Process minutes: 2005-02-22

Agenda:

Agenda 1. Check-ins 2. Monkeys 3. Shared resources from Gail 4. How to solicit input for June meeting: see list of last dot storm 5. Discussion of arrangements for June 18 training 6. Discuss feedback from revisiting decisions discussion 7. Resources line item: reimbursement request process and materials purchase form 8. Review and schedule "reminder minutes" for upcoming general meetings - now called Refreshing Policy Moment 9. Review of Committee Effectiveness proposal

Minutes:

Process Minutes 3/9/05 7:15 p.m. Jim Sweeton's

Present: Jim Sw, Elph, Jillian, Gail, Susan, Sarah (There were several varieties of tasty girl scout cookies present too, for a little while!)

Next meeting: did not get to: - Agenda setting - revisiting a group that does agenda planning - Conflict Resolution Cmtee effectiveness discussion/other models?

2. Monkeys MONKEY Review from last meeting: - DONE: SARAH will check with Willie, Melisa Tim, Jim and Susan to see if they want to stay on in their current work positions. - Re-MONKEY: ALL - Let's plan a "roll-out" event for book of agreements for an April meeting, where we can play a fanfare and show people how it works on the big screen! - Re-MONKEY: ALL - Check in with Jillian about the FIC party idea developments at our next meeting. - DONE: SARAH creating a process/form for GO members to apply for money from the "member resources" line-item -Re-MONKEY: SARAH gathering together a list of training opportunities for members to consider - Re-MONKEY: GAIL creating a list of resource materials already available in the community for loan between members - DONE: SARAH will contact Laird and tell him we are still discussing the student request - DONE: SARAH will work on some guidelines for presenting committees to follow. - DONE: SARAH will contact committees scheduled to present in March to see if they can do it. - Re-MONKEY: SARAH will check-in with Melisa about ideas for presentations re: specific committee effectiveness ideas

NEW MONKEYS from tonite: MONKEY: Gail will finish up the shared resources form and send it out. MONKEY: Elph will ask Betty about Laird's strengths MONKEY: Susan will consolidate the list of training topics the community brainstormed in Oct MONKEY: Sweet Jim will make the revisions to the Revisiting Consensus proposal, ask infoco for time on the next agenda, and will present MONKEY: Gail will take on email committees to remind them about the Refreshing Policy Moments. Sarah will take this over once Gail is convenor. MONKEY: Sarah will email Gail the Refreshing Policy Moments guidelines. MONKEY: Sarah or Melisa will put the committee effectiveness proposal on the next agenda and will present

3. Shared resources Gail passed out a form. Anything to add? Looks great How about, "Do you know of other people who live in community who could be a resource to us." Do we need a return date on this? How about March 31? MONKEY: Gail will finish up the form and send it out.

4. How to solicit input for June trainingSee list of last dot storm, Sarah had a handout. We did do some nuts and bolts of consensus in Oct 2004. And we had the introduction to nonviolent communication, which was really brief.

Diversity training is such a nebulous term, how can we narrow that down? FYI Diana Kardia used to do diversity training for a living.

Bring attention to what kinds of differences are here and how we are culturally trained to respond to difference. Take a look at that, and see how we could respond in new ways.

How can we get feedback? Maybe break people up into smaller groups? To get more new ideas or to narrow down what we got at the last training?

Maybe give people a chance to see this list again?

Also Laird has certain strengths - personal responsibility in regards to individuals and community, communication styles and differences, especially around ways people communicate issues during meetings.

Ways to encourage a diversity of voices to be heard during meetings?

Seems like we would not want to just pass out this whole list - its somewhat confusing, some repetition.

We could list 3-5 of Laird's strengths and see what things people are most interested in.

Elph - we could ask Betty (an old friend of Lairds who is also a process trainer) what she feels Laird's top 5 strengths are. MONKEY: Elph will ask Betty

If you add these things up in this handout you get a different range of numbers. If we said, these are some of the major categories that got the most votes. Could say, we talked about communication and had three areas under it, and skill based stuff. And here's what we know about Laird and his strengths. I think its good to remind people but not using this full list. Put down communication and things like Diversity, Differences, etc. and here's the things that Laird does. That might make the meeting go more smoothly. Otherwise we'll reinvent the wheel.

Also had the idea previously to have a 3-5 year plan for training. Particular topics or skills that build on eachother. Seems like it would be easier on us to have a longer term plan so we don't try to cram everything in to each training. How do we start that? Probably not with the whole group, prework by us or a subgroup.

I'd like to see us get focused on diversity training - we've had that idea floating around for a while now. Laird could work on differences in communication certainly.

At some point though, we should have a full out training just on Diversity training - with roll plays etc. Would Diana know people who do this locally? Diana K's business name is Diversity by Design.

So, where we're at - consolidate list down to basic categories, and outline what they are, and get a list of Laird's strengths, and take that info to a community meeting and then either in a large group or small groups see what people think about that. MONKEY: Elph will ask Betty about Laird MONKEY: Susan will consolidate the list

March 21, April 6 and April 18 are the next meetings. Can we plan on doing this April 6? That way we have another process meeting to talk about this.

5. Discussion of arrangements for June 18 training Jillian asked Michael McIntyre from Sunward, and Sarah was talking with Maggi from TouchStone.

Sounds like there's interest from both communities if we do something on Sunday like an advanced facilitation training in the afternoon open to all.

Ethical dilemma about Sunday? We're paying for Laird for a full day on Saturday plus transportation, lodging, food. We talked about squeezing in a few hours in the morning on Saturday and open it to the other communities and then charge them a bit to help offset the cost. Now the new idea from Laird, is to work to throw a Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC, which is a nonprofit community networking group Laird is a part of) party (basically, a fundraising party) on Friday night in exchange for Laird offering a "free" training on Sunday. So would we charge others still, to help offset our costs in bringing Laird here in the first place?

