Loomio
Sat 27 Oct 2018 10:44AM

Structures

W waldo Public Seen by 58

feel free to edit any of this text, this is our common wiki

We anticipate several big changes in:
1. Our legal framework: Kiez Burn e.V.
2. Our organizational structure
3. The "who does what" roles

The first Kiez Burn was very akin to a classic event organizational model.

Then decentralization happened...
Many more people embraced stronger roles in year 2. With a bigger community, more active members, we now want to decentralize further and empower the many complex networks active in our community

Better and more decentralized structures will enable a more open and sustainable community.

Some questions that we want to co-think out:
1. what is the role of the Kiez Burn e.V.? And what does the board do? How do we make it "fun" to attract the right people to such a board?
2. Organization: More chaos in the organization, ok... but how? And how are people connected? Where do people meet? And who organizes those meetings?
3. And then who does what? How do we connect the dots?

Kiez Burn e.V.

We are currently founding a new Verein, with it's focus exclusively on the Kiez Burn community.

role of the board

One of the key concerns we have about the board, is that it could become an empty shell, only occupying itself onlywith finances and legal responsibilities. To make the board attractive to the creative and active members of our community, we realize it needs to be more than that. Our current proposal goes in the direction documented below, but please comment/discuss.

The role of the board could be:

  • to be the "vision guides" for the Kiez Burn community, focusing on important structural problems or opportunities
  • flagging weak spots in the Kiez Burn event organization (e.g. we do not have a power lead, anyone wants to take that up?)
  • legal guidance for the event(s), and legal responsibility for the verein
  • financial control of the event(s) and the tax responsibilities of the verein
  • organize the regular general assemblies and enable active community participation

The board would not

  • necessarily actively involved in the Kiez Burn event
  • does not coordinate the Kiez Burn event as such, but is focused on enabling the organization to self-organize

The board consists of

  • president: mainly focused on administrative activities, makes sure there are regular board meetings and makes sure the general assemblies happen
  • Schatzmeister: the person that makes sure the finances are organized correctly.
  • other people: to be voted in

Organization

Let fail what the community does not carry? what if there are not enough volunteers for welfare? What if first aid falls through? Do we cancel the event? Or are there "people" that make sure it does not fail?

2019 vision

We want to move away from a "core team" that
- coordinates everything
- makes sure "crucial" aspects or even the event actually happens
And instead, let the community self-organize without a "central" team.

Or: are there maybe people that are "connecting nodes" that connect different people & topics to help make it happen?

What can be decentralized?

Up to 2018 we still had a lot of things running centrally. In other communities we often see that a lot of this can be left to the community, or not happen, and everything is still fine
- Gate & greeters ==> can this become a Kiez? What if no Kiez wants to do gate? And what kind of support would that Kiez get? Would the Kiez get extra money through the dreams platform? Would that grant request get extra push on the dreams platform?
- Food for volunteers/kitchen ==> no food for volunteers anymore? Or would a Kiez (e.g. Deine Mudda) potentially be able to offer food for site leads?
- Temple & effigy ==> can work as art grants, potentially with some push on the dreams platform?
- Centralized site planning ==> Borderland lets camp self-organize. Only putting the map online, with loud & quiet areas indicated, camps place themselves and discuss out issues themselves.
- Welfare ==> ==> can this become a Kiez? What if nobody steps up to do welfare? And what kind of support would that Kiez get? Would the Kiez get extra money through the dreams platform? Would that grant request get extra push on the dreams platform?
- Centralized art grant committee ==> dreams platform, but still need for guidance?
- Workshop programme ==> no centralized push to make this happen?
- Opening ceremony ==> no centralized push to make this happen?
- decoration team ==> only art grants?
- volunteer team pushing to get people in ==> but how do people know then where to sign up?
- signs ==> still needed centrally or not?
- transport ==> no centralized push to organize busses anymore? (but what if someone volunteers to make that happen?)
- no more build team ==> maybe just putting up some tents for feuerwehr, security and gate if no kiez volunteers to do gate?
- lights ==> can become an art grant?
- tools ==> how sustainable is it to keep supplying all the tools for the camps? Yet, we do now have all these tools... Could a Kiez adopt this?

event-critical roles?

