Process: Infoco minutes: 2011-06-07

Minutes:

Infoco Meeting
6/7/2011
6:45-7:45
Present: Elph, Jillian, Nicholas

AGENDA
1. Checkins
2. Monkeys
3. June 20, July 18, Aug 15 meetings
4. Next work season job checkin/review
5. Facilitation recipes
6. Infoco mandate
7. Next meeting

1. Checkins

2. MONKEYS

MONKEYS from previous meetings:

DONE: Jillian to add job description/checklist for support role of
Alternative Meeting Leaders, maybe to facilitator job description or
to the Process section of the Wiki page. (see notes 1/4/2011)
DONE: Jillian to show the intro to consensus powerpoint to Nicholas and Meg.
MONKEY: Patti will provide Infoco with the facilitation training info she has.
Workin: We'll pick one or two of these facilitation chunks at our next
meeting and write out what the pieces are.
Re-MONKEY: Jillian will put another call before the next work season
that we're looking for new facils.
DONE: Elph will put the question of compiling information about
parking, what is the current agreement and why - what were all the
issues balanced by that agreement, to Grounds and see if Grounds is
willing to present, since they have done the most thinking about
parking and are likely most familiar with the nuances.

MONKEYS from this meeting 6/7/2011:

MONKEY: Jillian will check in with budget at gocoho.org to see what their
meeting needs will be later this summer and then get back to Work
cmtee.

MONKEY: Alicia and Elph to check in with presenters for the June 20
meeting - Work cmtee, and Mary King for Meals, and someone from the
Seniors in coho group - check in with Gail Graham about that. And
other presenters if they pop up - Gail will put out call for agenda
items when she's back on June 10.

MONKEY: Jillian will add each faciliation recipe as we complete it, to
the Process section of the wiki for now.

MONKEY: Jillian will update the infoco mandate draft, take out all the
extraneous formatting, make some changes and bring it back.


3. June 20, July 18th, and August 15th community meetings

Work cmtee has asked for 10 minutes on 6/20, let's plan for 20 to
allow for questions. But they've asked for 60 to 90 minutes on July 18
and 45 minutes on AUgust 15th.

We will have other issues that need addressing, Gail pointed out -

Meals - can have the time they want at the June 20 meeting.

Parking - Grounds has compiled information about the current parking
situation. They do not feel there is a parking problem but are happy
to provide the information to whoever wants it. Grounds and Steering
can discuss if it will come to a community meeting or just go to
cubbies/email.

Seniors in cohousing - could be an item on the June 20 meeting.

Reserve fund? Hm. Not clear what that would be, weren't we done with that?

Budget: this is the biggie. Usually we do start working on the budget
in July or August.

MONKEY: Jillian will check in with budget at gocoho.org to see what their
meeting needs will be later this summer and then get back to Work
cmtee.

MONKEY: Alicia and Elph to check in with presenters for the June 20
meeting - Work cmtee, and Mary King for Meals, and someone from the
Seniors in coho group - check in with Gail Graham about that. And
other presenters if they pop up - Gail will put out call for agenda
items when she's back on June 10.



4. Next work season job checkin/review

Only difference for Infoco is we'd need one additional facilitator,
since we don't have alternative meetings in Oct and November so we
need two facilitators for those meetings instead of one.

Jillian has a monkey about this already.



5. Facilitation chunks - let's call them facilitation recipes

At our last meeting we brainstormed pieces that go into facilitating
so we could expand on them one at a time, create teaching tools
similar to the powerpoint we created on what is consensus, which new
people have found very useful. We need to teach more people about how
to facilitate, need teaching tools. Recognize that facilitating is a
complex and large topic that people write entire books about. And, we
need more facilitators at Great Oak for commuinty meetings. We decided
to pick one recipe at each infoco meeting and expand on one in the
meeting. Here's the list we brainstormed in May:

- meeting prep/logistics
- calling the question - what are the five things to say when getting
ready to ask for consenus
- quorum
- how to deal with emotion (bring out the posters (emotional input))
- naming names in the discussion of someone who is not there
- stacking or not stacking - discussion management
- anatomy of a monkey - we often leave them off - due date, who's responsible
- timekeeping - planning the agenda, time managment - eg doing a
warning before the topic time is done etc
- roles and duties of the presenter - prep, presentation with a range
of methods, and then presenter can sit down and participate

Let's do the Recipe for the Anatomy of a Monkey tonite

This applies to committee meetings more than community meetings but
seems worth fleshing out.

Recipe for the Anatomy of a Monkey

Each monkey needs a head, a heart, hands, and a tail.

A head: why are we doing it, the thought behind it.

A heart: who is doing it - the one we hold responsible, the one that
cares for the completion of the monkey

Hands: what is it we're doing

A Tail: When is it done, the hook that it all hangs on.

Each monkey needs these pieces put in the minutes to be effective.

MONKEY: Jillian will add each faciliation recipe as we complete it, to
the Process section of the wiki for now.


6. Infoco mandate
Read it over, draft from a few years ago that was in the process of
being updated but never finished.
Plenary floor seems a bit obscure, change terminology
Needs to be updated - received pending agenda items from agenda planner
Formatting is a bit painful
Move "meeting with facilitators and presenters" to the top - that's
primary of what we do.
Re capturing items from debriefs to bring back to infoco for
discussion, we're not doing that very often - maybe we should start a
google doc - except some people aren't on gmail. That can be worked
around. Or maybe a wiki doc?
Maybe change to occasional joint meetings with process rather than one
per month.

What aren't we responsible for - writing proposals for others.
What is expected - change to "attend scheduled meetings". Get rid of italics.

MONKEY: Jillian will update the draft, take out all the extraneous
formatting, make some changes and bring it back.

I feel like we've lost energy for continuing to learn and teach
facilitation - right after the two year training we had a lot of
energy for it, but that has dwindled. How to make it fun, appealing.
That's partly why we started meeting at people's houses over dinner,
made it like a dinner party, we enjoyed eachother's company, social.
That seems to have dwindled a bit. Try something new? How about going
out?

The reason the intro to consensus powerpoint was created, was Amy,
Mary and I agreed to go to the Roadhouse for brunch, and spend half an
hour to an hour while we were there creating the consensus powerpoint.
It worked!

We could sample cafes around town for infoco meetings?

Harder for single parents to do unless they have babysitters, but
often they need to get babysitters no matter what, just to come to the
meeting.

We used to trade off each person bringing a teaching agenda item, need
to go back to something like that - people contribute.


7. Next meeting
First Tuesday of the month - will be July 5, 6:15pm.

-end-