Process minutes: 2005-01-12

Minutes:

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Process cmtee meeting

1/12/05 7:15 CH sitting room
Present: Sarah, [[Elph]], Jillian, Amy

AGENDA
1. Check ins
2. Report on Book of Agreements
3. Process cmtee job description/mandate
4. Revisiting Consensus Decisions
5. Media Guidelines
6. [[Committee]] Proposal Update
7. Short side discussion about committee work
8. 2005 Training Dates/Events
9. Short presentations/trainings at community meetings
10. Next meeting


2. Report on the Book of Agreements
Amy H suggested that Jillian start her BoA work by updating the hardcopy binder, before she starts in on getting data into the electronic version. Jillian is ok with this. Willie has been creating a framework for the electronic version but the data is not in it yet. We will have new members coming in so seems important to have at least the hardcopy up to date. Also a good idea to make an extra copy of it.
MONKEY: Jillian will work on this.
MONKEY: Jillian will check in with Willie about the electronic version
MONKEY: Amy will let membership know


3. Process cmtee mandate
Sarah will present it at the Jan 17 meeting.
MONKEY: Sarah will re-email it out

Are committees presenting these job descriptions for consensus? I don't think so, unless they're asking for empowerment. We're not an empowered cmtee, so far as I understand it we don't need to ask for consensus on what we're doing. If we want to be empowered, we'd need to put forth a proposal on the parameters of that empowerment and how it would work, within our along with our job description.

I think there is some confusion in the community about what Work cmtee does, but does that mean we need to consense on the job description? Work cmtee can just put forth our job description for discussion, even if its not for consensus it would help. Altho there is one piece of our (Work cmtee's) role that is very undefined, and that's about what happens when work does not get done. If there are to be consequences that would seem like it would need to be consensed. The job description can be more meta level, and can say that the cmtee needs to flesh out x and y and will need write proposals for community consensus about x and y.


4. Revisiting Consensus Decisions
There was a revised draft proposal and then there was some email feedback, was that ever addressed? What is the best next step? Should we bring the ideas to the community before we finalize the proposal, just for a "concepts" discussion? Or shop around the proposal outside of a community meeting? I think it needs to come back to the full committee - I'm ([[Elph]]) tired of working on it. And we're not sure of the next step. We should reread it as a group and talk about the feedback at our next meeting.
MONKEY: [[Elph]] will reemail it to the group.

5. Media Guidelines
Do we need to consense on the guidelines for tour and media access, or was it enough to have had a conversation as a large group. Melisa was concerned that if it wasn't consensed on it would kind of "float away" and get lost, fall between the cracks and could be a source for conflict in the future. She refers to the garage issue as an example of something that was informally agreed on and now there are a lot of different perceptions and expectations etc. At first I (Sarah) had wanted it consensed on, as the media person I felt vulnerable without the guidelines. But after having the feedback and discussions, I felt comfortable with it as it was, I had gotten feedback and direction. One reason to hesitate, is maybe there are a lot of unique situations that might come up and there are a lot of judgement calls, I didn't want to make it cumbersome for the media person in future, to maybe not have the flexibility they need to amend things out of experience or whatever. If we consense on it, if you make a change to it, do you then need to bring it back again?

Condense it down to broad statements that seem appropriate for consensus, perhaps? Rather than consensing on something that might be too detailed and too subject to change. Values, how does GO feel about media, in general do we want to share info about what we've done with others. And in that broader set of statements we can refer to the guidelines that those doing the outreach work will follow and the community can ask to review the guidelines at any point. But the consensed on part can be much bigger picture.

The job descriptions/guidelines can still go in book of agreements, in the "other documents". all the committee job descriptions should be in there.


