Council 2006 06

• Date: June 21st, 7:15pm
• Facilitator: RevPhil
• Scribe: Seamus
• Place: Free Geek

Attendance

Michael, Kerm, Jac, Laurel, Debbie, Phil, Jeanne, John, Richard, Dave, Matteo, Steve, Seamus, Jim, Emily, Martin, Seamus, Wren, Rick; Late: Jeff, Bobby, Sam

Richard explains the history of Council. Laurel notes that a council orientation page is being prepared (Council Orientation on the wiki).

Old Commitments

• Phil: train more guides. IN PROGRESS
• Martin: get Uganda pics posted DONE
• Mark: Non-profit-info site info DROPPED
• ALL: Find Board Nominees DROPPED
• Martin: Blind Linux group meeting DROPPED
• Martin: Ambassador's group DONE
• Oso: Phil's hiring report CARRYOVER
• Shawn: announce next Providence mtg DONE
• Martin: hiring priorities proposal discussion to Council list DONE
• Staff: recieving coverage report DONE

Reports

Receiving Report

Receiving coverage: staff are covering, with some subs. new intern Katrina has been hired, starting mid-june.

Volunteer Program report

See Council list.

Build report

See Council list. Could use extra Eval 1 hands.

Board report

Budget expansion passed. Core breakfast! Marie + Joe may not stand for reelection in October.

Old Business

Internship Guidelines Proposal

• Presenter: Martin

"add to the hiring guidelines a reminder that paid internships create inequality, 
 can be misleading, and should not be used unless:
 - the position is low stress
 - the position is necessarily temporary
 - we are unsure of the need for the position in the long term 
 in the third case, we should, prior to the hiring, define a clear set of criteria 
 by which we later decide if a position becomes permanent or not."

There were two concerns at the last meeting. Martin tried to address these concerns via email. He didn't hear back after his initial response, and neither of the sources were present, so we considered those concerns met. He expressed that the purpose of the proposal is not to create new policy, but to formalize existing processes.

A couple concerns were raised. It was suggested that exploratory internships may exist, in part, to define the criteria by which they would be evaluated for position-creation, and perhaps it would be best to define up front a default action for the end of the internship instead. A lot of people had issues with the phrase "low stress". We clarified that the three bullet points of the proposal are "OR" conditions, not "AND". We made some small alterations to the text:

"add to the hiring guidelines a reminder that paid internships create inequality, 
 can be misleading, and should not be used unless:
 - the position is lower stress
 OR the position is necessarily temporary
 OR we are unsure of the need for the position in the long term
 in the third case, we should, prior to the hiring, define a clear set of criteria 
 by which we later decide that a position become permanent or not."

And then we ran out of time and agreed to move it to the list for further language refinement. CARRYOVER for July.

Propogation of Concerns

• Presenter: martin

"when anyone is approached with a concern, question or idea, it should be taken to
 the group of most specificity which would sensibly be interested and/or 
 responsible for addressing it. That group is then responsible for addressing it 
 within a month. After that, the requestor is given the opportunity to go to a 
 group of less specificity with both the original issue and to address the failure 
 in the responsiveness of whatever group was tasked with their issue first."

Martin wants not so much to make policy but to make a process that is clear to people trying to get concerns addressed as to how they can go about it. DROPPED as a proposal. Martin COMMITS to putting it on the wiki.

New Business

Providence

• Proposal from Providence meeting:

"We agree that the Providence proposition falls within our mission, but if the 
 concerns enumerated in the minutes can not be addressed then this proposal does 
 not fall within our capacity. We suggest the council create a working group to
 create plans to address these concerns."

• Minutes @ http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Providence_Planning_06_2006

This is a huge issue that everyone should be aware of. There was some debate about whether this is a good idea for FG; whether we are ready to experience so much growth.

CONSENSUS: the Council agrees with the proposal above. CONSENSUS: the Council creates a new Providence working group to create plans to address the concerns identified by the previous meeting. The first meeting will be Tuesday, June 27th, at 7:15.

One concern was the initial scope of the working group. Some felt that we should empower the group to negotiate and begin implementation of the agreement with Providence, in order to make sure that our end moves at a business-like pace. Others noted that contracts are specifically the responsibility of the Board. It was also noted that Providence will probably spend another month putting together a Request For Proposal, and then the process of taking our response and finalizing would likely be at least another month, so we do not need to finish this discussion immediately.

For the time being, Council has not empowered the working group to do anything more than consider the obstacles and plan for how to deal with them.

Laptop Coordinator Intro

I'm Jeff! Come in and help out with laptops!

Printer Coordinator

Guy has resigned; he will still be around as a volunteer. Staff isn't really sure what to do about it yet. HR is reassessing. We may want more of a generalist than a printer-specific person. We discussed the relative merits of hiring a generalist right now vs a new printer coordinator.

CONSENSUS: empower staff to define a position for and hire a general staff person.

New Commitments

• Martin will write about escalation of concerns for the wiki.
• Providence working group will meet and report regularly to Council
• Oso: Phil hiring report

Next Meeting

• Facilitator: Seamus
• Scribe:
• Minutes Checker:
• Date and time: July 19, 7:15
• Place: Free Geek
• Unfinished business
  • Process : staff to present
  • Ambassadors: pushed back to next month
  • Space usage report/decision regarding process (jeff)
  • Propogation of concerns (martin)
  • Core program (jeff)
  • Accountability (jeff)
  • Board/budget report (seamus or other director)