and advisory / advocacy for Working Group efforts and needs, and to facilitate bringing issues from Working Groups to the full membership via Loomio.