Fire Family Council Retreat Notes
How to read these notes: “Consensus Proposals” appear at the point in the meeting that they were proposed, but their wording was adjusted during the course of the following discussion so that only their final form appears in the notes. Bookmarked items requiring future discussion are marked with ~~~~~
Feb. 22, 2007
Present: Morwen, Shimmering Wolf, Una, Jimi, Jason, Sylvia, Tao, Jasper, Rodger, Raven; James Bianchi for second half of Feb. 22. No notes were taken because the agenda primarily concerned resolving past and personal issues.
Feb 23, 2007
Present: Morwen, Shimmering Wolf, Una, Jimi, Jason, Sylvia, Tao, Jasper, Rodger; James Bianchi for first half of Feb. 23.
Jimi: Agenda. First James (20 min), then finish visioning. Then lunch. Then decision-making process. Lunch 1-1:30.
Morwen: next piece should be structure of council and job description of council members. Are council and production team same people? Once we have description, we can see if we want to do it, and then do nominations today or tomorrow.
I. James’ Presentation:
How to avoid ten mistakes organizations make:
1. Develop decision making calendar. You make same decisions at same time every year. First evaluate your program, then set goals, then set budget, then start again. Miss one, takes forever to accomplish anything.
2. Meetings: Let committee chairs summarize everything. Delegate everything to the project chair. Focus on solving problems, not micromanaging people you’ve put into power.
3. Minutes: Need to show date, who is present, and what is decided. But also need policy book where all financial, policy, employment, etc. decisions are recorded on their own pages. Repeat what decision was before it goes into minutes.
4. Money: are you solvent? Are you within budget? Answer these two questions, avoid presenting every detail of cost. Delegate to project manager their allocation; don’t micromanage their budgets as long as what they ask for is within it.
5. Money II. Three stages. a. authorize people to spend what they have. b. Put costs to goals and project revenues, cut back if there’s a big difference. c. final statement to plan better for following year.
6. Goal setting: think 1, 5, and 10 years out. Goal formula: a timeframe, an objective, an evaluation of how you did. 5 year is for extensive projects, 10 year is for big things like acquiring endowment or land. Now determine who is responsible for developing management plan and budget for each goal.
7. You are a tool for change: allow for flexibility in and reframing of goals. This is why you set goals every year.
8. Council binder with names, policies, bylaws, budget.
9. Structure. Formality of process protects you when problem arises, from making ex post facto rules. Create policy to address problems as they arise, don’t just reinvent the role.
10. Policy. Need to have one for media and PR (consistent message) and finance. Every year, every project manager should write an outline of what they did so their replacements don’t reinvent the wheel. Require this at time of yearly evaluations.
~~~~~External communications: we need to decide how to make council voice heard in public forums (email lists) and to what extent individuals can speak for council.
~~~~~Filing for federal non-profit status. James says it’s a straightforward process. They don’t look at your personal income taxes. Justification for status is already addressed in bylaws.
- Morwen will remove “draft” from top of bylaws and email copy to James.
Tao: bylaws and budget got posted on website and he has paper copies for everybody.
II. Visioning
Jasper: there are concrete issues that need to be addressed. What is the goal of this gathering? What do we commit to provide? Community involvement, staff size and infrastructure: will it be a huge production or a bare-bones container for the community to fill out? Size of gathering.
So key questions are:
Size
Infrastructure complexity
Community participation
Tao: that is, is it about trying to bring in as many people to staff as we can or is it a minimum number to get the job done?
Jasper: 150-200 people feels right if we’re at Cutter. In favor of simple event, framed as us providing container. Let’s revisit assumptions about what community expects (e.g. snugglers’ lounge). We let needs arise and invite community to step up and do it. Clarity to community re. what container can allow. Our role then becomes coordination, not details.
SW: 250 good maximum size. Council should guide workshops, affinity groups in terms of providing direction and staying in alignment with our vision. Some project oversight of community task forces is necessary. Also, outreach. How do we provide guidance to other fire circles. Maybe have one person in charge different from media person, who reports to council.
Jimi: 250 is my cap. Last year not quite critical mass. How do we cap it compassionately? Many could not attend last year.
We should provide infrastructure on site, e.g. large tents, etc. Community gets to fill it up and decorate it.
I like less is more. We need to guide affinity groups so we have consistency of vision, but also because it’s a gateway for new people to come in without a lot of commitment. But we should involve other noncouncil people with good ideas for workshops.
Don’t like work study; either on staff or not. Accountability and class issues. First timers should not be on staff.
