Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC Thu 24 Apr 2025 2:12PM

In New York City, East Coast USA, today, 1500 UTC is 11 AM. Right?

Matt Noyes Thu 24 Apr 2025 2:13PM

Yep

Kathe TB Thu 24 Apr 2025 2:13PM

Agenda

1500 [15 min] 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/]
Where are your roots? What place or people or beings ground you?

1515 [5 min] ADMIN:

Who is here?
Does anyone need to leave early?
Confirm our next call on May 8 1500 UTC
Who is note taking?
Who is facilitating? Does someone want to practice one or two topics?

1520 [5 min] Inform and Decide Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/X03D5ONF/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-10-april-thursday-1500-utc/3

1520 [10 min] Updates from working circles (We haven't had a full update in a few weeks, bumping this up the priority)

Finance
Tech
Community
Legal - defunct

1530 [20 min] Scoping: What are Big Conversations?

Context: We need to have clearer lines of communication between the working groups and general membership of social.coop both (Loomio and Mastodon users). We want this to facilitate feedback on current operations and spark new directions for the coop. (link to full topic https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf)

Successful Big Conversations will include: 1) Scoping opportunities, we have some topics from our group and will also need to solicit topics from membership. 2) Hear and consider multiple prospectives from the membership and communicate that listening. 3) Span multiple modalities including synchronous and asynchronous. 4) Compassionate and active listening where emotions are valued and respected, leaving people feeling heard and seen. 5) Increase active participation across social.coop governance.

Unsuccessful Big Conversations would look like: 1) People leaving the coop because they feel disrespected or harmed. 2) Active working group members stepping back because of burnout from moderating or facilitating the discussions. 3) People undermining or sidetracking discussion.

Round: What are your first reactions?
Round: What is good about this draft?
Round: What needs to change?

Round: Can we draft a scope and consent to it?

15:50 [5 min] Scoping: What is our budget report?

Update on Kathe's analysis

Round: What questions are coming up for you that you want answered?

Round: What else do you need to give FWG budget priorities?

15:55 [15 min] Scoping: What do we want in an equity report?

Solo: Review the description of an equity report: https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf

Round: What are our curious questions?

Round: What would we like to see in an equity report?

1610 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

Call a round to check in with people

1615 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

1620 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

Matt Noyes Thu 24 Apr 2025 4:31PM

Notes

1500 [15 min] 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/]

Where are your roots? What place or people or beings ground you

1515 [5 min] ADMIN:

Who is here? Caitlin, Ammar, Kathe, Flan, Marie, Matt,

Does anyone need to leave early?

Marie (1600 UTC)

Flan same

Confirm our next call on May 8 1500 UTC

Eduardo Mercovic facilitate

Kathe might not be able to make it

Flancian neither but TBD

Marie out next week afterwards Thrusday is usually working

Flancian: https://crab.fit/social-coop-organizing-circle-554317 -- can expand as needed

Matt after 20h UTC (but no availability on Weds)

CWG members are ready to swap in, Matt could come back in Fall

Dan and Hollie have expressed interest @dphiffer @hollie

Caitlin (On May 8th, I may be driving from Vermont to Montreal, but I don't know what time)

Ammar good with W/Th at current time

Kathe good with Thurs, could move to Weds if necesary

Who is note taking? Matt

Who is facilitating? Does someone want to practice one or two topics

1520 [5 min] Inform and Decide Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/X03D5ONF/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-10-april-thursday-1500-utc/3

1520 [10 min] Updates from working circles

Finance

Nathan leaving. remaining members: Caitlin, Andrew (aka Andres), Josh.

Need a meeting

Metagov path for submitting expenses is no longer working but we don't consider it a problem - OC process is working

Gift membership?

Others interested:

Alex @arod;

Kathe after end of OC at large term (Jan 2026)

Ammar interested in joining a meeting

Andrew doing (done?) accounts for 2024

Should we run a sortition process for FWG? -- talk about this next month

Tech

pando.social.coop -> new server hosted with a coop, finished setup recently, for development and testing

some alpha.social.coop progress again, but not ready to test yet. posted an update to https://www.loomio.com/d/C4HKmTOa/proposal-to-revisit-extending-the-character-limit-for-posts

good interactions with Andrew about streamlining paying for hosting

personally still trying to push for (re-)opening the question of how we communicate with other working groups and within the coop in general

need a coherent platform for comms

Matt: it could be good to have a dedicated session including screen sharing so we can evaluate different options (Matrix/Hylo/Git.coop/etc.)

Flan: edsu@ also volunteered to start a survey of options/what people around the coop wants

Community

Solid group that is committed and supportive of each other

Responding to issues in a timely manner

alternate person from CWG

moderation issue

related to https://www.loomio.com/d/cJL7Kg0k/we-need-to-have-a-conversation-about-deference-politics

would have been good to store copy of the post -- add this to procedure -- Matt ask Ops Team about this

feature request: mods add content warning

Legal - defunctish

1530 [20 min] Scoping: What are Big Conversations?

Context: We need to have clearer lines of communication between the working groups and general membership of social.coop both (Loomio and Mastodon users). We want this to facilitate feedback on current operations and spark new directions for the coop. (link to full topic https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf)

Successful Big Conversations will include: 1) Scoping opportunities, we have some topics from our group and will also need to solicit topics from membership. 2) Hear and consider multiple prospectives from the membership and communicate that listening. 3) Span multiple modalities including synchronous and asynchronous. 4) Compassionate and active listening where emotions are valued and respected, leaving people feeling heard and seen. 5) Increase active participation across social.coop governance.

Unsuccessful Big Conversations would look like: 1) People leaving the coop because they feel disrespected or harmed. 2) Active working group members stepping back because of burnout from moderating or facilitating the discussions. 3) People undermining or sidetracking discussion. 4) We only talked to people who are already active and engaged. 5) The conversation concludes but no action is taken afterwards.

Round: What are your first reactions?

Good, covers all, Nothing to change, Exciting.

Round: What is good about this draft?

--

Round: What needs to change?

About unsuccessful conversations: we could add "one which kept only a narrow group of people participating, didn't do enough to include others."

Conversations keep coming up again and again and is unresolvable because no root issues were addressed.

Round: Can we draft a scope and consent to it?

15:50 [5 min] Scoping: What is our budget report?

Update on Kathe's analysis

Round: What questions are coming up for you that you want answered?

Obliged/non-obliged, use this to think about reserves.

Maybe fee for service vs donation? Both under external

Dashboard? Kathe can create CSV version that others can use to create presentations, dashboards

Round: What else do you need to give FWG budget priorities?

-- What is the breakdowns of contributions by types? ... How many people are giving (annually) in each range, say, $0-10, $10-25, $25-50, $50-100, over $100?

-- Are we over-reliant on a a few big contributors?

-- What percentage of members (Active/inactive users) are "freeloaders" (non-contributors)?

-- how to combine membership figures from Loomio, Matrix, Mastodon, OC

-- how much labor from different working groups? (measured in hours per month? responsibilities? types of work/contributions of skill, management, other factors?) -- are we much cheaper (internal costs) than we should be?

15:55 [15 min] Scoping: What do we want in an equity report?

Summary from Caitlin

if we do a self assessment we can track over time.

Big part is reflection around ideas of power and authority

CWG could have insights into what questions to ask

Include positive successes and change pinch points