Agenda [Proposed]

1500 [20 min] Opening

Check in [no notes]:

• How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://www.nycnvc.org/feelings or https://feelingswheel.com/]

ADMIN:

• Who is here?

• Does anyone need to leave early? 

• Confirm our next call on July 3 1500 UTC

• Who is note taking?

• Who is facilitating?

Inform and Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/oEdDMqte/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-june-5-1500-utc-/4

1520 [20 min] Updates from working circles 

• Finance

• Tech

• Community

• Legal - defunct-ish

1540 [10 min] Decision: Big Conversation

https://www.loomio.com/d/FtIG6kQ0/big-conversations

Round: Are there any clarifying questions?

Round: Is this good enough for now and safe enough to try?

1550 [10 min] Review: Strategic priorities

Solo: review https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy#Strategic_priorities

Round: What is working well with this policy?
Round: What should change?

Round: Do we have consent to do [something]?

1600 [15 min] Review: At Large Member Selection

Round: How have we done this in the past?

• See this brief summary of the sortition: https://www.loomio.com/d/txYOWJ4q/comment/2848607

• And this proposal for the original OC: https://www.loomio.com/p/OI8kEjVz/social-coop-organizing-circle-proposal

Round: What worked well about how we have done this?

Round: What could change?

Round: How do we want to do this and what are next steps?

1615 [15 min] Close out

Tasks

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

Feedback

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

Are we meeting?

I'm getting a message that the meeting hasn't started yet.

Found the right link!

@Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC Do you happen to have the notes from this meeting? or @Eduardo Mercovich could you write up a recap?

I have the meeting notes!! I will post them!

Social.Coop OC. 3 July 2025. Meeting Minutes (as copied from the Shared Notes)

+1500 [20 min] Opening

Check in [no notes]:

    How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://www.nycnvc.org/feelings or https://feelingswheel.com/]

ADMIN:

    Who is here? Ammar, Melissa, Eduardo, Marie, Flan (joined :25), Caitlin (joined at the end)

    Does anyone need to leave early? Marie (1600 UTC)

    Confirm our next call on July 17 1500 UTC

    Who is note taking? Melissa

    Who is facilitating? Eduardo

Inform and Review recap from last call

+1520 [20 min] Updates from working circles

•     Finance - no one is present

•     Community

•     does finance care if we onboard more mods

•     let's move forward with adding Calix

• (round of Q&R begins)

• Q: is there something written about process here? And: could we generate documentation/an intro to moderation as we go along?

• Zulip could help with the second.

• https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Onboarding_New_Community_Working_Group_Ops_Team_Members

• Keeping track of the way we are moderating and building docs from that starting point makes sense.

• Zulip works very well for CWG members coordinating with each other; and also could help with accountability. The monthly meetings notes mostly do the latter but they are more "official".

• Happy to see the innovation coming from new members in the CWG, and the use of new tools!

• As long as we make sure that critical content is summarized/graduated into the wiki consistently, it sounds great.

• Edu works on optimization of e.g. support flows. Would like to participate in producing documentation as an output; it could for example help other instances beyond ours, on top of helping us onboard new moderators.

•     Legal - defunct-ish

•     Tech -

• Last meeting notes at https://doc.anagora.org/social-coop-tech-group

• did meet in mid june, next meeting soon

• discussed Terms of Service from mastodon.social - m.s put it on hold and paid attention to feedback.

• Dan: own understanding is that a ToS is a "contract" between a specific provider and a specific user -- but lots of people seemed to think these were terms that would be binding between the mastodon project and everybody. People were concerned over at Loomio.

• bonfire! we have a test instance up, folks are welcome to try it out. it is not backed up. accounts may be flushed. does federate. bonfire.social.coop want to test SSO with wiki pws here

• https://bonfire.social.coop/signup/invitation/01JYS4TWKYZYJRX5VXMHRERVZA is an invite link, anybody who signs up must know that all data should be treated as ephemeral

• new version of Mastodon just came out, need to update

• Round of Q&Rs

• +1 on people being confused about ToS. Excited about bonfire!