Morwen: I’m in alignment size-wise. Get intimacy and connection with small size. 300 okay, but not over.
Really want it to be clear to community that responsibility goes along with participation. Some kind of “vision control” needed. Oasis is a good example of how community can participate, not just an add-on. Later, let’s talk about what things to drop or delegate. My idea: Set up committees with one council person on them and then let community sign up for them. Entry barriers low but expectations high.
Una: 250-250 size. Caps should be first-come, first-served.
Create skeletal structure and letting community fill it. Perhaps have council point person for each area. We could screen by letting people submit proposals for projects. Council or committee decides if it’s appropriate. Spontaneous projects: deal with on the spot if not in alignment.
Jason: 150-200 is best. 250 okay, but 300 is not. Can agree on a cap and set it for certain number of years.
Capping is easy: first come, first served. Make it clear from outset.
The more we can lose the Firedance karma, the better. I like us planning affinity groups and letting community do workshops, or some combo. Don’t just drop them when they show up. Let people know first slot of workshops is community-planned, 2nd are
Staffwise: At Forestdance, we have buddy system. 2 people covering each other and picking complementary tasks. This helps team leader not get overwhelmed. We can use teams with team leader. Let community choose team, not about shifts but building something together and deepening our connections, learn something about how to bring this home.
One’s person devil is another’s angel. If it’s going to hurt anyone or scare a lot of people, we should talk about it, but must be careful not to impose our spiritual preferences on others.
This council should walk its talk in difficult areas. We must follow the rules we make.
Sylvia: cap at 250.
Certain areas need more attention, like fire. Need point persons on these. And have people submit proposals for things that take up a footprint, ie. Installations. Work out space and resource issues in advance. Must also create forum for people to work out difficult issues and conflicts, this is what they’re here for. Strong mediation needed.
Rodger: Size-wise, we need to consider break-even point. Cap of 200-250 fine. First come, first serve needs proactivity on part of registration people to give good warning.
Installation/footprint piece with proposals is good. The other side is programming. To what extent are we hiring teachers to present workshops and how much does community bring it to us? We may need to provide comps or travel expenses for someone really talented to come.
How do we show people where to plug into various areas (drumming, healing, fire)? Instead of evening orientation, let’s have more interactive setup. Let first day workshops cover 6-8 ways to plug in, and people could go around like a bazaar and collect tokens from each so they get the full story of what we do.
We need enough staff to handle bottom lines. Enough control so things don’t fall through cracks. Whole concept of gathering is co-creation, though.
Tao: size: 200, not 250. Bigger event, more things ride on going smoothly. Eg. If Fire Tribe
Council needs to ensure bottom line on event coming off, safety, and defining spaces for people to come into. Model is open-source. Limited number of slots for sessions. Anyone can submit proposal for session, then everyone registered can rate interest in attending that session. We can exert some veto power but this lets people exert their will directly. If we have to bring in some talent, okay, but in general, let community step up and give them some room to fail too. We don’t currently have more drum teachers because we have that “master” drummer thing covered.
Affinity groups: at FT Hawaii: everyone gets signed up and a council member is in charge of each group. Meet every day, have areas of responsibility, provide support for each other.
~~~~~Drumming teachers vs. community drumming vs. discussion-based teaching around the drums.
Revisit round:
Jasper: Worried that if we have committees with council members as team leaders, only leader will show up and others will bail. At FTH, leader made clear multiple times that I’m not bottom line, this is our event. Can we cut out committees and have process that lets us monitor but doesn’t have us on the hook if things don’t happen?
SW: Need to remember beginner’s mind. Like kitchen-sink orientation idea of Rodger’s. Last orientation didn’t go smoothly. To make more effective, we need to engender attitudes of communal responsibility/ownership by distilling guts of what they mean, define expectations of what attitudes people should bring. Then have some kind of infrastructure built around idea of right attitudes.
Task force or committee to make recommendations on what ‘talent’ to bring in. Feedback from participants should be integrated into deciding what we can deliver to community. Evaluation could happen as an onsite meeting to discuss where community wants to go vs. what our vision was.
Jimi: Registration cap also has class issues. Don’t want to close out people who wait because they don’t have the money. We can count our chickens for planning purposes by setting up deposit and balance payment system. If you don’t pay balance by due date, you pay extra.
Like ‘tokens’ idea. More generally, need inclusive, participatory orientation.
Team building is about looking at this as ‘the journey is the destination’. It’s not about people just paying money to be at an event.
A good facilitator is not someone who does all the work, but motivates other. Committees fail when leaders don’t facilitate well. There must be accountability and performance reviews. Committees can be accommodated if this is met.
