Process minutes: 2010-03-09

Agenda:

Process Cmtee meeting
3/9/2010
7-8:30pm, unit 18

AGENDA:
(Didn't do checkins and monkey review since we were meeting with Infoco to
start.)
1. Met with Infoco about next season's work
2. Met with CRC about next season's work, and a couple of (non confidential)
CRC items
3. Reviewed rest of Process jobs for next work season
4. Process revised mandate
5. Tweaked Alternative meeting proposal
6. Next meeting

Present:
Gail, Patti, Vincent, Jillian, plus Infoco for the first part (AmyH, Mary,
JimG, Alicia, Malcolm, and Langston) and CRC for the second part (Alex,
Susan, Alicia)

--

MONKEYS from this meeting (ongoing monkeys are at the end of the minutes)

Re-MONKEY: Jillian will make a few more tweaks to the revised Process
Mandate

Re-MONKEY: Vincent will do some tweaking of the Alternative Meeting proposal

MONKEY: CRC will work on developing an agenda item that would help build
personal connections among GOers.

MONKEY: Alicia and Sarah will work on finding an outside presenter (social
worker?) and schedule times for conversations of interested people. Process
and CRC are resources for support.

MONKEY: Jillian will review Dale's email about how to submit work changes
and preassignments and will email them in by Friday

Minutes:

1. Process met with Infoco about next season's Infoco work. Notes from that
in the jobs section below.

------

2. CRC check-in

[Process asks CRC to come to the Process meeting in the third month of each
work season, if possible, just to check in about how the work season is
going, and if there are ways Process can support CRC, and also to find out
if all CRC members plan to continue in the next work season - it is
important that only one member of CRC rotate off at any one time, so that
any ongoing issues that CRC is working on don't get dropped.]

(a)
Susan, Alex, and Alicia all said that they are fine with how things are
going, and all plan to continue next work season and are aware of the need
to stagger rotations when they do want to step down.

(b)
Susan brought up how much GOers really liked the sections of the Skills and
Thrills weekend in November when we were able to share personal thoughts or
experiences such as during the GO timeline outside, and when we had the
conversation cafe small groups talks too, people really found that rewarding
and connecting.

And Susan realized we haven't done personal interactive stuff very often, in
a while, as a community. In the beginning GO had some sharing circles more
often - "talking teddybears" about various issues and how people were
feeling (about move-in, about parenting in community, etc). It might be a
good idea to do that more. Susan reflected that some of the need for CRC
engagement is because there is a distancing that happens between people in
community by their own personal choices relative to their understanding of
community choices.

Pam is doing the next alternative meeting and hers are very good at helping
people connect.

And we don't have a lot of things on the stack for the regular meetings
right now - it would be possible to do something at a regular meeting too.
And remember even though we have pushback, every time we've done it it's
been good. Regular community meetings, April 19th or May 17th as potentials.

Ideas mentioned such as "true colors", variations with tinkertoys, etc.

MONKEY: CRC will work on developing an agenda item that would help build
personal connections among GOers.

(c)
Particular issue, that is not really a CRC issue, and CRC thought it would
be useful to talk about with Process. Some email traffic about it too. When
Alex sent out his email to GO-talk about an issue with a person at Sunward
and the situation with the charges of sexual misconduct filed against him,
a few GOers emailed CRC and asked what can they do, asked what does "being
proactive" mean in this situation. CRC emailed Process about this. Sarah
indicated willingness to be involved.

Discussed. Agreed that:
- it would be good to organize a get-together, or ideally a series of
get-togethers so people who can't make it on one date could come to the
next, and also to help keep the gatherings a bit smaller.
- maybe if there is more than one gathering opportunity, it could be small,
feel safer for participants, in the sitting room (or game room) with a
closed door rather than in the large open dining room
- maybe neighbors could take turns doing childcare if there is more than one
gathering opportunity
- this should not be done as an act of the whole GO community/condo
association - this would not be at a regular or alternative community
meeting. The goal of the get together(s) would be a bigger picture one but
it can't help but be specific too, and we have to be careful about legal
issues and libel; we are not discussing this as a condominium association,
rather we are discussing it as a group of interested people
- ideally we will have an outside presenter

What would be the goals of the get together? Information share about the
sentencing - what do the specific charges mean. And bigger picture, what
does it mean to have a neighbor on the national sex-offenders list, and,
mostly to raise awareness on a bigger-picture level, learn - people want to
know how to act and what to watch for.

Hopefully a social worker could answer both factual stuff, and more
emotional too:
- here are some ways you might want to process it with your kids who are 10
and over and are out and about and might hear about it or have contact with
the person
- here's how you might want to think about it if you have kids who are
younger
- resources or ways to deal with your own feelings that come up around it
- education about what to watch out for in general - this is not a unique
circumstance

Use this opportunity to talk about the larger issues we need to pay
attention to, that could come up anywhere at any time really.

We have to be careful. Not just the condo association - libel issue, but
also relations with Sunward, and GOers' own personal histories and hurts
which could get triggered.

MONKEY: Alicia and Sarah will work on finding an outside presenter (social
worker?) and schedule times for conversations of interested people. Process
and CRC are resources for support.


