2019-12-18 Hypha Worker Co-op: Standup Meeting

Time: Wed, Dec 18, 2019 @ 5-5:45pm
Location: https://jitsi.hypha.coop/hyphacoop
Attending: pc, yj, el, uv, dc, bl, gi Cultivator: bl
Notetaker: dc Next up: bl, yj, uv, pc, gi, el, dc

Agenda

Standup (3 min/person)
1. What did you work on this past week?
2. What do you plan to work on this coming week?
3. What are your blockers?

Standup Notes

Person: Udit
- last:
  - Attend business planning wg meeting
  - Working on introduction deck for hypha, planning to ask folks for info in new year (bios, pictures)
- next:
  - Holiday!
- blockers:
  - No blockers rn
Person: Patcon
- last:
  - Payroll things, somewhat useless call with Wagepoint sales folks. Connected with onboarding specialist
  - Finance WG call, all comfortable with direction. On track for mid-Jan first payroll. Still some questions
  - Collecting financial information for folks
- next:
  - Holidays!
- blockers:
  - No blockers, distance between wanting to connect and ability to
Person: DC
- last:
  - Organizing repo wrap up
  - Year-end stuff
  - Called WSIB to research requirements
  - Set up governance 2020 meeting
- next:
  - Holiday!
  - One final thing for Hypha before eoy -> send that contract!
- blockers:
  - None
Person: Elon
- last:
  - Jitsi and documenting in wiki
  - Infra/ops wrap up meeting today
- next:
  - Integrating infra documentation with the handbook
- blockers:
  - No blockers
Person: Yurko
- last:
  - Infra/ops call
  - Finance WG prep for wrap up
  - Reclaimed phone number, put a pin on VOIP stuff in future. In maintenance with current setup going forward (reminder to keep pushing out)
- next:
  - Holidays!
  - Hosting the github mentions finding app somewhere
- blockers:
  - Holidays!
Person: Ben
- last:
  - Setting up Transferwise to allow for payment of (second) invoice. Some documentation needs to be updated
  - Project updates! Aether and distributed.press
  - Entered leads to CRM, discussion with business planning WG
- next:
  - Ensuring the money arrives from wire, then transfer into Desjardins account
  - Documentation
  - Holidays!
- blockers:
  - No blockers
Person: Garry
- last:
  - Not much
- next:
  - Following up in new year on branding
- blockers:
  - None (time)

Discussions

Voicemail SMS?
- Current provider doesn’t have it
- Looks like eventually porting to another carrier/service provider once we nail down requirements
- Holding off on it until we have a clearer picture
- Currently able to use YJ’s temporary number in meantime
Branding
- dc: I’m hoping we can have a minimum product that we are able to share. This feels like a priority. I was not expecting us to still be where we are end of 2019
- bl: see a priority
- pc: we can be thoughtful about communicating that to luisa
- bl: pitch deck / branding synchronization?
  - uv: will sync with garry
Cultivator for January until AGM
- most recent cultivators: Benedict, DC, Patcon, Yurko in Sep, Udit in Aug
- bl, dc, pc all volunteered
- JAN Udit
- FEB Patcon
- MAR DC
- APR Ben
- MAY AGM potentially

Year-end Summary

Business Planning
- Completed business plan
  - Researched current business landscape and competitors offering similar services
  - Brainstormed sales and engagement tactics
  - Prepared human resources plan including compensation, benefits, and vacation schemes
  - Developed first year strategic plan and financial forecast
- Formalizing business development practice
  - Selected and implemented a CRM
  - Collected current and future leads
  - Discussed project sales pipeline and organized CRM to our expected sales flow
  - Began to meet more regularly on business development tasks
  - Started to collect and develop business development collateral (eg. introduction deck, project case studies, team bios)
- Initiating development of Hypha’s brand
  - Held an initial jam session with broader Hypha
  - Ran preliminary values exploration session with Nomadic Labs
  - Started conversations with Nomadic labs to potentially partner with to help develop brand
Finance
- Researched on banks, credit unions, financial software, payroll systems
- Navigated the complicated regulations and systems for multi-currency invoicing across countries, bookkeeping as a non-profit worker co-operative, different types of Canadian taxes, employee payrolls and deductions, integration points and practices around financial software
- Tried to navigate methods of holding sensitive information.
- Set up accounts at Desjardins, TransferWise, QuickBooks, Wagepoint, CRA, and
- Migrated financial transactions from Google Sheets to Quickbooks and prepared Quickbooks to start doing business
- Had CRA accounts set up, agreed to retain accountant and have identified bookkeeper candidate
- Developed process for tracking billable and unbillable hours
- Hypha can accept payment as if we have a local account in Canada, US, EU, and UK
- Billed our first Canadian and American client
- Set up to run first payroll starting 2020
- Started running regular meetings
- Ensured compliance with HST & EHT expectations
- Create finance role
- Reviewed finances with bookkeeper
- Robust usage of time tracking
Governance
- Tracked organizational actions via task tracker
- Conducted “informational interviews” with other co-operatives
- Drafted and submitted articles of incorporation
  - Determined head office
  - Determined “incorporators” and “directors”
- Submitted initial return
- Developed co-operative resolution and signing process
- Ensured compliance with WSIB expectations
- Set up time for 2020 Q1 regular meetings and co-work session to work on:
  - Draft initial bylaws
  - Plan for initial General Meeting 2020 Q1
Infra & Ops
- Cataloguing the platforms we use via our inventory doc
- Supported task tracking through migration into GitHub Project system.
- Supporting communications by:
  - Managing email server for email routing, incl discussion lists
  - Hosting Jitsi Meet to improve call reliability
  - Tending to our Riot chat servers
  - Managing Riot’s “community”
- Assisting in decision-making via hosting Loomio
- Arranged for private repos via GitHub nonprofit account
- Acquired team hosting account on DigitalOcean
- Hosting passwords via Passbolt
- Hosting a chatbot for tedious tasks, e.g. archiving notes
- Supporting navigation of resources via shortlinks
- Supporting our outward facing persona via
  - Hosting our public-facing email
  - Managing our phone number
  - Hosting our website
  - Squatting social media namespaces
- Ran regular meetings
- Developed clear sense of purpose

Year-end Discussion and Reflection

Business Planning
- Business planning had a hard time meeting
- Biz. dev was more exciting beyond the (grind) of writing business plan
Finances
- Multi-currency challenging
- Exciting to have the books up and running, good state for year-end
- Exciting to have a resource to call on
- Glad for pivot to Wagepoint and patcon’s research on that
- Little too easy to think things are locked-in and decision paralysis
- No domain area expertise, more effective researh, better way to lean on expertise?
- Finding out yurko knew tons of bookkeeping
Governance
- Struggled with meeting, an issue with no standing time
- Split between operations and governance? e.g., effective meetings, etc…
Infra/Ops
- Straddles two areas which might diffuse
- Need to think about split of working group and tasks, what is relationship between governance, operations, and infra?
- Stuggles with meeting regularly and with purpose
- Long time getting to decision, want to reduce this in the new year
- Able to move fast on infrastructure, but slower pace on everything else
- A lot of moving into uncomfortable spaces
pc: Missing an understanding what a success would be, knowing what that would be in the next quarter. Getting goals and checking back on them
- Have: 2018 December retreat milestones
- Have: (light) Strategic Plan in Business Plan (until AGM)
- #todo uv: kick-off January call with goal-setting

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