Council 2006 05
In attendance:
- shawn f. (facilitator) - stacy (co-fac) - bil - shawn p. - laurel - matteo - tony - seamus - oso - jim - sophia - tim - rob - jesse - dave - jeanne - martin (scribess) - jeff - pete - john - kermit - rick - nathan - scott - others were late
Previous Commitments: 5-10 min
- Staff: Report on Volunteer program DONE
- Phil: train more tour guides on how to talk about monitors.
CARRYOVER
- Martin: get Uganda pics posted to the web (this is a request from
Pete!) IN PROGRESS
- Jeff S. (et al): meet to resume space usage discussion. DONE
- ????: (scribe missed this.) Jeff S. requested that somebody speak
about an Advisory Board. There was some discussion at this
meeting, not sure if anybody committed to look into this further.
- Matteo (et al): Convene to discuss hiring priorities. DONE
- All: discuss receiving internship on email list and elsewhere, in
preparation to make a decision next month. DONE
- Mark will announce a web site he's aware of about board
nominations. (correction: non-profit information) CARRYOVER ++
- Stacy, Laurel, Pete, All will think about possible Board
nominees, and refer them to New Director Agreement. CARRYOVER ++
- Martin: Convene a group to discuss blind linux distro needs
assessment. CARRYOVER +INFINITY
- Martin: Convene the ambassador's group (forgotten) CARRYOVER ++
Reports: 5-10 min
- Grantwriters: we got another grant! yay! we're on tv. we will
have video cameras. phil has a job!
wait - we hired phil? he said he didn't want a job! and don't
we have a policy about not letting grants specify that we hire
someone? what's up, accountability?
Business
- Council/Staff interaction on hiring etc. (Pete) 15 min
concerns about role-blur between council and staff. council is
critical of staff, but that is good on some levels. staff needs
to be transparent on their decision making processes to council
to promote trust. council needs to focus on big-picture issues,
and then articulate them well to staff and core.
sophia: shawn's report on staff hour usage was good
oso: i perceive turf wars going on. simple mission statements
for different groups will clarify.
laurel: (reads the council definition from wiki and bylaws)
martin: has a proposal relating to this later
steve: we need to very clearly define the group roles, or the
democracy will interfere with the functioning of the
organization.
nathan: where is the lack of trust?
pete: hugest is that council is not in on the everyday
discussions that staff have, and so staff don't take them into
account. not mistrust of motives.
oso: proposals drive council, and everyone has the power to add
them in. process is out of control.
laurel: staff deal with implementation. council deals with
concepts.
jeff: not a question of motives. volunteers don't always feel
their concerns are address and responded to (later). staff make
lots of decisions, but where are they published?
jim: isn't hiring staff's function? how would you limit
proposals and preserve democracy?
rob: you guys seem to be doing fine, no?
- Hiring Priorities Report/Recommendation 10 min
http://lists.freegeek.org/pipermail/council/2006-April/001545.html
PROPOSAL: Assume $11,000 per quarter surplus. distribute as
follows:
- core breakfast
- +12 hours of floor shifts
- laptop intern @ 24/hrs per week
- 75% of remaining surplus towards pay raise
- 25% of remaining to build operational reserves
then have the grant writing priorities:
- forklift (as needed)
- baler
- vehicle
laurel: structure for opening up grants for discussion will
help transparency
nathan: laptop intern hiring is moving ahead according to
process.
oso: other things can happen and are even in the works...
nathan: hr committee talks about this a bunch
scott: how much of a pay raise?
not much, 5-8%.
pete: how certain is $11,000?
we're setting it into the budget like that.
tim: advanced receiving intern needs to be considered.
jeff: we could meet again next quarter on this if our numbers
are too far off.
seamus: the board didn't get to meet over these, so will need
to approve this.
CONSENSUS - PENDING BOARD APPROVAL
- Free Geek franchising and trademark issues (shawn?) 10 min
trademark our name so not just anyone can use our name. come
up with a process by which organizations can join freegeek
"intergalactic". lots of new startups that need help through
howtos and checklists and applications. some freegeeks are
already established, and will need to give name rights over to
us, and then be grandfathered in.
jeff: who's in charge of this? so far, c7.
oso: wiki pages on all this. "intergalactic" will likely
eventually become its own organization. how will we enforce
all this? we want an anual or bianual meeting of the
intergalactic congress.
shawn p.: what issues will the congress address?
review new applicants, share information, shared governance of
freegeek principles
jim: higher level governance body means we become a peer.
steve: stop our name from being used for evil
kermit: defend our name
- Big corporate donors of stuff (i.e. Providence) (dave?) 10 min
http://lists.freegeek.org/pipermail/council/2006-May/001632.html
This is in the works, but providence wants to switch recyclers
to us (!), which means ~1200 systems a month, moderately high
quality, no harddrives, ... so what does it take for us to
deal with this and not crumble? they need to make a $5/system
donation so that we can be open another day, cover recycling
better, seek external storage, get a baler... we would benefit
from this on many levels (production, recycling income, average
spec). gresham could take some of the surplus.
seamus: what's our current production?
