Town Hall Series Outline

Community Governance
1

  • Top Level Information

    • The week of Oct 11th - Oct 15th is the Code of Conduct Town Hall Week.
    • The week of Oct 18th - Oct 22nd is the Mission, Vision, Values Town Hall week.
    • The week of Oct 25th - Oct 29th is the PL Funding Distribution Town Hall week.
    • Check the sourceCred Calendar for specific times and dates of gatherings. Look for “Facilitated Discussion” and “Town Hall”.
    • Weekly Update for the next three weeks will happen asynchronously, since we are using it’s time slot for Town Halls. Check out these roam notes:

  • Context

    • Both within and outside of Core, there’s been consistent sentiment for transitioning to a new governance model. Core itself was always meant as an experiment in governance - to workshop some of the Sociology principles that Thena and Ryeder stewarded starting in March. Core ended becoming a defacto council, which didn’t have very intentional membership or membership that accurately reflected who was active in the server. So we need something new.
    • We had a delta moment in the last month were several of us had similar ideas for a town hall for different purposes, simultaneously. Lotusleaf / Jules had ideas for a collective process for Mission, Vision, and Values (stay tuned for next week), Thena had ideas for a town hall for discussing how to distribute PL funds, and I was having thoughts on using the need for ratifying my Code of Conduct draft for an excuse to try new governance. Why not do this all together?
    • Discussing and deciding upon funding distribution is a high stakes conversation requiring trust in what ever process we use. So, this series is designed to ramp up in complexity and stakes based on the topic. A simple document ratification, to our conversation about our values, to a conversation about money.

  • Facilitated Discussions

    • We had a great facilitated Discussion on Sept. 21st called "What does Cred mean to You?"and it generated a lot of sense-making and ideation on a topic that is complex and represents a part of our product that needs changes. There was an expressed desire to have more of these conversations to keep up momentum.
    • As a part of the Town Hall weeks, these convos will continue. Both to maintain that momentum, and also to create a space more open than the Town Halls to get juices flowing and get more expressed on the topics we’re tackling. Hopefully, this means we’ll have a little more focus to get down to brass tax come Fridays when we get together to do more goal-oriented work.

  • Consensus Curriculum

    • If you haven’t been a part of Core in the past, it might be worth looking over what our process has been so far. Once these Town Halls get under way, it might become clear that we need to tweak this process or completely change it. But for the time being, this is a good starting point because it’s worked so far.
    • Group Consensus has been workshopped in Core to become a smooth and effective tool for coming decisions. As we transition away from Core, it’s possible we will need to modify how we make decisions together, but for the time being it’s nice to have a place to start.
    • If you want to see an example of the above process, here’s example notes from a Core Meeting that happened back in August.
    • The important concepts about the process to know about are:

    - Quorum:

    • According to Google: “The minimum number of members of an assembly or society that must be present at any of its meetings to make the proceedings of that meeting valid.”
    • It’s unclear what this number will be moving forward. Once we get some momentum and community buy-in, we can revisit what a good baseline quorum would be for collective decision making. For the time being, we can hopefully rely on the judgement of facilitators like myself and Thena, if there is sustained trust from the community. In Core, the most recent number for quorum was 7.

    - Proposals:

    • An individual or a sub group has an idea. A brief, informative proposal is written up that can be voted on. It’s introduced verbally and then discussion starts about any immediate concerns. Voting is called by the discretion of the facilitator. Often, voting can start immediately, without discussion.

    - Addendums:

    • Once a proposal is discussed, sometimes it makes sense to add an additional requirement or stipulation onto it. When the proposal is voted on, any addendums are a part of what is being decided one.

    - Consensus Hand Signals:

    • thumb up = Yes, I agree
    • thumb held horizontally = Stand aside, small concern that will be addressed if not resolved***
    • fist = abstain (does not count toward quorum)
    • thumb down = I object, or a block, significant moral/strategic objection

*** This opens back up discussion if there is time, and if there isn’t time, the proposal may be tabled for a future meeting.

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