  • power ==> do we still want to do this? It has a lot of dependencies on other roles (art grants, site planning, getting in touch with camps,...) And what if nobody volunteers to do this?
  • Finances ==> how much can we outsource?
  • First aid ==> could be outsourced to the Feuerwehr, but they do not speak English
  • Legal ==> what if nobody volunteers for organizing the material insurance? Also need to liaise with local Amt around event permit etc.
  • Water ==> is this critical? How critical? And what if nobody volunteers?
  • Toilets ==> how good is it to outsource this like we did in 2018?
  • Firemen & Security ==> super event-critical
  • Tools ==> we need people to fill the admin/setup and improvement for our communication & management tools (dreams, loomio etc.)
  • Communication ==> given that much more is self-organized, we will need even stronger communication leads. However, this has always been a weak point for us. ==> this is about people taking care of outward communication on external platforms like Facebook, newsletters - as well as on our own tools
  • rangers/wonderers ==> in how far is the current way of doing things limiting us? Compared to the Borderland clown police, which have a much more hands-off way of dealing with issues, we still try to "control" a lot, how much can we "let go" and let the community self-carry?
  • tickets
  • Freiland liaison: at least to some extend we need to coordinate and align with Freiland on what happens how
  • LNT & strike: what is our responsibility here to absolutely make it happen? Or is this something the community can potentially carry without "central" push?

Meetings

Real-life meetings are crucial to oil the people-machine. What kind of meeting schedule do we envision?

Who does what and how?

There are so many dependencies between all the roles. This means that we need a lot of transparency on:
- who does what, so people can contact each other in case of issues or questions
- what the depencies are between the different roles
- we need to be able to identify weak spots, where there might be communication to the community needed for a shout-out for help.
==> given the different way people go about doing things (online/offline task-oriented/relation-oriented ...), a tool that can help with this, is a fascinating topic
==> Should we differentiate between roles that are "crucial" and the ones that are "not crucial" or does everything go in one pot?

RS

Remy Schneider Mon 29 Oct 2018 6:36PM

I had a comment regarding "failure" - I think that one of the things that the board can help shape in regards to allowing things to fail is to create some type of environment for testing and collaboration - this is more on the tools side, but could be a foundational pillar of what we encourage. We can also poll the community, to see how people feel about the structures we carry - perhaps holding meetings with specific "30 minute topics" as well as general assemblies (online or in person before meetings) would allow those who are interested to voice opinions and take ownership over areas that might fail if they aren't taken over.

H

Henrik Tue 30 Oct 2018 1:13PM

What kind of environment do you have in mind? You mean like a real world "test event"? Or are you talking about an online environment tool where people can test how well they communicate / collaborate?

RS

Remy Schneider Mon 29 Oct 2018 6:38PM

An additional area that might be important (and perhaps a role for a board member - maybe not) is transparency in what we are doing. Trying not to hold back about things that are challenging, could fail, are going strong, accomplishments, etc. Not sure how to make this happen, but it's a close topic to decentralization, and not something I think e.g., Borderland or any other burn does particularly well.

H

Henrik Tue 30 Oct 2018 1:04PM

Agreed. A person dedicated to make sure that what happens inside is visible internally and externally not only would create connection between the members but also enable us to learn from one another.

W

waldo Fri 2 Nov 2018 3:14PM

This is the borderland post-mortem: https://docs.google.com/document/d/131vyylN_aziM0OXLahJXv2jCSeVD3zvV_OG7clpD43I/edit#

This is a potentially vital thing we should also do. The goal for this, would be to assure we can be open to new people joining. Unless we can give a clear briefing on:
- what are the tasks associated with the role
- who they can ask for help, and who they would need to work together with
- what the broad timeline & deadlines are

It is very hard for newcomers or people that have never done the role before, to effectively take up the role and make it their own.

JT

Jan Thomas Sat 3 Nov 2018 10:01AM

That's really useful - I think we should use their question structure for our "map" of tasks!

W

waldo Sun 4 Nov 2018 6:58PM

Allright, I made a copy of it and made it more "Kiez Burn". Who would like to volunteer to prepare this and send it out to all the leads of 2018, so we are ready to hand it off for 2019 to future leads? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BThHB0bV4TN1cc8qpZKjO8S4KVEwJjQ01_KO4y4h994/edit#