400 systems
seamus: how many can we possibly make?
500-600
seamus: are we selling higher spec machines already?
yes
oso: bulk sales of systems get things out quickly.
jeanne: lincoln city can take systems too, hopefully.
jeff: how will we be addressing increases in build?
increased storage space, extra day open.
kermit: will providence have to approve moving systems to other
freegeeks? similar systems move quickly.
shawn: no harddrives
we'll just use the smaller ones from recycled systems
???: ebay
nathan: there is a working group for this which everyone
interested, and we will all need to work together to address
this. we may also attract other large donors.
shawn: this group will continue meeting. announcements will
follow.
- Internship hiring guideline proposal (martin) 5 min
http://lists.freegeek.org/pipermail/council/2006-May/001627.html
PROPOSAL: add to the hiring priorities a reminder that paid
internships create inequity, can be misleading, and should not
be used unless:
- the position is low stress
- the position is necessarily temporary
- we are unsure of our need for the position in the long term
in the third case, we should, prior to hiring, define a clear
set of criteria by which we later decide that a position become
permanent or not.
jeff: does this change the method to hiring?
laurel: in September of 2004 we decided Staff could move a
non-collective member into the collective by unanimous,
non-stand-aside agreement.
nathan: how is this different from the normal method?
martin: we want to make the method we use formal.
jim: what if the internship changes the criteria?
martin: we'd have to go into an open hiring or otherwise follow
policy.
nathan: should we decide this here or at staff?
dave: maybe this should go through HR.
martin: council had many months of decisions about this, and so
sees a need for a policy.
seamus: well, we need to talk about why we have interns, and
then decide about interns
rick: needs to be more clearly stated about the way of interns.
pete: concern: a big part of the problem has been communication
between interns and the staff about the criteria.
martin/pete: that council need to have a word in the criteria.
pete: a big priority is that the intern have a good sense, when
hired, about what's going on.
oso: granted, it's not gone smoothly in the past, and we're
trying to avoid some of this. On the staff level, it's
appreciated, due to a variety of reasons, people were
dropped and not supported, and that didn't work. but
there's a lot more staff oversight to prevent exactly what
you're talking about. we learned from those failures.
seamus: we need more conversation
martin drops propopsal -- carry over to next month.
- Receiving Coverage (martin) 10 min
seamus: +12 hours of floor shifts with an emphasis on
receiving.
nathan: basic receiving is fine, advanced receiving is falling
apart.
oso: staff should be able to handle it at this point.
dave: basic receiving is not handled fine - we're hiring temps
too much
PROPOSAL: table this to staff
tim: i want to pay attention to ebay, but could help do both
- Space usage report/decision regarding process (jeff) 10 min
http://lists.freegeek.org/pipermail/council/2006-May/001605.html
oso: no decisions were made, we just made "might be" plans for
the long-term... nothing will hold up over time. we will
announce further meetings. we have proposals at this time.
TABLED till next meeting.
- Propogation of concerns (martin) 5 min
http://lists.freegeek.org/pipermail/council/2006-May/001628.html
PROPOSAL: 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.
TABLED till next meeting.
- Core program (jeff) 5 min
TABLED till next meeting.
- Accountability (jeff) 5 min
TABLED till next meeting.
Next Meeting:
When: June 21st, 7:15pm
Commits:
- Phil: train more tour guides on how to talk about monitors.
CARRYOVER
- Martin: get Uganda pics posted to the web (this is a request from
Pete!) IN PROGRESS
- Mark will announce a web site he's aware of about board
nominations. (correction: non-profit information) CARRYOVER ++
- Stacy, Laurel, Pete, All will think about possible Board
nominees, and refer them to New Director Agreement. No more
carryovers allowed. CARRYOVER ++
- Martin: Convene a group to discuss blind linux distro needs
assessment. CARRYOVER +INFINITY
- Martin: Convene the ambassador's group (forgotten) CARRYOVER ++
- Oso: report on how phil got hired
- Shawn: will announce next providence meeting to core, council,
board
- martin: will carry over the hiring priorities proposal.
- staff: report on receiving coverage
agenda:
- Internship hiring guideline proposal (martin)
- Space usage report/decision regarding process (jeff)
- Propogation of concerns (martin)
- Core program (jeff)
- Accountability (jeff)
facilitator: stacy
scribess: seamus