Loomio

2026 Organizing Circle Mid-year Recap

Luke Opperman Wed 16 Sep 2026 1:28PMPublicSeen by 30

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:

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.

Alex RodriguezWed 16 Sep 2026 3:43PM

Given how quiet Loomio has been, does that mean that social.coop has effectively stopped making strategic decisions? If so, I wonder what is needed for us to be able to flex that muscle again?

Billy SmithThu 17 Sep 2026 6:24AM

@Alex Rodriguez 

It got quieter during the summer last year as well.

People are outdoors more, so are online less. :D

It'll kick in later. :D

Luke OppermanSat 19 Sep 2026 5:21PM

@Alex Rodriguez aye, part of my motivation (personally) in more regular updates to Loomio is to exercise that muscle in preparation.

Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OCTue 13 Oct 2026 5:01PM

@Alex Rodriguez  Actually, the Organizing Circle makes policy decisions, according to the new bylaws. That makes Loomio quieter. Also, still in the bylaws, any member can create a proposal.

Alex RodriguezTue 13 Oct 2026 6:33PM

@Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC are these bylaws on the Wiki out of date?

Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OCFri 25 Sep 2026 2:15AM

The Social.Coop Bylaws created the Organizing Circle. It is run with inspiration from sociocracy. We do need new at-large members; and, the Tech Working Group and Finance Working Group and Legal Working Group might welcome new members too. The Organizing Circle has been meeting every two weeks for 90 minutes, and we are thinking to change to 60 minutes with emphasis on the first meeting of each month for policy work.

Gilles DePemig Dutilh Tue 29 Sep 2026 4:58PM

Content warning: This post is full of negativity 👺, please skip this if you're not in the mood! 🧘‍♂️I like you all for just being here! 💛

This reply is critical about the culture of communication about governance on social.coop, not about the current content on itself. The issues I am critical about:

- The announcement under 📣 is missed by many people (in particular people using apps). A @SocialCoop post would have been great.
- The content of the announcement is hard to understand for people who are not already involved. (I say this as a non-native reader of English) Why would they bother clicking?
- The content of this loomio post (the one I am replying to) is difficult to grasp. There are many terms I never heard of. (even though I am an active member doing moderation here)

For people who know nothing about social.coop yet, this is not really inviting. I am pretty sure that a new user who clicked on the link in the 📣 has big difficulty understanding what this is all about, and closes the window after the first paragraph and a half. I think this is a missed opportunity. We want this community to be inviting, right? 🎊

I explicitly do not want to criticize Luke's writing. I criticize the culture that seems to be here in which it is assumed that people (including non-native English speakers) understand all kinds of technical governance-related terms, and, for example, know what loomio is for, and what the different groups are for. I had no clue, and honestly, I still only understand a fraction.



Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OCTue 13 Oct 2026 5:28PM

@Gilles DePemig Dutilh   Sure. It's a "re-cap." It is a high-level summary of 10 points under 4 broad themes within a full page of writing. There is something lost when a summary is so very concise; made of bullet points and sentence fragments. I can see how it would be difficult to follow if this text were your first interaction with governance issues here (or anywhere). ... As a "do-ocracy" of volunteers, we did not take the time to write out a more floral and wordy version of this summary.

I am curious which parts were hard to understand.

We do need to attract new members into governance, and I can see that this post might have been "too short and sweet."

We are aware that the announcement feature on Mastodon is missed by some people using different apps. We did think of notifying using a regular post, and we might get to that at our next meeting!