Committee to select submitted proposals in line with our values at the time can be accommodated.
Best part of Rites of Spring is “village building” by groves. All there with common purpose. Everyone picks a crew to work on like affinity group. Problem is when it’s over and actual gathering begins, it feels anticlimactic and we also lose ownership to all the paid participants.
Morwen: Our Arts and Environment group comes up with theme every year around Earth Day. Gives us a focus within larger context. Might do this to help people shape what they contribute.
Last year, we intended to frame affinity groups as service groups. I like this model. But don’t want people to think: I’m a drummer so I don’t have to clean toilets, or do any other kind of work. Don’t want to get rid of “work shifts” idea altogether. How can infrastructure and work/service teams interface?
Committees can be positive. I’m thinking of pre-production work now. We want to avoid people flaking out, as Jasper fears. Committee provides formalized structure for how larger community can plug into pre-production work, and it’s a training ground for joining council, etc.
Cap: don’t want to lose awareness of how much work it was to follow up on those deposits. Still a good way but need to make sure it doesn’t all fall on Registrar person. Also, we might want to hold 10 or so spaces. Sometimes, we might want to invite someone a week before the gathering. Don’t want to play favorites here, but may want some flexibility. Close to gathering, we could release these spaces to a waiting list. Would not recommend that we publicize this process. Or, we could just decide to go over our cap.
Workshops: like Jason’s idea of combo of council-set and wide-open community workshops. Like idea of letting community rank workshop preferences. If our purpose is to build local community, we may want to specifically invite and comp a limited number of local people (no travel costs involved!).
Una: I like diversity in our community. Must be mindful of imposing our own preferences on our vision of workshops. Mixed feelings about paying teachers to come; there are many in our community just waiting for chance to offer. Need some combo. of “stars” and others. Maybe we don’t need workshops at all; let people socialize during the day. Don’t always need to fill up space. Need to let people know we are not “putting on an event” or “producing” it in our PR. We don’t need to respond to pressure of people’s expectations to entertain them.
Love Rodger’s orientation idea. I have vision of labyrinth and let people walk it, gain pieces of wisdom as they go. Let it be part of welcoming process.
Staff: We’ve been overstaffed. Not enough work to do disempowers people who show up to work. Need minimum amount; ask, what is the work that absolutely must get done?
Jason: Don’t like idea of holding spaces for people who are skilled or who we know, and secrecy around it is even more problematic. We must have integrity and be transparent. We can put it out to community if there’s a problem with our cap.
If we cap at 250 instead of 200, let’s cut costs. Also, there’s a difference between comping people and paying for them to fly in. At Forest Dance, we’re doing 1100 mile club. Price for full week at FD is $210. To afford to bring in juicy people, we tell people on registration page that we need to fly in some teachers as well as honoring existing local teachers. We ask them to make donations for flying teachers in and then we track this money….???. We will additionally offer a sliding scale, do scholarships, and ask people to make donations to the non-profit.
We could make agreement with teachers that they will only get flown in a certain number of years.
Committees: we can tell people that if you’re feeling fried and burned out, don’t show up.
Need a gentle landing at our gathering that last morning; not rushing people out. Give people time to rest, integrate, talk. A good day not to have workshops.
Sylvia: love idea of community workshops. There’s a polling function in Yahoo that works well. But do it so you can’t see running totals and have turn into competitive popularity contest.
I like have workshops because people come to learn new things. We should decide what is essential for people to learn at this event. If community doesn’t offer it, we could provide it.
Sometimes, people need a certain amount of training to be part of infrastructure team. Need to make sure we get enough time to train those folks, e.g. for healing work.
Rodger: one community workshop model from the past is that people come to gathering and say “I want to do this”. This gives us no control. Proposals in advance give us more control.
I support letting local drummers give workshops. But fire circle and community drumming differ from ethnotraditional drumming, and latter doesn’t necessarily translate over well. How do we integrate to make it work at fire circle? One workshop criteria in past has been to make one’s topic relate back to the fire somehow.
People make choices to prioritize fire vs. daytime workshops. This is just a choice people make and whatever we do, some people will complain.
Electronic divide issue comes up with creation of polling system. (Comes up also with registration.)
Tao: Technology for voting is easy to create.
Would like to see event made cheaper without going lower than our break-even point.
Una: registration doesn’t have to be purely web-based. There are other local options, although it does involve more work. Should consider them.
Jason: Re. teachers, community can decide who to fly in.
~~~~~ Food plan and relation to registration costs.
