Agenda

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

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 October 23 (1500 UTC)

• Who is note taking?

• Who is facilitating?

Inform and Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/MjL6ROmz/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-september-25-1500-utc-/3

Consent on the agenda

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

• 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." 

"Start with what can do"

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

1520 [20 min] Updates from working circles 

• Finance

• Tech

• Community

• Legal - defunct-ish

1540 [5 min] Update At-large member selection

https://www.loomio.com/d/VeuZvyM9/organizing-circle-and-legal-working-groups-jury-meetings

1555 [20 min] Sense making - OC operations

Context: Before we onboard new members it would be good to review how we have been operating, what is working and what might need to change. Conducting this review may generate recommendations for the new circle members starting in January.

Scope: We started scoping a how-to letter to the future OC. We want to be clear that the process can be modified and be motivational/encouraging of the future circle. We should include processes that we've found useful and be clearly future focused. We'll pick up with some formulating discussion on this next call.

Round: With in that scope, broadly how have we been doing things?

ALT 1555 [20 min] Formulation - OC advert

Context: We want to generate a 'candy coated' advert for what the OC does and has done. This will be used in recruiting WG members and to help explain who we are to general membership to increase engagement.

Draft: https://share.mayfirst.org/s/fqtKY74RnwpZKsP?openfile=true

1615 [15 min] Close out

Tasks

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

  •  

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

  •  

    [[SOMEONE]] will post recap

Feedback

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

Yall, I'm getting a message that the meeting hasn't started yet. Did I misunderstand something?

We moved the meeting location.

It seems many people can't attend today.

15 minutes in: Only Melissa (CWG) and Andrew (FWG) and I (FWG) are here.

NOTES for Organizing Circle Meeting: 2025 October 9 (1500 UTC) (Thursday)

Present: Caitlin (notetaker), Andrew (FWG), Melissa (CWG)

Organizing Circle Meeting: 2025 October 9 (1500 UTC)

[Confusion about who is expected today's meeting. Some last minute cancelations are confirmed, and some absences are unexplained.]

Current time: 15:15 UTC 

    Finance topics ...  generally, some frustration: how do we get things done?! Action!!

    Should Social.Coop do Community Contributions in October/November? 

    Process? : FWG can put forward an FWG budget that includes Community Contributions ... 

    Each working group puts forward a budget for themselves. 

    FWG puts together a budget that includes all WG requests and ideas ,and then seeks approval for that budget from the OC. 

    Andrew: We pay 1,000 British pounds for Meet.Coop services annually. Caitlin approves! We all use our Meet.Coop services.

Current time: 15:30 UTC 

Community Contributions, Consensus: So many good works in the fediverse that need our solidarity funds. Social.coop depends on these other fediverse organizations that "hold us" and "create a container" for the success of our community. 

Budget for FWG in 2025 should include Community Contributions. Ideally, each working group proposes their own budget for their working group. 

FWG will move ahead with getting input from working groups and members about organizations who might get a Community Contributions. Andrew will post to Loomio with a Loomio link to last year and he will "time box" it to 10 days to solicit the organizations to potentially receive funding. 

Melissa will hold Caitlin accountable to approach Alex R. about forming the Legal Working Group. He volunteered (AGAIN!) to be part of it (after a year or so)! 

We will look to Zulip for private OC conversations rather than leave people off the DM thread on Social.Coop

Andrew will put forward the Finance Working Group budget to the OC on Zulip. 

End meeting: 15:45 UTC

Some conversations are happening over Zulip, especially regarding our Call for Volunteers, here: https://www.loomio.com/d/TZrD5I6C/call-for-volunteers