Advisory meetings with Karrot

2023-09-05 meeting

Attendance: @jane.losare-lusby (facilitator), Vas, Nick, Bruno, @nathalie.szycher , @john.l.clark (secretary)

Report on last meeting:

  • Karrot team decided to do some work on a membership policy

Nick: made a lot of progress on a membership policy in recent meetings; still a draft

Agenda for today

Nathalie: could provide feedback on current proposal draft; different scopes of threads could come out of talking about this proposal draft

Discussing the current draft

Jane: seeing open questions, possibly other feedback?

Bruno: second section is slightly outside the scope of the particular membership in Karrot; interested in placing this work in a larger scope; focus is on the first section

Jane: what is blocking this proposal?

Nick:

  1. Membership and bank account? Maybe not with the current bank account set up
  2. Section for members on the forum
  3. Tilmann as a member? Just ask him?
  4. When do we introduce additional circles?
  5. Shift from Q&A format to more declarative format
  6. Mention the existence of the larger contextual material, but perhaps not include them directly in this document

Vas: largely agree with Nick; do we need to have another bank account?

Noting the process listed here for excluding someone if necessary.

Nathalie: maybe not include the current members in the policy; would be good to include other governance elements in a broader governance agreement

John: are meetings exclusive to members? if not, remove as power. agree w/ nathalie about building towards a more complete governance document. Vision/Values/Mission/Goals/Domains/etc

bruno: this is one piece of the larger puzzle which includes vision, values, decision-making process, other circles and modes of contribution; want to emphasize that this is connected to additional ongoing work

Jane: noting no answer for the last question in the first section (relation of membership to governance); this relates to points others have made earlier; reminder that no decision is final, can always make updates with feedback

Next steps

  • listing members clearly on the forum (and removing them from the policy)
  • following up with Tilmann
  • separate out the question of additional circles (Jane mentioned a SoFA article on this)
  • sort out bank account issues
  • clearly define member removal process (also linked with broader governance work)
  • processes for removing members may need to be a separate conversation
    • Jane: is this blocking the policy overall?
    • Bruno: not for me
    • Vas: have had membership related issues, would be happy to have this ready for this policy; we’ve postponed working on it before
  • Nathalie: would appreciate having clear statements around decision-making

Proposal (Jane): rewrite the document in a declarative format, remove member list, remove bank access statement, establish a space to list members, follow up with Tilmann; clarify a process for both decision-making and removing members

  • Nathalie to lead the text around decision-making
  • Bruno to update format of docment and to lead the text around member removal
  • Nick to set up web/forum space for member list

Nathalie: would be enough to clearly state the power; doesn’t need to state the mechanism yet
Jane: are you willing to resolve that concern?
Nathalie: yes

Vas: excluding someone from Karrot is very much a decision-making process; happy to draft the exclusion text, but wanting more discussion about it
Nathalie: current draft seems to indicate a process already
Jane: in sociocracy, this would be another consent process, but without empowering the member in question with the ability to object

Next meeting

Maybe 4 to 6 months from now? Jane: maybe 2 months?

Meeting creates a nice deadline to work towards.

Proposal: 10-17 at the same time? ← no objections

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