• ToS issue is indeed confusing. And the power of defaults is a risky thing here.

• Q about SSO idea: what are the next steps?

• Will try Mayel's instructions hopefully this weekend.

• A few months ago we had some contact with a lawyer who offered to help us, it seems they could help here.

• Opt-out vs opt-in for ToS is worrying in this case; in particular the clause about forced arbitration.

• Would love to see more lawyer participation given the

• believe Free Software Foundation has some free legal services that we might want to engage here too - we might be able to be an example/guideline

• EFF might be another option

• Seems good to explore. There is also an organization in France (Mamot.fr ? / La Quadrature du Net, Marie: I don't know about legal assistance, but they are a valuable partner for having this discussion and they are familiar with French/European law) that is in a siimilar space/could provide such services.

• EFF is another very good option in this space, Flan is a member and can reach out and ask for consultancy services.

• Q: are we at risk of being "de-clouded" at some point, e.g. if we lose servers in some jurisdiction?

• This is a good question and we should have a round of reactions.

• Flan: great question. We have discussed shortly recently in the context of "what if we lose Hetzner". We try to manage this risk by keeping our servers "reproducible" and our backups tested. But we can do better by having a definite emergency plan. About the US: only bonfire.social.coop is currently hosted there. There might be some secondary risk with Cloudflare.

• Edu: we could/should align with our values by not hosting any services in the US.

• Melissa: Happy to see this is on people's minds.

• Dan: iocoop's motivation was addressing the de-clouding issue (like that term). We are currently at odds with Hetzner's ToS if a member posts e.g. pornography. The ideal would be to find a coop host which is not in the US.

• Ammar: At some point in the future it would be lovely to consider a more self-hosted route? Would be happy to discuss distribution/decentralization with the TWG.

Check-out incl. homework

• (informal round, only taking down action items)

• Marie: will explore nextcloud more in mid-July - learn how to update calendar links for meetings

• Flan: reach out to the EFF as a member to ask about legal consultancy for coops

• TWG: consider next steps w.r.t. de-clouding risks and diversifying from US-based hosting.

• Maybe reach out to iocoop.org and ask them about non-US hosting options?

• Melissa: will drive the question of how to document how to moderate within the CWG.

<<<< BELOW, TAKEN FROM THE ORIGINAL AGENDA >>>>

1540 [10 min] Decision: Big Conversation

https://www.loomio.com/d/FtIG6kQ0/big-conversations

Round: Are there any clarifying questions?

Round: Is this good enough for now and safe enough to try?

1550 [10 min] Review: Strategic priorities

Solo: review https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy#Strategic_priorities

Round: What is working well with this policy?

Round: What should change?

Round: Do we have consent to do [something]?

1600 [15 min] Review: At Large Member Selection

Round: How have we done this in the past?

    See this brief summary of the sortition: https://www.loomio.com/d/txYOWJ4q/comment/2848607

    And this proposal for the original OC: https://www.loomio.com/p/OI8kEjVz/social-coop-organizing-circle-proposal

Round: What worked well about how we have done this?

Round: What could change?

Round: How do we want to do this and what are next steps?

1615 [15 min] Close out

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

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

Thanks @Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC !!!

The items below <<<< TAKEN from... were not taken due to time constrains. However, we could dig deep into some important issues and some tasks where taken.

I don't know the rest, but I sense a lack of a shared place where to see topics, statuses and their related actions.

While in my mind is something similar to a kanban, it doesn't have to be that (even less, backlog, ready, working, cage, done). Our value flow is different and one possible is Heard or Present (kinda Backlog), Understanding (or Scoping), Exploration, Decision, Execution, Done/Archived.
Does anyone perceives this lack too?

In other issues, tomorrow I will not be able to attend, for a good reason: I have the post surgery check! Everything seems to be ok, so I assume I'll be released from my house-only life. 😁

I promise to read the notes after.
Thanks a lot for your help and sharing! :)

@Eduardo Mercovich Could we modify the 2025 priorities document to reflect the kanban structure? https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf?openfile=true