Collective working groups formation

Good to discuss once we have the call this week.

I would like to resume the discussion about working groups and areas of interest. Just from collating requests & contacts I've had lately, these are the groups that currently come to mind:

• Financing- responsible for managing funding sources, grant applications, funds allocation & contributor payments.

• Partnerships- responsible for relationship building, consulting & tracking engagements.

• Marketing- responsible for storytelling, media relations, narrative cohesion & branding.

• Education- responsible for communications, training & bundling / packaging of solutions.

• Technologies- responsible for internal technology choices of the group as well as the coordination of development work.

• Protocols- responsible for interoperability efforts & technical inclusion with related projects.

• Inclusion- I think this needs to be integral, but also (at least to begin) needs to be held by those already holding relationships with marginalised (esp. Indigenous) folks. We are all at different stages in our decolonisation journeys and there is potential to do great harm if we engage under-prepared.

• Governance & ethics- feels like it could be an over-arching group topic; given that ideological foundations and ethics will underpin everything we do and affect us all.

If we can bring together at least 2 people on each topic, I think that may be signal enough to form up a working group to discuss the topic more. What does everyone think about this list of responsibilities as a first pass? Changes and additions welcome.

A quick general broadcast to the group-

I think we can bookmark this thread for January some time and all take a moment to relax and reflect on the whirlwind of a year just gone. It's been communicated that more or less all of those who have been invited are interested in being a part of this creation; and that is probably enough for now.

I propose setting a vague date for a group call some time late in January to sync up and talk about what we've started and what we want it to be. In the meantime, it looks like we have buy-in to the idea of sharing our notes so far with trusted peers who might be interested in getting more involved as things progress.

Another next step to add to the discussion topics for next time we meet (:

Ah - noticed that I was still an "invited" member. I looked through my inbox to click on any invites. Found one that seems to have upgraded me to full member? @Jean Russell you may need to do the same.

It may be related to using the google login feature. Let me know if I show up now - I added a password.

You'll see it when you create a thread or poll and try to invite "members of Economikit". Yourselves don't seem to be provided as part of that list.

Hmm. Seems to be working for me using my noah@comakery.com account.

@Ferananda Ibarra is in this category too. Will fix later. Hi, Fer! 🤗

@Jean Russell & @Noah Thorp's accounts both seem to be a bit broken at the moment. I just cancelled both your invites and recreated them, but I think the issue is much more likely to be that the email addresses I'm inviting you by are not the ones linked to your Loomio accounts.

If it's easiest, let me know what the correct addresses are by some means (here or email if you prefer) and I will add those accounts. Then hopefully you both end up getting treated as members of the group and are not forgotten in assigning people to threads!

Yes please! I love that idea and was thinking of formalising something similar.

Roles make sense. I think we need working groups and a cadence for checkins. Probably small bi-weekly 15 min working group Standup’s and a big monthly facilitated group retro with next steps would be a good format? If there’s some support here I’ll make a new proposal to hash out the format.

Also, I'm currently enrolled in Seth Godin's The Marketing Seminar. It's a three month program that has changed the way I look at messaging, branding, positioning, communicating with groups.

Well, I'm not going to dictate to you (or anyone else) what I think you should do... it's up to you to decide your level of involvement! (;

I'm curious to hear from yourself and others what the governance / strategy aspects of these goals are. @Tom has some projects in the works that are essentially saying, "if you want to receive funding from this incubator then you need to use REA accounting so that we can track your performance with high fidelity". So I think there are some lightweight constraints and protocols to sketch out. But I think most of the actual "how do we track things" implementation will be technical rather than social. Could also branch out into roadmaps and which tools we prioritise the development of.

I like the collaboration, communication and coordination framing. I suggest adding compensation :)

"Maybe Amanda's only involvement needs to be as an anonymous viewer so that she can keep tabs on the narratives we're weaving here." @pospi Happy to be engage in whatever level you see fit. My interest is tied to seeing how we can support this effort to understand what is required to help projects sustain and maintain. At an ecosystem level, I'm interested in how we can successfully track efforts, flows, and increase collaboration with other projects. On a personal level, I'm observing how this project could be a good case study in terms of collaboration/communication/coordination.

Given my current commitment levels and other projects going on, my realistic involvement level looks like this:

• Responding to prompts from others in Loomio & Gitbook to keep the process moving; mostly in an asynchronous "trying to keep all the plates spinning" manner until such time as I feel I can let go of certain topics; and

• Dedicating slices of time to work with a particular purpose or outcome (eg. creating content to address a particular governance concern), and working on those in sprints maintaining regular contact with others involved.