Consensus: Council agrees to a cap of 200 paid participants, of which some portion will be village builders. No more than 250 bodies on site will be allowed.
III. Council Decision-Making Process
Rodger: We need a) big-order consensus process we use when we’re meeting in person b) a process when we meet by phone or email c) an emergency process for when we can’t have full process.
Morwen: we also need to delegate decision making power to the lowest level possible to get the job done well. Major decisions should happen by consensus.
Jimi: We should decide what are bottom line decisions that need to be made by consensus? Of these, some decisions will have time limits. For these, we should use the fallback. Consensus-majority should be the fallback process. You try for consensus 3 times; if you don’t get it, you go to majority vote.
Jasper: As well as for those decisions that don’t require consensus, what will the process be?
Tao: This is probably our last in-person meeting before the event. So the email/phone process is the most important for us.
Rodger: As part of non-consensus process, we need to know what constitutes a quorum, i.e. the minimum number of people needed to make a binding decision.
Morwen: Bylaws say we’ll decide on quorum.
There’s a distinction between consensus as vision/concept and as formal process. Our vision is for a process in which everyone feels they can at least live with a decision. When fallback is majority vote, I’d advocate for a 2/3 or ¾ majority. The formal process piece has several models/techniques, but the goal remains the same.
Jimi: If 9 people are at a meeting and that’s a quorum, the 2 people absent are saying implicitly that they trust the rest of the group to make the decision.
Una: Is it beneficial to explain what 3 methodologies are?
Tao: I felt frustrated last year by the tactic of accepting consensus model but not having concrete process in place.
SW: In terms of email, we need to decide where the consensus is necessary, depending on the decision. What are parameters for decisions requiring consensus?
Sylvia: Positioning and ego derive from two party system, which always has winners and losers. Consensus is an agreement to seek agreement. Changes psychology.
Jason: We’re all busy. Need email process.
Jimi: Consensus on phone is similar and in some ways better than consensus in person. It can work both places. On email, there must be clear parameters on how we communicate. Just want some bottom lines right now on difference between consensus vs. majority decisions. Examples of former: site, budget, who’s on the council.
Morwen: Consensus also makes space for the minority voice. Not pressure for unanimity. Last year I sent articles to Tao and Jasper. Can you make copies and pass it on to those requesting more information on consensus?
How do we adapt consensus concept to email?
Rodger: Some of us have a low threshold for “me too” emails and others need to hear it to feel that everyone is paying attention. Our email process should include acknowledgement and negative acknowledgement (block) within a given timeframe. We put out a proposal, gather feedback, and then have everyone send acknowledgement or block and then have a second call of the question as a “last call” for input.
Tao: If you’re really sending out a proposal, capitalize “proposal” in the subject heading. When we’re in person, have enough time, and dealing with subjects that affect event as a whole, shall we use consensus?
Jimi: I need acknowledgement for my emails. Also, I sort email by date and subject. If you’d like to answer that subject, keep it in that subject line. If you’re starting another thread, don’t just hit reply; change the subject line.
Jasper: I’d like a whole netiquette manual for us which council members must agree to: response windows, e.g.
Morwen: Because we’re bicoastal, we need email but we’re setting up a situation in which people who are not email enabled cannot be on the council. Should be aware of this even if we decide that’s okay to do.
Jason: We could include an onsite advisory position for someone not on the grid, but we need email as a tool.
Una: If someone is committed enough, they can get access.
~~~~This will be part of our job description for council members: email access.
Tao proposes to adopt consensus decision making as a baseline for meetings that happen in person, with enough time to make decisions, dealing with questions that affect event as a whole. This does not have to be the only time we will use consensus.
Rodger: No blocking concern here, but we should specify a concrete consensus method to be using.
SW: What does “enough time” mean?
Morwen: If there’s an externally imposed deadline like a contract with the camp, we would try for consensus but if deadline looms, we go for fallback. Or if we try for consensus 3 times and don’t get it, we use fallback.
Jason: Amend to “in person on site” and “affect event as a whole” to and “decisions affecting council”.
Una: “enough time” is circumstantial; a given deadline.
Sylvia: or when we’re burned out or it’s the end of the festival and we’re all leaving. Anytime we feel that we don’t have enough time for a particular topic. Something in the moment.
Rodger: Or before the festival. Other alternative to a fallback process is deciding to table the proposal.
Morwen: This part of the discussion gets into when to use the fallback method, which we’ll get into as we flesh this out.
All textbooks warn that if there’s a time crunch, consensus does not work well.
