Organizing Circle Meeting: 2025 September 25 (1500 UTC)
The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2025 September 25 (Thursday) 1500 - 1630 UTC. We will meet here: https://socialcoop.meet.coop/kat-aiw-mpv-6vv
Kathe TB Thu 25 Sep 2025 4:29PM
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:
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Who is here?
Kathe
Melissa
Calix (briefly)
Ammar
Caitlin
Flan
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Does anyone need to leave early?
Ammar perhaps a little past the hour
Flan at the hour
Confirm our next call on Oct 9 1500 UTC
Who is note taking? Ammar
Who is facilitating? Kathe
Inform and Review recap from last call
https://www.loomio.com/d/4ao03ABX/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-september-11-1500-utc-/7
Was a productive call
We came out with a plan to move forward with selecting new WGs members (including selecting members to serve as Legal Working Group)
Consent on the agenda
sense making should come first before we make the advert.
Mostly seem equally important topics.
The advert can be done offline so sense making should be priortized.
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 sensitiveOrganizing Circle operations: how do we track tasks (and more, as described in the priorities doc)
Forming a Legal Working Group: criticalMembership 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
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Finance
No updates
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Tech
edsu@ has left the group as he left the instance, we thank him for his service!
more software updates took place
did a batch of rebooting and documented improvements needed
no progress on alpha :) hoping to get this done by Q4 / in Q4
-
good visits from Andrew and contributions
(meeting cross poster)
RSS cross-poster for Loomio -> instance: no progress for now
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Community
starting adding the moderators to the public calendar
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Melissa working with Sam and Hollie to discuss how we should offboard members when we have to suspend - more in zulip soon
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TWG could provide dumps for users if that helps them 'offboard' to a different instance
We gave them time, so not needed for now
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Which other instances do we work with the most closely?
(...)
a little with cosocial.ca
Here we caught some flak due to not suspending fast enough
-
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Legal - defunct-ish
1540 [15 min] Update At-large 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, Finance Working Group - FWG, and Tech Working Group - TWG). 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.
Finance Working Group budgets and authorizes charges to our Open Collective account.
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.
Organizing Circle coordinates efforts between the working groups and catches anything that does not cleanly fall into work group domains.
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, FWG, 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:
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@Ammar will select the three meeting dates for the Selection Committee and pass them to @Kathe TB to be included in the invitation
Done, dates are:
Wed October 8th at 10AM Pacific time
Wed October 22nd at 10AM Pacific time
Wed October 29th at 10AM Pacific time
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@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.
Found 3 only so far
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Q: how did we find them?
A: Picked 10 random people from those which were monthly active (using an actual RNG). Messaged them all and found two people that way. Then also messaged people in the livestream (some Wednesday). Found 3 people overall.
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@Melissa Santos will start a Tulip thread to generate agenda guidance for the three Selection Committee meetings
Done
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OC decides on recruitment strategy to advertise volunteer opportunities.
Working groups will target invites for specific skill sets and for maximum inclusivity
Ammar: on learning about sociocracy (as a skill) 'on the job' here in the OC.
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Melissa: this kind of information about skills associated with each working group could live in the wiki.
+1, that makes sense, we could just reuse that going forward.
( draft volunteer form https://share.mayfirst.org/apps/forms/s/sGpeGSpKjzbqafY2XnPNkHnS (I'd love to see more info on the wiki linked pages too))
@Ammar will facilitate three meetings in October of the Selection Committee
New members start service January 2026.
Advertising schedule:
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need a loomio thread asking for volunteers
we need to write the copy
we could reuse some of what we have above
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need many mastodon posts linking to the survey and the loomio thread
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need to write blurbs for this
"Like social.coop? Come join our volunteer team! [link loomio]"
and a schedule of announcements
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should also put it in server announcements
mention in the matrix rooms! @Flan is taking this on
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reactions
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Ammar: happy to leave exact wording to whoever takes up the posting; also happy to volunteer
Ammar can take up posting the Loomio thread
Caitlin: support, will also ask the team members (all teams) to broadcast from their own personal accounts
Flan: happy to co-edit drafts, will also announce/boost in Matrix (TWG and open chat room)
Melissa: sgtm
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We were talking about having the jury review the volunteer form, but maybe we want to get that started sooner. decided on getting it out ASAP.
