Agenda for the on-boarding call - October 8th 2025 at 5PM UTC

- [5 minutes] Opening

* What is the goal of this meeting and review the agenda

* Who is here and does anyone have hard stops?

* Who is taking notes? (Ammar is facilitating)

* Establish norms on speaking (Rounds + progressive stack)

* When are we meeting next? (Same time on October 22nd)

- [20 minutes] Introductions

* What do we call you? Where are you from? How are you connected to social.coop? How are you showing up to this meeting https://feelingswheel.com/?

- [10 minutes] Social.coop context and background

* Review By Laws: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Bylaws

* Review working group purposes, current member composition, and updates: https://www.loomio.com/d/TZrD5I6C/call-for-volunteers, https://www.loomio.com/d/5ngdmUzj/organizing-circle-recaps-2025

* Round: Any questions or reactions to offer?

- [5 minutes] Next steps

* Next meeting identify selection criteria for members

* Final meeting to review volunteers and make selection

- [5 minutes] Reflections

* How did this meeting go? What worked well and what should change next time?

* How are you leaving this call?

Meeting notes

- [5 minutes] Opening

• What is the goal of this meeting and review the agenda

  • everyone consent!

• Who is here and does anyone have hard stops?

  • Dan C, Rich Jensen, Nathalie Szycher, Ammar

• Who is taking notes? (Ammar is facilitating)

  • Nathalie is taking notes

• Establish norms on speaking (Rounds + progressive stack)

• When are we meeting next? (Same time on October 22nd)

  • Nathalie has conflict in October 29th

- [20 minutes] Introductions

• What do we call you? Where are you from? How are you connected to social.coop? How are you showing up to this meeting https://feelingswheel.com/?

  • Rich

    • knows Dan from previous project

    • working with coops from some times, music topic

    • looking forward to process

  • Nathalie

    • she/her pronouns, located in Germany

    • Not an active social media user

    • working with Karrot and Sociocracy for all

    • interested in exploring governance of social coop

  • Dan

    • Chicago timezone

    • connected through Nathan Schneider

  • Ammar

    • they/ them

    • located in Seattle

    • hopeful and energetic, hoping for this process to bring energy to social.coop

    • grateful for everyone being here

    • member of social.coop Organizing circle

- [10 minutes] Social.coop context and background

• Review By Laws: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Bylaws

  • 5 minutes to read on our own

  • Questions/ Reflections

    • important for social coop to find its spot between surveillance capatalism and a one person run instance

    • fan of the coop, happy to participate

    • Which decisions can working groups take? Compared to all member ones?

      • A: Any member can propose a decision, working groups operate within these policies.

    • Who is approving expenses?

      • A: Any new projects need to be approved by the full membership

    • "Every quarter, all non-paying members receive an email checking" is it happening? A: Not in that time frame

• Review working group purposes, current member composition, and updates: https://www.loomio.com/d/TZrD5I6C/call-for-volunteers, https://www.loomio.com/d/5ngdmUzj/organizing-circle-recaps-2025

  • will advertise this call for volunteers in the upcoming days

  • second attempt to establish Legal Working Group

  • we only have 3 members for the committee (instead 6 - 9)

  • Round: Any questions or reactions to offer?

    • Which working groups? Organizing Cirlce and Legal Group. Organizing Circle has 3 seats open. For Legal Working Groups it's second attempt to convene.

    • Other working groups e.g. Tech? They'll do their own selection

    • happy to finally get involved into the governance, have been receiving Loomio notifications

    • more than I expected to do

    • List of volunteers? Will look at it next meeting

    • looked at Organizing Circle Recaps, want to reviewit after the call

    • work makes sense

    • respect the ways how the community organizes

    • Q: Do we have enough candidates? What are the quantities? A: We have a dozen of volunteers, can share the list

    • try to reach out to people and promote the call ourselves!

    • How many seats are open? 6-9 members for Legal Working group, could be less

- [5 minutes] Next steps

* Next meeting identify selection criteria for members

* Final meeting to review volunteers and make selection

* Conflict for next meetings?

- October 22nd? no conflicts

- October 29th? Wednesday November 5th 1500 UTC instead

- [5 minutes] Reflections

* How did this meeting go? What worked well and what should change next time?

* How are you leaving this call?