We could put out a suggested donation amount, but not a required fee. Maybe $25 per person or something. Even a couple hundred dollars, would help pay for his transport.

Laird is not charging us for Sunday, but there is still our time in setting it all up on Friday etc.

My feeling is, if you explain the whole situation and then charge a fee, even a small fee, suddenly the training has more worth than if you just said, this is a freebie. Will be more valued. When you give it away things are devalued. Its a weird psychology.

I suggest we not use the word donation. Use a marketing strategy. Because he's here, because he's willing to do this, because we are throwing this party, you can do this for this for a low price that you won't get at any other time. $20 per head or something. 4 hours worth of training from someone that costs $1200/day that you can take back to your community and share.

Its just a perception that its free, its not really free. It helps us recoup the costs to make this happen in the first place.

This needs to be a group effort, this Friday night party, its not just Jillian or Sarah. We'd all need to pitch in (for the whole weekend really but esp for Friday night) to work on the marketing, responding to people, reserving the common house, food, beverages, whatever else Laird needs.

Can Laird help market? Sure, he would probably email something for us to use.

Posters for CH and in town, email.

So I'm hearing that people that people are willing to put work into this. June 17 Friday night party. June 18 GO only training. June 19 joint training.

Laird has been working with a student for a couple years in facilitation. He's asking if she can be present too. Seems ok to me. To have a female along might actually help balance out the gender. Any additional cost? She could stay in the guestroom and Laird can stay in unit 18. Some floor time for her is fine however it should be mostly Laird.

Food? Both of them Sunday night, that's two community meals. Then there's Friday and Saturday nights. Laird will probably want to go out, and pay for his own dinner.

6. Revisiting Consensus Decisions The proposal was discussed at the last community meeting. Jim has a handout with the feedback.

"while all of this is going on, the current decision remains in effect" - seems like this should be inserted? At the top maybe? Sure: "Note, the standing decision remains in effect during this process"

Jillian had suggested at the last community meeting, that people write their responses to the questions, and then one idea was to schedule time at a steering meeting to discuss it - help the person clarify their ideas before it comes to a community meeting.

I think we'd need to be careful though, steering should not have the authority to tell someone "no", this is not a juried role or a supreme court kind of role. Or even if steering did not mean for it to come across that way, just having this as the procedure might seem like its that way.

Just making sure they had fleshed out their thoughts before it came to the community.

The spirit of this is not adversarial, rather to make sure they had worked thru what they need to work thru.

The committees most closely involved with whatever issue might not be impartial enough, might be too charged. Steering would potentially be more neutral.

Maybe conflict resolution?

Requirements are there to make sure its not trivial. But we're also not trying to make it too onerous.

Conflict Resolution would be perceived as supportive rather than being seen as a way to squash something.

Communities can certainly make decisions that need to be redone. And one person can bring that up, can see that something needs to be changed. Don't want to make it too hard to do. AND, its most likely that this will come up where we might have a new person who did not understand all the aspects that went into a decision, and going thru the questions will hopefully enlighten them.

AGREED: we could say that they must go thru their answers to all these questions in their presentation to the community.

Need to leave room for people to do this to the best of their ability, there may be a question or two that they really can't answer until the initial community discussion. Important that people put some solid work into answering the questions, but not to stymie someone because there is a question or two that they feel they need community discussion in order to answer.

We don't say in here, to use the proposal writing template. I'd suggest we add that. Right after "strongly recommended". "Write the proposal using the proposal template."

MONKEY: Jim Sw will submit this to InfoCo for the next meeting.

7. Resources line item: reimbursement request process and materials purchase formWe have a $500 line item to get resources for a library and to send people to trainings that would benefit the community. So we need a process for people asking for that money. Sarah handed out a form. Awesome! Needs a date field. What kinds of training are we talking about? Quickbooks? Permaculture workshop? A training in how to lay tile or how to put gutters on? Could be any of those. How will we evaluate the requests? Process just needs to tell people how to do the process. We need to talk about how we will evaluate requests.

8. Review and schedule "reminder minutes" for upcoming general meetings Sarah handed out a list that she and Gail had come up with. March 2 Recycling Guidelines - DONE! March 21 Fence policy April 6 Common Land adj, to LCEs & Planting trees and shrubs April 18 Pet policy & Outdooer pet policy May 4 Truck usage May 16 AC June 1 CRC mandate and CR proposal June 1 TS wetlands access Sept 7 Membership policy Sept 19 Work policy & committee mandate Oct 5 Lilacc Charter Oct 17 CH use/access guidelines Nov 2 CH office policy Dec 7 Bylaws

New name? People seem to like "A Refreshing Policy Moment". OK.

Is someone willing to be the process person who sends out this email before each community meeting? MONKEY: Gail is willing, until Gail is convenor and then Sarah will do it.

MONKEY: Sarah will email the Guidelines to Gail

9. review of Committee Effectiveness proposal

Melisa wrote a long document in October. Sarah and Melisa got together and worked on simplifying. Came up with this proposal, plus a big info packet to be presented in smaller pieces, separately.

Committees are working on their mandates which is good. MONKEY: Sarah will send out a message appreciating that that is happening.

This proposal is a bare bones thing that just says out some basic ideas. Hopefully not controversial.

Seems fine to me to move this onto a community meeting, no need for us to hold it back. it goes over a lot of stuff we already do. Melisa and Sarah have already put a lot of work into it. MONKEY Sarah or Melisa will put it on the next agenda and present.