Consensus Proposal: Council will adopt a particular consensus process, the rules of which will be named later, in circumstances when we’re all meeting in person, dealing with a decision that significantly affects the gathering, and we the people meeting agree there is enough time to use it.
Morwen: So we’re talking about consensus-level decision making for email/phone, in person, also fallback, and delegation of decisions to lowest level.
Jasper: I’d like some other option for another model besides consensus.
Morwen: Various decision-making models: After consensus, supermajority model comes one step down. Then 51% majority. Further down on the continuum are: delegation to people most affected by decisions, delegation to committees of people affected, delegation of decision to experts, autocratic with input, autocratic with no input. Can we learn about various possible processes rather than try to list all decisions under each method, with understanding that we try to get biggest buy-in from everyone possible?
~~~When we discuss nominations, let’s talk about possibility of not nominating people when they’re in the room.
Jimi: One model of a committee is one that makes a decision, then they become responsible and report back. Another model tasks a committee to come up with recommendations that the committee must get board approval on. The more of the former we can do, the better.
Rodger: Wants more clarity on what supermajority might be; could it be ¾ of the whole body, for example, or can it be ¾ of a quorum present?
Morwen: I’d say only if quorum is a significant majority of the council. And we might want to poll people who were absent.
Let’s talk about whether to extend last consensus proposal to the phone and/or email?
Rodger: In principle it will work, but might need protocol, like a roll call, to make sure no one is lost in process.
Tao: Not sure if consensus by silence translates well to the phone.
Morwen: My concern is in hearing people’s concerns because we can’t see their body language.
Jimi: We’ve recently called for concerns by roll call when we’re on the phone. Same with consensus in person; must do roll call person by person and ask for their concerns.
Jason: New concerns keep coming up too so we need a process for knowing where each of us are in the queue.
Jasper: So when someone has a concern, we’d stop to discuss it and then continue in pre-established order, just like with feather.
Jason: If someone is not available and we need consensus, we can send them meeting notes and fill them in.
Jasper: But what happens if that person has concerns? Do we need another meeting?
Morwen: Depends on the decision. Yes, if we have a quorum and you’re not there, you imply consent with what group decides. But on some decisions we need to hear from everybody, e.g. with nominations.
What happens when people consistently can’t make meetings? We need to talk about this before it comes up.
Jimi: Decisions requiring consensus should not have to be made over the phone. Consensus by phone should come up in emergencies, not the norm.
Jason: I see the conference call as being the best option for our group given our distance.
Tao: Ideally, most of our decisions will not be those significantly affecting the gathering. We’re now dealing with decisions that don’t significantly affect gathering. To what extent do we use consensus there?
Jason: Consensus for who is going to take responsibility for areas of event, but not on the decisions that person is in turn making.
Morwen: Our model now is to have our big annual meeting at the time of the gathering so consensus can happen there. My proposal would be to educate ourselves about different decision making processes and for every major decision, decide what our process will be. We can ask: “is this consensus, majority, or delegation downstream?” We want many tools at our disposal and to pass on.
Tao: Not sure I agree that gathering is best place to do business.
Morwen: I mean the day afterward or something like that.
Tao:
Una: I like having situational modalities at our disposal.
Tao: Many people have been burned by consensus.
Jimi: you must then ask how much experience they’ve had. Most people use consensus without understanding it. Consensus is really faster than anything we’ve used, but much is delegated.
Sylvia: consensus doesn’t work for every situation, e.g. Rainbow gathering. They have seen attempt to use idealistic principles with highly dysfunctional people. But if you have ways to opt out, limits on blocking, then it works.
Jasper: We’ve been using it and yet the past year was still not a positive one for us. So it’s not just other people, it’s our experience that it’s not easy.
Morwen: having just 1 or 2 experienced people in a group of nonexperienced ones isn’t enough. In the past, I made assumptions that people understood the process and those assumptions weren’t accurate. My good experiences have come from groups that look like this one; about this size and aligned around common goal. We need same basic operating assumptions.
Jason: Let’s remember that we can change this model if it’s not working for us.
Jimi: When I started DNE, we did not have common vision. Board went through many trainings but started with a lot more tension. I left for 8 years, but when I went back, there had been a lot of growth.
Una: most of us have been leery of consensus. I am asking us to move beyond the discomfort and give it another chance based on this new information we’re getting. Jasper: I agree.
Morwen: So to summarize, I heard that we would adapt consensus process to phone calls by calling for concerns and for consensus. And after the concern is addressed, we’d continue where we left off and not go back to the beginning of the roll call list.