- thank you very much for inviting me

- well moderated, effective

- what I expected to happen, great to ask questions and read bylaws

- useful to get oriented about coop governance

- appreciate organization

- volume of Ammar's mic seems to be low

- happy to see you all, excited to see it going forward

- grateful for taking notes

Agenda for the 2nd call - October 22nd 2025 at 5PM UTC

[5m] Opening

• What is the goal of this meeting and review the agenda

• Who is here and does anyone have hard stops?

• Who is facilitating (ammar?) and who is taking notes?

[10m] Check-ins

• How are you showing up to this meeting https://feelingswheel.com/?

[20m] Candidate review and selection criteria

• How many candidates do we have for each working group (OC and Legal only)?

• What do we know about the candidates (form responses + their social.coop account)?

• Round: what questions do we need to ask the candidates before making a decision?

• Round: do we have what we need to make the selection next meeting?

[5m] Next steps

• Last meeting to make the selection and announce the results.

[5m] Reflections

• How did this meeting go?

• How are you leaving the call?

@Ammar I might suggest focusing on the selecting criteria rather then reviewing the candidates. We could have new candidates still coming in between this and the final meeting. Maybe think about what to look for on the candidate Mastodon account or Loomio involvement and one or two availability criteria?

@Kathe TB Makes sense, I would like to at least take a look for inspiration but not focus on it too much, but could be convinced to avoid doing that altogether

Meeting notes

[5m] Opening

* What is the goal of this meeting and review the agenda

* Who is here and does anyone have hard stops?

* Ammar

* Dan

* Rich

* Nathalie

* Who is facilitating (ammar?) and who is taking notes? Dan

[10m] Check-ins

* How are you showing up to this meeting https://feelingswheel.com/?

[20m] Candidate review and selection criteria

* How many candidates do we have for each working group (OC and Legal only)?

* A: clarification: among the dozen volunteers, only a subset chose OC or Legal. Meanwhile, the call for volunteers is still open.

* What do we know about the candidates (form responses + their social.coop account)?

* 3 sources:

* short blurb in their response

* social.coop profile where we can look

* email to ask questions

* NS: how much time between when call for volunteers close and when we make our decision?

* RJ: possibility to add 2 weeks of deliberation?

* Ammar: will ask OC. Goal is late Oct/early Nov due to WG members rotating out.

* RJ: esp. re Legal WG

* Amar: there's less urgency there; rotating out not as much of a factor

* (reflections - should I record these?)

* NS: It's important to have the list of candidates at least a few hours before we decide.

* RJ: I'd prefer to use an alternative to mastodon when discussing candidates async.

* Ammar: social coop WGs use Zulip chat.

* participants agree to use it

* Amar: I'll set up accounts

* RJ: so a day in advance

* Round: what questions do we need to ask the candidates before making a decision (if any)?

* NS: ... . no questions to propose

* Ammar: we might look at profile for red flags - non-cooperative behavior

* we review info about time commitment from https://www.loomio.com/d/TZrD5I6C/call-for-volunteers

* DC: for legal, perhaps: how much time will it take to get the job done? Do you have that much time to contribute?

* RJ: ... progressive stack ... great tool. Having the groups be diverse and globally representative is important. The call for volunteers didn't specificaly ask about positionalities / demographics. We might ask.

* Round: do we have what we need to make the selection next meeting?

* RJ: I can help, over the next day or two, formulate the question I'm interested to ask.

* email those who already volutneered

* ammend the call for future volunteers

* Ammar: there's a risk that our tech doesn't support changing the form

* Ammar: another option: consider this a lesson learned rather than ammending the form at this late time.

* RJ: It's a high priority. If we have trouble, I think we can work something out by our next meeting.

* Ammar: consensus on that? (DC, NS: yes)

* DC: if I'm unresponsive async, I agree with anything 2 others agree to.

* NS: [scribe struggles to summarize].. I'm OK with it.

* NS: decision procedure within this group?

* Ammar: no, my role is not to have a voice but to facilitate

* following sociocracy [sp?] we aim for consensus, but... range of tolerance... [scribe struggles]

[5m] Next steps

* Last meeting to make the selection and announce the results.[5m] Reflections

* meeting time confirmed

* NS: I appreciate that I was heard in my request to get the list of candidates ahead of time

* DC: this meeting had more substance... so much that it's a struggle to scribe

* RJ: appreciate today's meeting. Would like more clarity on the cut-off time... T-24hrs?

* new comms channel

* drafting a question to ask

* How did this meeting go?

* How are you leaving the call?