Community development - A Community circle @ meet.coop?

# Community development - A Community circle @ meet.coop? *Mike Hales : 2020 12 03* We may want to move towards creating a Community circle within the governance framework of meet.coop. To explore, and to begin community development work, thro December-January we will use **the Forum** to process ideas and generate participation, leading to **an initial meeting in January 2021** of members interested in contributing to this emerging stream of work. *Note: @mentions below are names in the Discourse forum: [https://forum.meet.coop/]* If such a Community circle proves viable (ie if Member hours are available to sustain it - the old sweat-equity challenge) it will be a significant piece of the coop’s architecture. As Ben Lau ```@benhylau``` highlighted in the Forum, it’s the job of Operational Members to translate our internal work into clear public messages that reflect status and plans. The Community circle would be a natural focus point for this ongoing interaction/dialogue - alongside the Forum and the All-hands meeting (aka Permanent Assembly). In a true multi-stakeholder coop, the mix of governance channels eventually could be quite complex? In due course, the coop will need to hold annual Assemblies too, so again a Community circle would be part of the infrastructure to support overall governance of a large, international federation. Culled from today’s initial meeting on this topic (Wouter Tebbens ```@wouter```, Gary Alexander ```@garyalex```, Mike Hales ```@mikemh```) and the Forum thread (Micky Metts ```@freescholar```), below are initial topics that might be discussed in January, for further development. In each case, going further with the idea would require us to define stages, outcomes, principles and a facilitator/project-development leader. >Please, **discuss in the Forum**, [Working as a community](https://forum.meet.coop/t/working-as-a-community/416/). Also related in the Forum, [Circles and roles update](https://forum.meet.coop/t/circles-and-roles-update/447) ## Nine things we could do for community development . . *A shopping list we can discuss in January . .* #### A programme of events that we could **invite our networks to** Define goals, outcomes and a facilitator-host for each event. This seems quite close to some ‘awareness’ plans that **MayFirst** has for its membership in 2021 - so maybe, collaborate with MayFirst? Who else? femProComuns? Civic Intelligence Public Sphere Project @ Seattle? Schumacher Institute? Kate Raworth’s ‘doughnut cities’ project (DEAL - Doughnut Economics Action Lab)? Etc? Topics might include . . - Awareness of the **meet.coop community** being built - How to do **outreach** in meet.coop - Cooperative principles in **software ownership** (FLOSS vs corporate) - Building our own future away from **the Corporations** - platform coops, commons stewarding of digital means, federated coops, etc etc. For progressive groups being banned from Zoom, bcos of organizing things like protests, *infrastructure commons* (meet.coop, MayFirst, collective.tools, etc) are now an alternative? Etc. - **Voting** and related democratic practices in large-scale distributed civil society communities, or coops and coop federations. MayFirst, femProComuns, collective.tools/digiDemLab ```@petter``` and Vocdoni all have good experience to share, relating to annual Assemblies, civic decision making (participatory budgeting etc), strategic direction-setting, etc. - Seven cooperative principles, updated in **distributed coops** with digital infrastructure - The **DisCO** coop model. - Building **a space** together - configuring a digital ’toolsframe’ for collaborations, support for community literacy in ’digital infrastructuring’. For example, highlight the practice of BBB coupled with Discourse and Etherpads, a synch/asynch combination available in meet.coop, not available from Zoom. - Brainstorming (BBB) **features** together. - Etc. etc. #### Approaching the **Mutual Aid** and solidarity economy communities . . with an invite to come to the meet.coop community, join meet.coop (leave Zoom!), participate in the Community circle/events programme? If well planned - a campaign? a half-day conference? - and if we have our Community strategy for meet.coop well thought-through, it could be a big win for intentional communities and free software. **Social.coop** is maybe one of the starting points for this? Also, **MayFirst** has solidarity economy organising as an item on its movement technology agenda for 2021 . . so again: collaborate? #### Members (member *organisations*?) **presenting themselves** . . . . their use-case, challenges and hunches on how we (meet.coop? our movements?) can get better. Camille ```@camille``` at Friends of the Earth International would be happy to present their case. We might analyse our membership (currently 60+ members and rising daily), and invite a programme of discussion around several member organisations that have profiles in various civil-society and coop-economy ‘sectors’? #### Members **presenting themselves** in a more informal, low-key ways . . in Community gatherings; small-group breakout exchanges, round-the-room intros etc. Perhaps, informal community gatherings, like a Christmas party. #### Contribution by women within meet.coop Ditto **BIPOC** (black, indigenous, people of colour) - fundamental, on a global level. May be much easier to develop this thro focus on Community-members and their challenges and needs as activist-organisers, than thro a focus on digital infrastructure/FLOSS tools? Related to this . . #### Support for **language communities** . . eg Hispanic, Catalan, Francophile; global-South etc etc. MayFirst ```@jamie``` has a fully bilingual practice. femProComuns ```@dvdjaco``` has organised a commons event in BBB with breakout rooms (and an Etherpad!) in four languages. Friends of the Earth International routinely operates multilingually. Etc. Localisation of the BBB/Greenlight **UI** is a (tech) aspect of this. But maybe, include this matter with the preceding broader one - constituting a basic focus on **contribution and ‘voice’** within the meet.coop community? #### Federation of coops as a policy? Federating between meet.coop and user-member coops, between member-coops? Oli Sylvester Bradly ```@olisb``` was enthusiastic about this in his presentation this week to Digital Life Collective. Community members in the future becoming (remunerated) Operational members of meet.coop, in a Community circle? Related to this . . #### A Members’ directory . . (voluntary, full data privacy). This perhaps goes alongside Georgia Bullen’s proposal for network mapping of the community ```@georgiamoon```? This could facilitate federation between community members. Could extend to Offers and Wants, who needs help and who can help out - eg could be a Category in the Forum? Maybe, even a mutual credit initiative (Open Credit Network)? #### meet.coop servers & room admin At a more tech-admin level: analysing the usage of our servers. Looking at how our room-admin interface (Greenlight) and our server monitoring systems and usage stats are set up (and what’s missing). May be important for members with Multi-user accounts, who are re-selling BBB to their own member communities.