Jason: While we’re on the phone is when the process may have to evolve and change. So let’s try it.
Rodger: So part of our process here in person is to get everything written down. My concern is that decisions that don’t go through formal consensus get written down.
Jason: Concern about scheduling phone calls among all of our schedules.
Jimi: Because we do a lot of email and phone, this process lets us slow down enough to hear the proposal and concerns and not have them get lost. Rodger: the phone conferences have been difficult for me. Looking over email, the last time I got a phone conference invitation was in September. Others I heard about offline from different people and sometimes a half hour before the meeting started.
~~~~Rodger and Jasper will work out technology of phone conferencing, maybe change the service we are using.
Tao: One of the nice things about formal consensus is that it shines spotlight on things for recording process, writing things down. Can we get proposal started?
Jimi: Jason, scheduling is all part of the job description. Deciding how often to meet and what happens to people who miss meetings.
Proposal: [As an addendum to the first proposal], we adapt the consensus process to phone meetings by using roll call both to call for concerns and call for consensus.
Jimi: We’re more likely to lose written record of what happens on phone calls so we need to use this formal process there.
Tao: All consensus we use should involve requirement to record any decision we make.
Jasper: Who calls for concerns?
Morwen: The facilitator. There isn’t just one way to do this, though.
Una calls for concerns.
Rodger: drop “as an addendum to first proposal”.
Morwen: Then we put this part in parenthesis because these two proposals are going to wind up side by side in the policy book.
Rodger: So let’s say: “As an addendum to the first proposal, proposal:….”
Jasper: Is this substantive?
Rodger: it’s clarifying because “as an addendum” is just verbiage.
Tao: I agree but this is a level of specificity not necessary here and it sucks my energy.
Jason: We have limited time. Let’s prioritize. Amending for clarity is good, for grammar sucks energy.
Morwen: Tweaking language of proposal depends on envisioning how people in the future will read it. What record of our intentions will be most useful for them?
Jasper: So we’re taking cumulative decisions and put them into policy manual so that some of this language may be edited.
Morwen: Yes.
Rodger: Massaging language after the fact is a problem. Subtleties can get lost. Consensus should set language not to morph. This happened last year and it was difficult for me. Let’s get it right in the moment.
Jason: Massaging process doesn’t affect meaning, just cleaning up. We often post original and edited language side by side.
Una: Can you take a risk here and trust that issue is one of cleaning up, not massaging meaning. When someone has a concern like now and we haven’t satisfied it, what is the process?
Morwen: Some of this will be addressed in articles. If a concern isn’t met, that person can stand aside and not block decision but go on record as having a concern. There’s also standing aside “with reservations” with a record of their rationale. Strongest move is a block.
Sylvia said group needs common understanding of how serious blocking is for the group. Can’t be in a group and constantly blocking all the decisions without asking if you are indeed aligned with that group.
Jimi: this is where failure of consensus comes in, a lack of understanding of what blocking is. Blocking means you remove yourself from the group, not that the group can’t move forward.
Morwen: Sometimes concerns are strong enough to force someone to block based on personal concerns, which can’t stop the group. But if block is about best interest of the group, this is very serious.
Tao: I’m hoping that the process of writing down and repeating will address Rodger’s concern. But if we spend a lot of energy on wording, we can’t move forward substantially.
SW: I echo Rodger’s concern. If we are get consensus on a specific proposal, why would it be morphed in any way?
Jason: Me too, but this isn’t the meat of what Tao is raising.
Sylvia: This is indicative of our learning curve. We’re learning the process right now. This conversation is really about a larger concern about whether we must go through consensus and get nitpicky for every process.
Morwen: Our decisions should express what we mean. I also don’t want to get into nitpicking but still, getting what Rodger said in the notes is important b/c it’s connected to this larger figuring out of how the process works. What we’re doing now is actually very productive.
Jasper: In the question of whether wording of proposals can be changed, there is a trust issue. When we say we can’t change a word of what’s been decided, it says we don’t trust the integrity of the rest of the council. There are safeguards we can put in place to get meat of meaning right. Wording might change when all these proposals go into policy manual to help language flow better, but these don’t affect decisions.
Rodger: I hear your point about trust, but clarity of language is related to clarity of thought.
Jasper: My point was, were we dealing with muddled language or minor grammatical points? Frustration comes when we move away from discussing edits that don’t affect the meat of the proposal.
Consensus Proposal: [As an addendum to the first proposal], we adapt the consensus process to phone meetings by using roll call both to call for concerns and call for consensus.
