2019-05-08 Toronto Workers Co-op: All-Hands Meeting

from template

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Time: 17:00 - 18:00 EDT
Location: https://meet.jit.si/offline
Attending:

dc
yurko
patcon
garry
elon
udit (cultivator)

Notetaker:

benedict
[~] dc
[~] elon
garry
patcon
udit
yurko

[TOC]

Agenda

Previous Action Items
- ben/finances wg: submit proposal for CU on next call
- governance wg: move forward in articles of incorporation thread
- ~~patcon~~ dcwalk: scaffold out business plan in gdocs
- governance wg: start drafting written articles
- everyone: read dc’s proposal
- patcon/udit: review and feedback on working open statement for submission to handbook
- All: collect examples for handbook toolchain discussion
- ??: transfer members@ to .coop domain
Quick Working Group Updates (10 mins)
Discussions
- Opportunities and Proposals
  - dc: pitch collaboration as part of her dissertation work (done last time - any more discussions required?): https://hackmd.io/kLoRWrsnQAGg29pVtZvYSQ?view dc: timeline on discussion could comfortably wait until June, July
- Transition of Infrastructure (and Cleanup)
  - cleanup: GitHub “december-retreat”, reading pool
  - decision: google drive and opportunities sheet
  - decision: internal domain
  - decision: chat rooms
  - decision: using shortlinks in official way
- Check-in on Cultivator role
- Check-in on note-taking software
  - +template change? “Announcements,” “Standing Items (e.g., opportunities, project check-in)” section
- Design Jam scheduling [time sensitive]
- Finances banking and software
- early-MAY Review business plan and Y1 strategic/financial plan
- mid-MAY Articles of Incorporation
- Net-Centric Resources call summary (patcon)
  - https://hackmd.io/s/HJYr2jnc4

Announcements

Ben absent for the next few calls
Udit will be absent for call on May 22 and unavailable June to mid-July
Net-Centric Resources call recap (patcon)

Notes

Starting with the Agenda
Handbook discussion:
- Item for the future
- Not time-sensitive (small scale)
- Upcoming discussion

Working group updates

Business Planning
- Biz plan to be shared in general in upcoming meeting
  - draft
- Already/always a public document
Finance
- Double-back later
Governance
- Loomio tidying
- Call with Fourth Pig coming up
- Montreal non-profit coop called Koubit
  - patcon will be in Montreal mid-June
- Process: Loomio thread for convo. Interview notes are in Google Drive Sheet, with notes to be published on GitHub.
Infra & Ops
- To be resolved: Domain question (internal vs external) (deferred to later convo)
- Finances:
  - Consensed: Desjardins has everything we need
  - Switch if need to in the future
  - “We think that Desjadins is the Credit Union we will work with as our main financial services provider”