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Next steps:
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post loomio thread
we chime in with wg-specific information
Ammar: ETA today :)
let's make sure to include the interest form
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post other announcements with a link to said thread
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which cadence?
every ~72h? every few days
at different timezones though
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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.
Round: What is in scope for this review? (from priorities list this includes task tracking)
Keep it future oriented, that way it doubles as possible documentation for the future OC
Let's make sure we do address history though, postmortems are good.
How meetings are run; agenda items we found useful, notetaking and recap practices; how we record and revisit decisions; how we listen to membership (or have struggled at it)
Cheerleading! Motivation! Encouragement! Go team! You can do it! You've got this! The future is yours!
How to start with OC: onboarding not just for at-large members, but for reps from teams/groups (i.e. CWG, TWG, FWG)
Be clear that process can be modified and adapted
Round: With in that scope, broadly how have we been doing things?
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procedure of how to meet
Loomio thread with agenda
How is an agenda built
How is the meeting run
post meeting recaps
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How are decisions made, things to avoid (sense making, formulations, decisions)
Wiki page for the policies, linking it would be useful
We don't have too much async work going on, that is something that could change
Shared calendar, deciding if we are still using that and making sure it is kept up to date
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What are we saying to our future-selves about zulip
tying this back to Caitlin's thought about async work
Guidance on our current tech-stack
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Highlighting that our goal is:
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Supporting working groups
coordiating between working groups
Filling the gaps between working groups
-
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clarifying exact scope for each of the working groups
previously FWG asked OC to outline the fiscal policy
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Role in the fediverse - but this is shared with CWG and FWG at least
FWG did the financial supports to other projects - "Community contributions" participatory budgeting-
CWG is talking about working with other coops and servers
information flow, passing information between WGs and Social Coop members
Distinction between sociocracy General Circle and OC - focused on accountability vs information flow
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.
Round: What should go into this? What do we cover?
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
Kathe: will post recaps
Kathe: post an announcement to Mastodon every 72 ish hours for volutneer recruitment
Ammar will create loomio thread for volunteer call
Ammar will talk with Caitlin about next clound and follow up with Melisa about forms
Caitlin will ask current group members to boost volunteer call as individuals
Flan will mention loomio call for volunteer in Matrix
Flan or TWG member will add comment in loomio call for volunteer about specific skills
Feedback
What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.
Kathe TB Tue 7 Oct 2025 1:51PM
Recap
Member selection and volunteers
We are following up on the timeline for member selection and our volunteer call. We are moving forward with three randomly selected members from the Mastodon active list who will meet Oct 8, 22 and 29th. @Ammar created a Loomio thread https://www.loomio.com/d/TZrD5I6C/call-for-volunteers; @Melissa Santos created a form for sign ups here https://share.mayfirst.org/apps/forms/s/sGpeGSpKjzbqafY2XnPNkHnS, and @Kathe TB is pushing announcements to the Mastodon server every other day between now and October 22th.
Letter to future OC
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.
Working group updates
Community is adding moderators to public calendar and working through how to off-board members. Tech working group continues software updates and had a successful reboot; hoping to have more progress on the alpha server and RSS cross poster in Q4 to report. There were no updates from Financing and Legal is still in pre-launch.
Kathe TB · Sun 21 Sep 2025 10:05PM
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 September 25 1500 UTC
Who is note taking?
Who is facilitating?
Inform and Review recap from last call
https://www.loomio.com/d/4ao03ABX/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-september-11-1500-utc-/7
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 sensitiveOrganizing Circle operations: how do we track tasks (and more, as described in the priorities doc)
Forming a Legal Working Group: criticalMembership 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 [15 min] Update At-large member selection
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.
Round: What is in scope for this review? (from priorities list this includes task tracking)
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.
Round: What should go into this? What do we cover?
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
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.