Jason: Should we have a consensus decision that every decision we make written down, consensus or no?
SW: No.
Morwen: But if we have a majority decision, or decide to delegate to a committee, this needs to be recorded too. Let’s err on side of recording too much. We record the decisions we will need to refer back to later.
Rodger: This is procedural stuff that goes into the manual. So let’s table this.
Morwen: Now we need to talk about reaching decisions over email.
Tao: And we still have a swath of decisions between now and August that cannot be arrived at through consensus. We need to extend process we’ve agreed on to cover these decisions or come up with alternative.
Morwen: We use the process best suited for the decision on the table, and behind that is the assumption that we educate ourselves about different models.
Jimi: Decision of who is on the council was arrived at by consensus. There can be no backup process for this. What are those few decisions we need to make that are purely consensus?
Una: We should stay on track with what we proposed to do.
Morwen: We’ve said that consensus means things that significantly affect gathering. Proposal I’m proposing now relates to things not requiring consensus, and that is to use model best suited to process.
Una: So are you addressing those models now?
Morwen: yes, and I will circulate materials so we can educate ourselves.
Consensus proposal: For decisions that are not made by consensus, we use the decision making process best suited to the decision at hand. To support that, we will undertake to educate ourselves and each other about the decision- making options available. These options include but are not limited to supermajority, simple majority, delegation to committee, delegation to experts, etc.
Morwen: Do we need to specifically list the options available?
Tao: I get the second part, but the first doesn’t really say anything.
Morwen: It acknowledges that there are alternative ways of dealing with things. Options include delegation to committee, experts, majority vote, etc.
Tao: And we’re not limiting ourselves to any one at this point.
Rodger: Proposal seems vague. More useful would be to have the options listed…?
Morwen: I want to emphasize our flexibility with respect to process we use in the moment. It’s not possible for us to list all the decisions we need to make in advance and decide what process to use. I think it’s worth saying that we’re not bound by one way of doing things.
Jasper: part of what you’re saying is that we need official statement on the books that we will educate ourselves and choose in the moment what works for us, without having to state specifics.
Jimi: We should have a list of several of the options and say “options include but are not limited to..”.
Rodger: And we need to decide what “supermajority, etc.” means.
Morwen: Now we decide what fallback is and the email piece.
Tao: Can we do a round of concerns about our email process and record them, then have someone take notes and craft a policy not in this space?
Jason: Seems that we need to make the policy in person now because most of our decisions happen over email.
Tao: I agree but this will involve around 20 details and it will be impossible to do that with the process we’re using now. Maybe we can do multiple rounds of speaking concerns; then someone crafts policy, then we propose it for consensus, as opposed to doing this in real time now.
Morwen: Could something come back tomorrow so we can take time to craft it but still revisit it before we leave?
Jimi: I volunteer to work on this and bring it back to the council because I think I can represent some affected voices.
Jason: based on my experience last year, I ask that if we don’t address email issues here, that we do it in our first phone conference.
Tao: Other volunteers to work on draft?
Rodger: call for volunteers is premature. Let’s do a round of concerns first.
Morwen: I’m willing to work on it too.
Email Policy
Jasper: I would like our policy on email to address timely response, clarity on what we’re calling for consensus on, clarity on when we’re calling for consensus, some other method, or when we’re just chatting. Silence equals consensus doesn’t work for me on email so can we find another way to deal with that.
SW: I echo Jimi’s concern about being clear on what you put on the subject line. Also a call for consensus has a specific key word like “proposal” in the header. What is timely?
Jasper: I don’t know, but some number of days for really important stuff, shorter for things we don’t require consensus on. Perhaps if you’re going out of town, you’re responsible to let council know.
SW: My idea of timeliness is 3-4 days on important decisions. Maybe acknowledgement of receipt of email in some cases. If reply doesn’t come in timely fashion, have some kind of phone tree or followup mechanism. Also, if there are separate decisions to be made, use separate emails.
Jimi: Agree on all of what I’ve heard. Is email access and dealing with email part of job requirement to be on the council? Also, many of us do go away on weekends. I’d like timeliness to be 3-4 business days. If we have a schedule for our phone meetings, this will flow a lot easier. We also need a quorum on emails. If not enough responses are received, we need a follow up mechanism, one that gets fed back into the email conversation loop.
Morwen: Email is important tool for supporting process, putting out language for proposals, discussing concerns. But I suggest we leave any consensus decisions to phone call/roll call process. Figuring out a quorum on email is silly. Timeliness becomes a big issue. Even just acknowledging that one is paying attention and up to speed is important, but actual final stage of that should happen on a conference call.