Discussions

dc’s proposal:
- https://hackmd.io/kLoRWrsnQAGg29pVtZvYSQ
  - Just a template/speculation. Intention of a research plan (Share discussion at some point)
- “Final” version of thesis proposal for Friday, May 10
  - Can share then, but please do not to publicly distribute. Must defend first (May 31), and there could be revisions.
- Timeline:
  - Ideal: ramp up in August, beginning of September
  - Not a near-term issue
  - Not to leave it to end of August
  - Check-in over time
- Articles of incorporation has higher priority
- Share final version as a next step
  - End of May to pick up convo
- patcon: how to participate and study?
  - dc: type of approach symbolic interactionist tradition of participant observation
  - Literature on bounds between participant and observer
  - Resources: Spectrum of participatory vs observer
December retreat clean up (reading pool)
- This was done, review and merge of PR happened
- Moving reading pool to handbook
- Look at the handbook for other coop resources
Decision: Google Drive opportunities
- Basic CRM of opportunities and people to talk to, but based on our Working Open Statement that should be open to members, not-open to the world
- Loomio poll with proposal to change to explicit permission
  - patcon counter-proposal: have public one with a private directory. nested folders/docs with permissions
    - view-only top-level possible?
    - upper-level most restricted
    - Two folders: Public, Private
- Google Drive a staging area:
  - Where docs go after Google Drive (staging area)?
  - patcon: potentially not a staging area with the CRM consideration
  - Temporality of staging (week, year, 2 years?)
  - Premature optimization?
  - e.g. Keybase, hosted Nextcloud
    - Hosted by other services? e.g. finances
  - For later discussion:
    - Long term Nextcloud might be a good idea
      - Service we could offer to others
  - Okay for using Google Drive as temporary/long-term location
  - Consensed in check-in (vote) to set up public/private nested Google Drive structure
- Is this duplicating work (is it a sustainable method)?
  - Separate docs
  - EDGI: 2 years scaling with minimal issues
- #todo: patcon to try out proposed structure to see if top-level is world viewable (permissions)
- Placing GitHub:
  - dc: Everything in Google Drive remains unprivileged
  - New structure moving forward
Internal/External Domain
- Reviewed hypha.club loomio vote outcome
- Check-in: Prefer 2 domains vs 1?
  - 1 for having 2 domains
  - 0/-1 for not
- Something interesting with having 2 domains
  - dc: no strong feelings about where services are hosted now, but think they offer something!
- patcon: labs.hypha.coop offers that as well? (learnings from civic tech)
- For our immediate use cases two or one domain:
  - No strong feelings
  - people lose things
    - moving between internal and external (dead link scenarios)
- Question (auctioneer-style): Are people wanting to use .club for anything?
  - dc: summer street festivals (schemes) – August timeline
- #todo: Migrate services on .coop (moving forward)
Matrix Chat Rooms
- Renaming and creating a public room
- Naming conventions for #hypha-*:tomesh.net
- ben: looking to resolve channeling conventions in this call
- Rename of the chat channel:
  - patcon proposal: #hypha-public, #hypha-internal (considering naming)
  - Naming indicates other contexts of public/private
  - yurko: just #hyphacoop for public?
    - patcon: *-public to clarify and signal (reminder for people)
    - Mitigate confusion of posting in wrong/off-topic places
- Public channel:
  - What’s our rule of thumb? Low stakes atm
- Consensed to make two channels, one public and one internal
- #todo patcon: Rename channel to patcon’s proposal
Design Jam Scheduling
- dc: proposed 3 times for meeting up for branding look-and-feel jam (when2meet)
  - Saturdays works better generally
  - Exception for garry on May 25 (content moderation symposium)
- In-person ideally
- Everyone look at the when2meet now (First time is this Saturday, May 11)
- Looking for location suggestions
  - Toronto Reference Library (TCAF on Saturday)
  - On-campus
- #todo: dc to follow-up on scheduling brand jam session (aiming for tonight)
Cultivator Role (Late May-June)
- Remainder of May + first week of June
  - Assigned to patcon
- udit M.I.A. for most of June
- cultivator for rest of May: dc
- cultivator for June: patcon
dc: happy to cultivate, but mostly unavailable June-July
Announcements section would be nice to have in Agenda

Follow Up

Actionable Items

patcon: review and feedback on working open statement for submission to handbook
all: collect examples for handbook toolchain discussion
dc: cultivate May
patcon: cultivate June
patcon: setup google drive
dc: schedule design jam THU
infraops: rename chat channel name
infraops: migrate services from .club/.dog to .coop domain

Upcoming Discussions

early-MAY Review business plan and Y1 strategic/financial plan
mid-MAY Articles of Incorporation
Check-in on note-taking software
- +template change? “Announcements,” “Standing Items (e.g., opportunities, project check-in)” section
Opportunities and Proposals
- Hosting our own cloud (e.g., Nextcloud instance) for others too
Check-in on Transition of Infrastructure (and Cleanup)
- decision: using shortlinks in official way
end-MAY Check-in dc’s research/study proposal
beginning-JUN Finances software

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