Ty, Kathe. Proposed: Let's make this entire thread for Meeting Minutes. Then, each post is only for the minutes of a particular meeting. There would not be an entire new thread for minutes.

@Caitlin Waddick, CaitlinWaddickSocial.Coop Yep! I would call this a clarifying question. The meeting agenda, notes, and recap for this specific meeting will be all on one thread!

I think we may want to take care of some of the items in the original OC proposal, for example: Roles

1. There will be four positions on the OC, elected by the OC

   1. Coordinator (coordinates the circle, prepares agendas, sends announcements, etc.)

   2. Membership Coordinator (maintains membership list, coordinates onboarding)

   3. Treasurer (keeps and shares financial information)

   4. Communications Coordinator (keeps and shares records)

• Compensation

  1. OC members will receive a stipend for attending OC meetings, the amount to be determined by vote of the membership

  2. OC members with designated roles (coordinator, membership coordinator, treasurer, communications coordinator) will receive an additional stipend for work out of meetings, the amount to be determined by vote of the membership

• OC decision-making process

  1. The OC members and WGs will choose which type of decision-making process to use, for example sociocracy

@Matt Noyes Are these contributions to the existing exploration item on the agenda or suggestions for new items?

Seems like they could all fall under the exploration item.

Notes

• 1300 [5 min] 

  • Who is here? (Caitlin W, Eduardo M, Marie VC, Matt N, Kathe TB) (not here: Eduardo Flancian and John A.) 

  • Does anyone need to leave early? 

  • Confirm our next call on 13 Feb. Review recap from last call;  anything critical that needs to be added to the recap? https://www.loomio.com/d/iobhRrMZ/oc-meetings-thread-when-and-how-to-meet-/33 (see pinned recap)

  • Who is notetaking? -Caitlin

  • Who is facilitating? - Kathe

• 1305 [15 min] Check in: How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://www.nycnvc.org/feelings]

  • How do you feel about your name? Is there a story about your name?

----Start recording now-----

• 1320 [30 min] Exploration: What needs to go into a governance document? What does social.coop already have (officially and unofficially)? Do you have examples for us to review?

  • Marie: To be transparent about when a decision is taken. The wiki is useful for a description for how to make proposal. 

•  chttps://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Make_a_proposal (for example)

• Matt: Likes pinning to come back to things. You can use Loomio to put a date into a intended, future decision and it will prompt you. Likes "good enough for now, safe enough to try" 

  • Kathe: Likes sociocracy. Likes clear phases for sessions. We need to be clear about how we will use feedback, when we ask for it. Terms and decisions are important.  Toolstack: a discussion thread that is combined with wiki. "findability" of conversatons. Link Loomio thread with a policy decision. Transparency in how a decision was made and highlighting how a member can contribute to such decisions. 

  • Eduardo M: Context should be linked: The Organizing Circle was created with objectives. ... Let's formalize the process to involve people: An Agreements Circle doesn't design on its own; rather, it gathers ideas from others and writes them up. 

  • Do we want to create a place that is official where we make an account in our microblogging platform of the organizing circle to formalize communications? If there is something to do for the members, add a clear CTA? 

  • Caitlin: Membership engagement and transparency. Involving members, how to fight 'negative suspicion' w/ OC, reaching observers.

  • Marie: Agrees with Eduardo M about having a place to publish and find information. Wiki is useful to people who are not members. Agrees with Caitlin: we can communicate well about the process, then members who are not part of the organizing circle, then they can feel involved becuase they ill know when the right toime is to give feedback and advice. 

  • Matt: Organizing Circle members can have admin priviledges on Mastodon. Watch out for 2-factor authentication.  TASK: Matt will give us permissions.  ... In the proposal, an example was given of a deiciosn-making matrix, but we don't have to use it. Our by-laws say that under governance, all we have is that anyone can make a proposal. Matt: he would put the OC with the Working Groups. OC is "meta" in that it coordinates working groups. Are we another working group/just another circle? He sees us as similar to other cirlces/working groups. 

  • Kathe: Themes of discussion: Transparency and Membership Engagement. ... Two forms of governance: how we govern the OC and how the OC governs Social.Coop. How are we/OC like a traditional sociocracy circle? 

  • We might think about a stewardship or Mission Circle. 

  • A more formal overall governance structure for Social.Coop could be appropriate. 

  • Eduardo: Opportunities for member involvement should have a clear call to action. There should be an open poll to know member opinions. What is the most simple way that people know that there is a call-to-action?  ... Triad/federated wiki: what is the middle point? the stream/Mastodon... middle is Loomio .. do we have a platform for document writing? > our wiki. 

  • Caitlin: reasonable expectations for selves in terms of reporting out what we are up to, clear calls to action... when calls to action close, what happens? need a clear process. Wikis are notorious for being  out of date. Need to be realistic about what we can do. Finance working group is very new and informal, post minutes, looking for guidance from OC about decision-making process for FWG. Money always a sensitive issue. Vastly underbudgeted -- need to decide how to steward our resources... Equity is key. 

  • Eduardo: how do we have an account in the wiki? Is it a separate account? We should all have an account. You should be able to sign up for a wiki account but we will follow up on that.

