2020-12-01 Hypha <> Berlin Co-op

When? Tues, Dec 1 @ noon-1:30pm ET Who’s here?

• Hypha: ben, udit, yurko, elon, patcon
• Co-op curious: andreas/adz, lluna, sarah friend

Notes

• intros
  • ben. met through tomesh/civictech. now: boring stuff: finance. compost. aether reddit clone.
  • udit. met thru tomesh/civictech. consulting lately in hypha. data gov for startups.
  • lluna. INTERNET! met ben in benlin. comp sci. job hunting! maintaining web app.
  • yurko. hypha. tomesh+neighbors. computer programming in school. amateur networking and hardware. finance. FT job.
  • patcon. civictech. work with gov in alt procurement. coop development consultation and more generally.
  • sarah. #todo name co-op. dev collective in berlin. worked contractor for yr. feeling stress. hoping to mitigate thru unity.
  • adz. met ppl thru ournetworks, rmbs yurko. impressed with hypha github. bg in music. coding on the side always. work with sarah on circles. things getting serious maybe start a coop. art, p2p…
• pc: FACTTIC told us to start with pooled projects, as if no project is beneath you. hypha didn’t start with projects; mostly itself as project.
• how to work now
• sarah+adz have several clients. present unified interface to client. not presenting two freelancers negotiating.
• didn’t always strcuture internal processes well. making org might make us take them more seriously. e.g. regular PM updates. lack of internal coord.
• not looking into starting legal form rn.
• bl: internal processes DO help, despite challenge to build. +1 udit
• e.g., hiring new ppl. tax wise. paying. invoicing.
  • uv: costly to maintain processes. need to be wary of operational processes you create, bc need to keep up. often don’t lead to efficiencies you hope to create.
  • adz: if no structure, very efficient. maybe too efficient. burn-out. maybe structure will help to slow down?
• uv: questioned operations focus at first, but brought perspective to how i’m spending time.
• patcon: started with a heartbeat meeting (1/month? then 1 per 2wk? now weeking allhands/standup, rotates weekly)
• bl: meetings started inefficiently. unstructured. broke out WGs.
  • in some ways building parallel processes to sociocracy
• sf: what are working groups? what if over or under staffed?
  • https://meetings.hypha.coop/
• uv: if we’re building enough good tooling, we should be sharing.
  • bl: re: convo with mikey/ahdinosaur. Root Systems. failed co-op. organized into groups. tried to evolve products within co-op while doing contract work, and found that very difficult.
• bl: feels we should find interesting work that pays first.
• WGs: Business Planning, Finance, Governance (legal and bylaw), Infra (tooling), Operations (internal processes).
  • sf: not client projects listed.
  • operations: what are gaps? what are processes we need? what are practices to hire? etc.
• bl: learning around boundaries. e.g., operations+governance. infra+operations.
• bl: a few ppl who were in many groups. ben+patcon+dc.
  • trended toward much smaller groups.
• adz: template for projects? internal wiki? standardized?
  • bl: projects: client + internal.
  • internal = e.g., open collective
  • client = e.g., aether
• bl: how much interface there should be between projects and finance/etc.
• time-tracking: forced everyone to use same time-tracker.
  • worked on spreadsheet for tracking hours.
  • getting paid is responsibility of members
• #todo share finance template
• evertyone paid different monthly wage each month
• adz: co-op wide payment.
• 25% clip for members. inspired by root systems. have been told it’s a low percent.
  • was told higher % for contractors, but not really exercising this yet
  • 11%
• circles: everyone makes same per-hour amount. very diff relationships to amount of money they make every month.
  • “for some, highest rate ever; for some a pay cut”
• meet.coop = take model. each Q, say what you did, and group votes on approving the requested “take”
• sf: feedback processes?
• bl: two separate angles: conflict resolution and peer feedback.
  • conflict resolutions: direct, then mediated.
• operations: what is a good member? hard to hold accountability without defining
  • peer feedback: recognize importance, but hasn’t been priority.
  • draft OKRs. working on that process. have done one round. stalled. rebooting in Q1 2021.
• adz: new projects. new members starting. skill share?
  • uv: in weekly all-hands, we have dedicated time for all-hands. how project is going, key learnings, etc.
  • skill sharing is adhoc. feels like a gap.
  • helping ppl along their career path isn’t something we’ve really done
• uv: payment models. what could a progressive clip look like? adjusting based on how project is doing. coming up as choice we’ll have to make.
• adz: communication with customers/clients. also, how comm with open source communities.
  • mystery co-op challenge: everything in separate telegram groups, incl clients.
• bl: no open source communities to maintain.
  • but for ongoing tasks, we draft roles over time. e.g. finance. we should pay for these roles in future.
• uv: each client project has lot of liberty for how comms happen.
  • some clients: signal comms.
  • some projects: matrix.
• trialed various tools before: Hubspot. didn’t use it well enough, so just created github issues in private repo, labelled “Opportunity: ” early on.
  • was template for project proposal that was used a few time, though not used as much recently. meant to frame high-level
  • now seem to mostly use github issues
  • use HelloSign for contract drafting.
  • have folder of contract templates we’ve created
• sf: WG vs main group?
  • uv: not so bad w everything being in main group at first. good chance to socialize values.
  • now starting to punt lots of things to WG
  • report and not ask permissions much
• mystery co-op projects
  • both ethereum projects
  • Circles UBI
  • Culture Stake (furtherfield-run, quadratic currency for local art curation). collab with gallery. having artists is maybe like having community activists as clients. low money but high expectations.
    • org doesn’t know when asking something difficult (not as tech savvy)
    • sometimes building stuff that doesn’t have “reason”, but artistic statement or aesthetic. “is this really necessary?
  • art piece by sound artist. target 2023.
  • uv: sales process? rn looking for ppl more than work. budget for 3rd person, and no one to take it.
  • sf: goal writing grants.
• what do you want to be doing in several years with co-op
  • adz: inspo = furtherfield. politics and tech. p2p tech. less ethereum. more p2panda or SSB.
  • sf: work for money, not for fun. ideal = artist. don’t care about tech stack so much. projects that feel important, generative, add possibilities to world. motivated by content more than anything else. furtherfield: interested in processes to facilitating community decision-making.
• pc: proposal matrix room for unnamed co-op. sf: still deciding tools.

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