2019-05-27 Toronto Workers Co-op: All-Hands

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Time: Mon, May 27 @ 18:00 - 20:00 EDT
Location: https://meet.jit.si/offline
Attending:

• dc (cultivator in absentia)
• benedict (cultivator)
• udit
• elon
• garry
• patcon

Notetaker:

• dc

Agenda

• Previous Action Items
  • patcon: review and feedback on working open statement for submission to handbook
  • all: collect examples for handbook toolchain discussion
  • patcon: setup google drive
  • elon: migrate services from .club/.dog to .coop domain (loomio / jitsi name / experimental services (pw))
    • infraops: what to do with link.hypha.club/drive and http://pass.hypha.systems
  • all: review business plan in google docs
• Runthrough Announcements and Updates (add below)
• Quick Working Group Updates (10 mins)
  • Business Planning
  • Finance
  • Governance
  • Infra & Ops
• Discussion: Review business plan and Y1 strategic/financial plan. Key points:
  1. General reflections
  2. Competitive positioning (Do activity) and Offerings
  3. Sweat Equity
     • how does this equity accrue and how is tracked?
       • DC: We agreed at an all hands to track our own hours in the coop, are people doing this?
     • is there a compensation scheme in place for sweat equity when funds are available in the future?
       • DC: Fourth Pig example for handling this -✂-✂- NEXT MEETING -✂-✂-
  4. Membership
     • Member classes
     • Member fees
     • Relationship between employee and member, founding members
       • DC: From Fourth Pig, this can be more straightforward than thought. Recommend ALL sign articles of incorporation b/c benefits without obligations, but just the subset who indicated interest sign on as Directors of the Board.
  5. Projects: Pricing and Leads
     • Leads and opportunities
     • Project pricing
     • Discuss alongside “first project” examples: Aether; Udit; Consulting (Patcon’s)
  6. Compensation
     • Relationship of “billable” and “non-billable” work and compensation
     • Wage (Living Wage, Guaranteed Income)
  7. Financal Plan
     • Y1 operating costs
     • Projected income (profit-loss) statement
  8. Strategic Plan (lite)
  9. Review/walkthrough Articles of Incorporation

Announcements

• ben is remote in SF from June to August 6
• potential lead in link.hypha.club for working with Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centre, and they are finishing year of research, and looking build. Likely sharing that research June 26 hacknight. Might be nice for members to attend and support
• potential collab with aether
• alanna re: co-op; offered thoughts on “livelihood pods” from her tech co-op experience. see: link.hypha.club/interviews

Notes

Quick Working Group Updates

• Business Planning
  • working on document, more discussions later
  • Wed 1-5:30 pm in-person wg session: ben, dcwalk, patcon (remote)
    • evening: garry, udit, patcon (?remote)
  • ben: how do we get input on biz plan re: questions that need broader consultation
    • loomio and google doc comments
• Finance
  • no updates
• Governance
  • Fourth Pig interview (see notes)
  • ben: can they connect us with an accountant in the sector?
  • follow-ups: grants (Reba), accountant, wave accounting
• Infra & Ops
  • started moving pass to .coop
  • looked into vision board thing

Business Plan Discussions

1. General reflections

• Test assumptions through first project
• Things about compensation will probably get a lot of changes
• Financial projection for Y1 (what is the worst possible?) we need that, and cost of dissolution

2. Competitive positioning and Offerings

• Activity
  • Metrics for how we position ourselves: market/mission-driven; design/development
  • Are the axes appropriate?
    • gi: implementation / strategy more helpful than current
• Check-in on offerings (quick!)
  • Question of whether “infrastructure management” should be included
    • doing infra stuff in the first year difficult (so many unknowns)
  • Offerings look good to everyone broadly
  • Perhaps takeaway is that we need to think about ongoing support
  • Is this more of an ongoing relationship
  • Agreed: We will not do infra management model as initial project

3. Sweat Equity

• how does this equity accrue and how is tracked? - DC: We agreed at an all hands to track our own hours in the coop, are people doing this? - seems like only dawn and patcon - difficulty for some folks in tracking hours
• is there a compensation scheme in place for sweat equity when funds are available in the future? - DC: Fourth Pig example for handling this: initial committment to pay for it, first surplus (years later), looked at all hours, one member made proposal for amount to repay (wound up as pennies on the dollar of current hourly rate) that all consensed with.
• alternatives to tracking hours? (more particularly for sweat equity?)
  • gi: adament about tracking per-project hours
  • y: two approaches: time-/project- v. salaried (calc some percentage). difficult to time-based tracking: hard to task switch
  • b: time percentage based on participating in working group? budget for time, specific tasks
  • u: seems like time remains the underlying metric
• maybe the point, tracking at a level of specificity to help understand activities (e.g., figuring out roles and rates)
• what time:
  • general time
  • project time (dc: strongly thinks this should be kept seperate at first )
• track generally to hourly precision

Consensed: all present agreed to the following sweat equity approach:

• goal: future compensation consensed upon at a later date
• track sweat equity during setup to an hourly level precision
• personally track (no shared tool)
• best judgement about hours spent back to the beginning (Augustish 2018)
• continue until superseded by an agreed upon compensation structure

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