Sudo room/05-16-2012 Meetup

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Gems

Things written in the margins

  • Sudo-Agent as concept of "participant" in Sudo Room!
  • (there was one more element of marginalia I can't recall...)
  • "What's on the Wiki Counts"

Attending

Jenny, Timon, Rachel, Eddie, Victoria, Marina, Micheal, Greg, Eddan, Matt

Notes

Agenda

0. Introductions
1. Decision Making
2. Finding a Space

  • + Community Bank of the Bay


Notes:

1.1 Decision Making

  • Topics:
    • Membership. Do we have it? If so, what are the levels/ benefits/ rules of engagement & expectations?
      • Membership and Governance are related.
        • Governance is a superstructure of Membership
        • Paying Membership get voting rights? Or setup a timebank system?
      • Lets define a what a member is
        • Qualitifations
          • Rite of Passage
            • technoshamanic rituals :P
          • Financial Contribution
          • Time bank
            • Anthony Di Franco BACE.org
      • Honorary membership?
      • Representative Do-ocracy?


  • Project Endorsement. When does SudoRoom attach its name and "backing" to a project, if ever?


  • Governance. How do we make decisions on behalf of SudoRoom? Are financially-concerned decisions different or do they involve a different group of people vs. other kinds?
    • Is it more important to setup governance first?
    • Heuristics: make only neccessary decisions
    • Are we going to register as non-profit (501(c)3)? This will determine legal structure
    • Examples: How do you pay rent? Insurance?
    • What are the possible legal structures? Pros and Cons


  • Activities (non-hacking). Will SudoRoom have speakers/ events/ classes? What system or structure do we put in place to facilitate this? Do others need to agree on any aspects of these "extracurricular" activities?
    • What is the culture?
    • How do you establish a culture?
    • How do you regulate the flow of new people to ensure the establishment of culture
    • Vision/Goods/Culture


  • META and BUSINESS decisions
    • Rent? Utilities? Insurance? Liabilities? Changes to group structure? Dissolution?


1.2. Who makes these decisions?
Qualifications:
-Application: can range from asking how to be a member or a project proposal or rite of passage (below)
-Rite of Passage: demonstrates committment / reliability / follow-through (consistency)
-Alternative currencies:

  • -Time Bank (contact Anthony Di Franco)
  • -OurVolts (Anca & James, Drupal)

-Recommendation (trust-based referall network)
-Honorary Membership
-Agreement - opportunity for accountability

  • **Assessing whether people are "being Sudo or not" (Rachel)

-Representative Do-ocracy

1.3 How are these decisions made?
-Consensus
-Representative Do-ocracy

1.4 Where and when are these decisions made?

  • Options:
  • Online (proposals and concerns?)
  • Weekly meetings (agenda and discussion?)
  • delay/schedule for introduction & decision making, allowing for asynchronous discussion & predictable decision making cycle

2. Money Making

Three broad categories of income-generation:

2.1. membership
2.2. goods/services
2.3. fundraising/crowdsourcing

2.1. membership

what are the advantages, if any to membership? to what extent should financial contribution be separate from 1) governance privileges 2) access to the space

  • if there is agreement on separating financial membership from access/votes, how do you solve the perception of the "usual" definition of member (ie, many people understand membership as paying x for y privileges).
  • can an alternate term be more useful to avoid the "usual" perception of membership? here are some alternate terms!: participant, affiliate, joiner, building block, supporter, sudo-agent (this term got a lot of support)
  • instead of defining benefits of membership, define responsibilities of membership?
  • logistics
    • membership amount ($50-100, sliding scale?)
    • in-kind options vs just cash; is there a need for this; a list of trades? (services exist that allow management of this kind of setup: timebank, ourvolts)


2.2 goods/services

  • examples: classes, events, conferences, speakers, skillshares, workshops, movie nights, etc.
  • sudoers have a lot of talent and can offer many possible services/events/goods that can be used to raise money.
  • membership and fundraising interacts with this type of income
    • selling goods/services can fuel and support membership (ie, members can provide goods/host events/teach classes/act as speakers + these activities can bring new members)
    • maybe members are ones who can initiate classes, speakers, and other group projects
    • goods/services provided can inform viability of grants/crowdfunding
  • **does charging for these opportunities run counter to the sudo open + accessible principle?


2.3 fundraising

  • examples: grants (foundation, city/state/govt), crowd-funding, corporate, investment, donations
  • kickstarter-esque campaigns have been discussed in meetings in the past and have received support
  • fundraising is time-consuming and difficult and will be more likely if membership is solid (also, goods/services provided by the community can inform the viability of grants/crowdfunding)
  • "donate" button on the site is a good minimum option
  • crowdfunding vs funding portal (eg; Sudo Room as Kickstarter Project vs. Sudo Room as Kickstarter :)



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Key points tabled:

  • How do we demonstrate transparency, the moment of decision-making/consensus? (Eddan)
  • We should discuss our autodocumentation meta-strategy :) (Jenny)
  • Talked to Anthony Di Franco about democratizing our tax model and cooperative voluntary equity/revenue share


---------------------------ACTION ITEMS---------------------------

"What's on the Wiki Counts"

1. Model + Budget + Income investigations (e.g Noisebridge, other)
2. Tax Structure Options: Eddan, Matt, Eddie

  • Timon - Zoning

3. Distilling Decision Maker/Community Options (Matt, Marina, Rachel, Jenny, Timon)

Will work on tonight (May 16)
4. Most transparent process [#3]
5. Determining important deadlines
6. Clean up listing of table of properties (Eddie, Matt)

Eddan spoke to Debra Acosta about realstate and had a place that he was interested in and it fell through. it's important to keep track of contacts

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