6. [[Committee]] Proposal Update

Melisa wrote this up. Some of the work done on the October training day was the first step in creating some more clear guidelines and direction for how our commitee system works. So our committee proposal is the next step, which we would bring before the community, basic things about how our committees work to try to bring some consistency across committees. So Melisa was very excited about this, did a lot of research on cohousing-L. And she put a lot of info into her proposal. Sarah made another draft and tried to make it more directive, without as much info in the guts of the proposal. And the idea was to take all the info that Melisa had gathered and present it over a series of community meetings, in small chunks.
MONKEY: Melisa and Sarah need to sit down and they plan to in the next week or two and come up with another draft and will bring it back.
Thanks you guys!


7. Short discussion about committee participation

MONKEY: Jillian will check in with Alicia about the list she was putting together about people who say they want tasks but can't be on a committee.

Misunderstanding, some people may think that the committee work is not very important so its not in the work program, but its ironic in that its really the opposite, its too important to try to reduce it down to fit in the work program!

What is our high water mark, what is "enough"? Is four people per committee ok? Four might actually be better than 8! If you could get 4 committed, clearly involved people that might be great, people who are only on that committee and not overbooked on more than one. seems like 8 overcommitted and only vaguely involved people is not as good as 4 people who focus only on that committee.

Education is step 1 - start the education with basic civics - democracy, control of your own destiny, involvement. That will move right into the topic of committee participation.

Idea to use the second hour of one community meeting for committee meetings - would have a few issues, of many people on more than one committee, of a short slot to get things done, confusion about enough meeting spaces, am not sure it would be efficient enough to work. Not to say we can't try it once though.


8. 2005 Training Events

Sarah handed out a calendar with the community meetings marked. NASCO is the first weekend in November. We budgeted for a day and a half of training in 2005. The half a day we might be able to get someone like Laird who is already here from NASCO.

We also need to schedule a spring and fall community work day, don't want it to be very close to any training dates. Seems like the spring work day would likely be May.

The other idea is June, first half of June.

MONKEY: Sarah will email with Laird about the Wednesday before NASCO and also just check in about if he's available in June at all.

For local people we've had a number of people mentioned.

Claire Tinkerhess, and some other U of M people. But we don't have concrete info on them.

Two ways of coming at this - identity the person and then identify the topic, or identify the topic and get the person.

The u of m human resources people are very specific. We'd need to know the topic.
MONKEY: Amy H knows a few people and will chat with them about cohousing.

Maybe we should look at training as a 3-5 year plan, look at all the areas and create a big picture, think about it as a whole. Build one piece upon another. Hey I like that idea. We know we could use training in just about everything, its hard to know where to start, what will best build on what.

Another idea is to ask cohousing-L what people liked.

MONKEY: Sarah will let Sunward and TS know about what we're thinking, maybe they could hire Laird (or whoever it is) for a second day after he has done work at GO. or if we do a subset training, like facilitation etc on a specific skill, then we could all attend together.

Looking thru the list at http://fic.ic.org/process.html, Jillian knows Laird, Bea Briggs, and Tree Bressen are all excellent, very experienced, and could do probably whatever kind of training we want.

Jacob is a friend who lives locally, he could do something "lighter". Might be a good emergency outside facilitator to consider.

Julie Mazo Jillian has heard about from others, she will ask a friend about her.

MONKEY: Jillian will find out about Julie Mazo.


9. Short Presentations at Community [[Meeting]]s

I would like to see us focus on doing the 15 or 20 minute presentations at community meetings at least once a month, and see the committee make that an important thing. It seems like a very effective thing we could do.
- Mary King would like to work with us to do some email etiquette.
- Melisa would like to bring something to the group from the workshop she attended with Laird.
- And then there's all the committee info pieces to bring forward.
Seems like we really need to focus on it, and make it happen, how to make it easy for ourselves to do it.
- Another thing process is supposed to do is to remind people about our agreements. At the least its emailing a committee and saying, please take 10 minutes at the next meeting to review this, the membership guidelines or the CH usage etc.
Can we go ahead and slot in Melisa and Mary King at the next few community meetings? This is definitely a great idea to do.

10. Next meeting
Tuesday 1/25.