  • Matt: it is helpful to distinguish OC internal governance versus overall governance, that is, how OC relates to overall governance. 

• 1350 [15 min] Formulation: Based on the above discussion, can we come up with the criteria of what we want a governance policy to address for social.coop and this circle?  

  • Value centric: What values do we want to call in?: transparency and engagement as 2 themes. Also, Simplicity (easy, usability, accessible, Universal Design principle). Equity. Tractability/Realistic (in our self-expectations for what we can do. KISS-Keep It Simple Sweetie).   

  • What do we already have on the wiki for how we govern? (https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Governance)

  • Eduardo loves wikis. Wiki is platform to collaborate edit documents (or notes or pages... "notes" in hypertext theroy). Intead of documents listed in directors, ... you can still have an index to express structure... Better: documents ("notes") can show process. And, we can use tags, such as "Governance" tag. We can write a first approach to governance.(i.e. What is important? what we do and don't like.) We can stable documents (approved document with a link to meeting minutes) or documents that are drafts ().

  • Social.coop - 

  • OC - 

  • We want wiki documents to provide a clear decision-making structure. For Working Groups, let's identify the domains for decision-making, their aims, metrics for success.  

• We want to put some criteria... How to balance hearing everyone and listening to minority voices: 

  • We want to share the vocal minority. 

  • EXAMPLE of how any member can make a proposal: proposal about participating in an EU research proposal. ... How do we/OC organize so that members know that members don't have to work through us/the OC? 

  • EXAMPLE: what if there was a member proposal that passed by member majority to do something outrageous ... what is the relationship to the OC? Anyone can take a position. ... The General Circle catches everything that falls through the cracks.  

• 1405 [10 min] Decision: Can we post these criteria to Loomio for feedback and then synthesize the result for a decision next time?

  • Interim Decision: We will use Sociocracy practices for making decisions: "Good enough for now, Safe enough to try" informed consent, talking in rounds.

  • TO-DO/TASK/ACTION: Kathe will summarize for people on Loomio about how we are examining these values to put them into practice. 

• 1415 [5 min] Decision: What ToDo itmes can we tackle between now and next call and who is doing it?

  • Kathe will make a Loomio thread on governance for social.coop

  • Matt give admin permissions for Mastodon to OC members...

  • Matt: check in with OC people who were not here

  • Matt: can we set up Meet.coop account for OC?

  • Catlin & Eduardo Create a calendar item for reoccuring meeting

    • need MayFirst account -> Trying to figure this out

  • Finding who is in charge/have permissions on the Wiki (ask Flancian? > Marie will ask to Flancian)

  • Accounts: 

    • in our microblogging, per OC. 

    • in wiki, per OC person

    • in MayFirst, per Social.coop

• 1420 [10 min] Feedback: 

  • What worked well with this call and what could be improved? 

  • OR Is there a process piece that you don't understand? Is there a process piece that you wish you could change?

  • We are in agreeemnt that we feel good about how it is going. 

  • Grateful for Kathe's facilation. We want to rotate facilitation, but not too soon! 

  • How to train ourselves in process and sociocracy? Kathe wants to teach us! 

Recap

We identified the need for two levels of governance: one for social.coop and a second for the Organizational Circle. Governance needs to address how decisions are made and what processes support this. We want to center the following values in our governance: transparency, engagement, equity, and simplicity. An identified tension is how to deal listen to individual concerns while hearing feedback from everyone. A question is what decisions are made in Loomio threads vs in working groups or circles (ie recent discussion around involvement in a research project https://www.loomio.com/d/2bIqy6FW/proposal-to-participate-in-eu-research-project vs a theoretical proposal to redistribute surplus budget direct to members).

Many folks in the Organizing Circle are familiar with sociocracy (https://www.sociocracyforall.org/) and will probably land on something similar to this structure. General tag lines for sociocracy are

• Good enough for now, safe enough to try.

• Those who do, decide.

We had lots of discussion around possible tech stacks including: Loomio threads for agenda/recaps supported by Wiki for documentation of termed policy. A challenge would be to ensure we revisit policies in a timely way.

In the Organizing Circle we are going to loosely adapt a consent decision model. Kathe (me!) noted that she is getting training certification and could offer trianing if folks are interested in the future. Folks were generally enthusiastic about the agenda construction, facilitation, and timeliness of the meetings to date.

Question to the general group: We seem to be outgrowing direct decision with Loomio and need a bit more structure. What else should we consider in designing the governance document for social.coop?

Link back to agenda and notes thread: https://www.loomio.com/d/zI1q0w95/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-january-30-tuesday-1300utc

Link to recording https://bbb.de.meet.coop/presentation/9977760a2103164c3aae50111805f343809d01aa-1706619228586/meeting.mp4

Many apologies! I clicked the link and went to a page that said "Unauthorized - Session not found" and I assumed that it was an error in my diary. At the moment I have an Organizing Circle entry in my diary every two weeks on Tuesdays. Is that correct?

@John Allsopp You were missed! Yes it should be every other Tuesday and we moved the times to 1300 UTC. The next meeting agenda is here: https://www.loomio.com/d/lHKSa7uA/organizing-circle-meeting-2024-13-february-tuesday-1300utc Hope to see you in two weeks!

@John Allsopp FYI I just added the recording to the recap