I currently work alongside Pame Carmona (@pcarmona) to send out SoMBu once a month. In SoFA Support Services Circle, we’re interested in sharing more announcements here on the forum. This week, I want to share a few specific announcements from last week’s issue of SoMBu (and one that will be in the next issue). So you may have seen these already, but these are announcements that are timely and can impact our work together. This also provides us with a place to discuss these announcements (for example to seek clarity, provide feedback, or connect with each other around the issues raised).
How does SoFA organize its pay for work?
What questions and tensions are coming up around paying for work in different circles and different roles at different rates? People are in different places with different needs. Do we understand each other? How do we understand SoFA strategies and constraints as those show up in budget and pay decisions? Could we have a more systematic way of deciding how much people get paid? For many weeks there has been a desire from several different circles to come together to explore our decision making about pay for work.
On May 23 (1030 to 1130 ET, 1430 to 1530 UTC) Rhonda will host a sensing and exploration conversation around pay for work. We will be sharing pay information and will look at one option for a more formal pay framework. This conversation will be followed by a three-part conversation around budget and strategy as we prepare for a new 12-month budget cycle beginning July 1. Anyone in a paid role is invited to the May 23 meeting. If you are not able to make that time please write to Rhonda at <rhonda.baird@sociocracyforall.org> to indicate your interest.
New Zoom storage policy
In the last couple of months, members of IT Circle have been working on reducing the amount of space that we use for storing Zoom recordings within the Zoom accounts (in the cloud). We want to continue to keep the amount of space we use within the limits provided for our account, and so IT Circle members have developed a policy which they request we use to meet this goal together. The policy is as follows:
SoFA members should store their recordings from using Zoom in SoFA’s Shared Google Drive. All working members can make a recording of a meeting. You can either
- Record to your local computer and upload the recording file to Google Drive, or
- Save it to the Zoom cloud and transfer to Google Drive later.
Due to limited space on the Zoom cloud, IT Circle will delete all recordings on the Zoom cloud more than one month old. To help keep the Zoom cloud clear, please delete recordings on the Zoom cloud yourself once you transfer them to Google Drive. Conference recordings in the sofa1@ zoom account are handled differently by Continuing Education Circle. In some instances when a conference is approaching, IT Circle or Continuing Education Circle may need to delete recordings that are less than one month old, although in those cases the members doing the cleanup work will provide a 2-week notification to SoFA members via SoMBu. You can find more guidance in the Zoom Recordings Best Practices.
Transition period: end of June 2023
As we transition to this new Zoom Recording Policy, IT Circle will back up videos on the SoFA Google Drive before they are deleted on the Zoom Cloud. From July 2023 on, videos that are deleted on the Zoom Cloud will not be backed up.
IT Circle will review this policy at the end of July, and we offer these Zoom Recordings Best Practices:
- We recommend recording to your computer when you are the person who will download and share/backup the video and you have a reliable internet connection and computer
- We recommend recording to the Zoom cloud when you are not the only person who will download and share/backup the video or if your computer or internet connection is unreliable.
- To help keep the Zoom cloud clear, please delete recordings on the Zoom cloud yourself once you transfer them to Google Drive.
- We recommend storing/backing up recordings on the SoFA shared drive in your circle’s sub-folder in a clearly marked folder, such as “Meeting Zoom Recordings”.
New patterns for using Canva accounts
Until recently, SoFA members have been using Canva with a collective account. Because we are a non-profit, we have newly obtained a team membership with 50 free accounts. We will migrate all existing content to the new accounts on May 16th.
Please fill out the following form if you want your own Canva account: <https://forms.gle/MNacokT2mAktBL7z5>.
We will remove editing permissions from the community account after the migration. People with access to that account will still be able to access the designs and to duplicate projects, but they will not be able to edit files owned by the SoFA Team from that (community) account.
Images are harder to transfer during the migration. If you can, please copy important images, videos, and graphics to the folders you’ve been using in our shared SoFA Google Drive; we would be very helpful for that assistance.
Thank you!
Recent Groundhogg training
Last week, Audrée Morin and Zujeil Flores hosted a training session describing how to interact with organization information in our CRM system, Groundhogg. If you’re interested, the recording of that session is available on our SoFA Drive for you to attend.
Upcoming IT tools training: June 14th
The Log Keeping team organized a first training and co-working session around how we use IT tools in SoFA back in March, and we are offering this training again on June 14th. At this next version of the training we are planning on including more opportunities to practice using the tools with each other.
SoMBu broadcaster role
Please note that we are still looking for a new person who wants to take on the work of putting together regular SoMBu broadcasts.