3. Process jobs

Discussion with Infoco about facilitators, who is willing to continue with
it this summer, who knows they don't want to and who is willing if needed.
Discussed the hours situation. Currently 1.5 hours/month for a total of 6
hours over the season, when the minimum hours it takes is 11 hours over the
season. Talked about the work involved, back and forth, and decided to
split the different and change hours to 2 hours/month for a total of 8 hours
over the season.

Discussion about CRC with CRC, all willing to continue.

Discussion about Process jobs with Process. One Process job we talked about
for a while is the Archivist job. Now there is a new piece to it, of
collecting the "favorite memories" of each year, and not just collecting the
community agreements and official documents. Idea is to collect a much more
personal history of GO of each year. Seems like a "historian" role to add to
the "archivist" role. Seems valuable to do. Idea is to post the compilation
on the blog every year. Will be valuable to us to have as a community in the
decades to come, just in and of itself. Plus it can be used to help market
Great Oak. There are several pieces to this aka the work system. (1) Gail
has done the archivist job, and it makes sense for her to keep doing it
rather than rotating it - she goes to every single meeting to get materials
or makes sure they are gotten for her, she makes space in her house to
safely store all the materials, including large flats of drawings etc. (2)
Gail has difficulty finding enough hours in the work system of jobs she is
able to do and this is one she can do. (3) There is now a new piece to add
to the job, change the job name to Archivist/Historian, and add the
collection and posting of "year in review" memories to the job description,
and increase the hours from 1 to 2.

Vincent and Patti are willing to continue as counted members
Gail is willing to continue as steering rep
Jillian is willing to continue as process convenor
AmyH is willing to continue as Infoco convenor
Minutes - open
Facilitation - preassign Amy H, Mary King, Jillian, Alicia, 2 slots open,
Sarah and Jim G are usually willing to rotate in if needed. Elph has too
many credits already. Patti wants to take a break.
CRC all are willing to continue (Susan, Alicia, Alex)
Book of Agreements tech - Willie
Book of Agreements entering - open (hopefully this will work - have had
trouble getting login access for people other than Jillian)
Archivist/Historian job - Gail to continue, change name, add the annual year
in review to job description

MONKEY: Jillian will review Dale's email about how to submit work changes
and will email them in by Friday


4. Revised Process Mandate
Revised Process mandate will come back next time. Per the last Process
meeting, Jillian will renumber with a new system, will get rid of the
confusing bit about CRC near the end, and will add an explanation that the
first part of section 3 is a summary and subsequent parts of section 3 are
going into detail on each item in the summary.


5. Alternative Gatherings

Vincent brought a new version. Got rid of a lot of extra material from the
original proposal from when the whole idea was new. Looks better!

More tweaks:

Remove 1 year expiration in background item and in item 5. We can bring a
proposal to change it at any time in the future but it was a mistake to do a
sunset clause.

Section 4 should become section 1 and renumber.

4.2 small wording changes
'this GOer assembly is empowered:'
change voting, for consensus decision
the usual community agreements around decision making still apply

2.2 change organizer to Leader

Should we add pros and cons? Yes. If we leave them out people will get upset
and if they don't see them. And it helps us build our case, that we aren't
just ignoring all the reasons that its not ideal.

Biggest pro - creating opportunities for people to connect, especially
around personal sharing and getting to know eachother in deeper ways, which
we don't do over the dinner table (dinner table chat is fine but is usually
more superficial), and which Process hears over and over, people want.
(Actually, ironically, some folks don't want it ahead of time, but after we
do it people rave about how good it was...)

Biggest con - Process is not dictating WHAT the leaders do, and many don't
like the events if they're too close to committee work. Goers need to be
inspired to lead the connecting kind of events if they're to happen.

Process should think about how to help that happen. We can lead some, too,
as individuals.

6. Next meeting
Second Tuesdays, so April 13, May 11, etc. 6:45pm til almost 8pm. :-)

ONGOING MONKEYS / COOLER

COOLER: Process to ask minute takers to come to a process meeting at the
start of each work term to talk about the full minute taker job description,
and talk about the using names issue so they are aware of some of nuances.

COOLER: Naming names in committee meeting minutes, periodically reread
current guidelines, make sure they're ok for both committees and plenary.

ONGOING MONKEY: Periodic check-in about how CRC members are chosen, if that
is working ok. And how its going for CRC. And reminder that CRC can only
rotate off one at a time. Plan to ask CRC to come to the Process meeting in
the 3rd month of each work season, and more often if needed.

ONGOING MONKEY: Process will email new renters or owners to make sure they
know, that they are encouraged to participate fully in meetings, that their
voice counts as much as anyone else's, there are very few decisions renters
can't be part of. (This should be spelled out in the levels of membership
agreement.)

ONGOING MONKEY: Jillian will remind infoco that: Facilitators should (1)
send out agenda at least 2 days ahead and then a reminder on the day of the
meeting, and (2) consider putting a slip of paper in every mailbox about the
meeting as well, at least a day ahead. Just to see if it helps.

ONGOING MONKEY: How can we make the thank-you board in the CH entrance-way
more active. Could we make a game out of it, or encourage people.

COOLER: Committee-level decisions and how they could or should get entered
in the BOA - they are not currently always getting in.

Re-MONKEY: all Processians please read the draft doc of how to plan an
event, and email any feedback/additions/corrections and Jillian will post on
the GO wiki in the Process section.

Ongoing MONKEY - All of us in process - think about the event and the
results from the Skills and Thrills weekend and how can we continue the work
from it and learn from it.
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