Jasper: is this for consensus decisions only? Or roll call too?
Morwen: Don’t know but consensus in particular seems difficult over email. Email is useful for sharing information because we don’t all have to be in same place and time, but actual stage of decision should be done by phone.
Jasper: Flip side is that email is self-recording.
Morwen: Yes, and taking notes on conference calls and sending out is something we should keep.
Jimi: And we should post records of decisions in the file section of the yahoo group or the council section of the website.
Una: Concur with much of what I’ve heard. Some decisions could be made over email as we’ve done in the past. It’s beneficial to have conference day on consistent day and time.
Jason: I want to explore how email and phone work together. It can take a long time to reach consensus by phone. We can come up with a list on what to reach consensus on go out over email and then try to reach agreement on them before the phone conference. If we don’t get it, that issue gets elevated to phone conference. Timeliness: my idea is more like a week. Not for acknowledgements but for really reading in depth. Usually takes me more than 3 days to get into depth of many of our decisions. Also think we need consistency of when phone meetings are.
Sylvia: Like idea of trying to hammer things out on email and if we can’t, move it to the phone. We haven’t tried to apply this to email with caveats of subject headings, acknowledgements. If we can do this great, if not, now we have a way of dealing with it on the phone. Consistent phone meeting time will make this work.
Rodger: Fact that we don’t all have to be on email at same moment means better chance that everyone or at least a quorum will see it. Leaving about a week to go from initial proposal to completion resonates with me. We might want to explore Yahoo polls for addressing proposals and concerns as opposed to relying on long message threads. In terms of consensus process and group rules, in the past there’s been an unspoken agreement that someone who is absent trusts the group to make good binding decisions. This applies to email too. If we get 9/10 people responding in allotted time, this effectively constitutes a quorum, so long as people know what “response window” is ahead of time.
Do we need more granularity on subject headings than just “Proposal”?
Jason: i.e. using: “Re. Proposal____, Rodger’s concern.”
Rodger: As long as they don’t get too long and the new piece of information gets lost somewhere at the bottom.
Tao: All my concerns have been addressed.
Morwen: I want to revisit timeliness issue. I have 2 ideas. When Jasper first spoke, I thought she meant a timeframe for getting a ping back from someone, not the same thing as getting agreement on a decision. My concerns for timeline are about participation, not how fast a decision gets made. Timeframe will vary depending on complexity of decision.
Tao: If there are decisions with deadlines attached, this should be explicitly stated in subject line.
Rodger: Should we use “confirmation on receipt/read” feature?
Jimi: No, gets caught in spam filters.
Tao: and not everyone has it.
Jason: If we’re continually feeding email list and it’s growing and there’s a 3 day deadline, the thread gets too long. I’d like to see there be a day by which the work must be completed and space made for new things to come in. this could be the day before the phone conference or the day before the vote.
Tao: I am now in agreement with idea of working out what we can by email and then leaving unresolved issues for phone.
Jason: I just want one email that lists all the decisions we need to vote on and says how many days we have to pass it, because I don’t think we will have enough time on the phone to pass every unresolved issue. I think email could be used for voting, not just information sharing.
Morwen: We could just stay open to fact that some decisions will fall naturally into email framework but that we use phone call for most consensus decisions.
SW: And conversely, if there’s a decision being made on email that one of us thinks should be made on the phone, we should move process to phone.
Morwen: But this can be an invitation to long phone calls about very difficult issues.
Rodger: I volunteer to work on drafting email policy with Jimi and Morwen.
Fallback Process from Consensus
Morwen: Must address what we want to use for fallback, and under what conditions do we use it?
Jimi: And quorum.
Morwen: Fallback to consensus is usually supermajority.
Question arose as to whether we needed supermajority of total body or of quorum.
Rodger: Based on principle of if you’re not there, you trust the group, than your supermajority is a percentage of the quorum. If you say that SM is percentage of whole group, you’re assuming everyone there disagrees with your decision.
Jason: I like other way better because it implies you are abstaining.
Morwen: Let’s get back to order of discussion. I say we talk about fallback process first, then conditions for invoking it.
Jasper: I’m inclined to put off quorum piece until tomorrow and do structure piece tonight.
Jimi: Quorum shouldn’t depend on how many people are in the council. We use 80/80 formula: 80 percent of group is a quorum, and 80 percent of whoever is present is the supermajority. That way it doesn’t depend on actual numbers. We need to know if we’re defining things this way before we decide on percentages. It’s a way of working with flexible memberships of groups, so over time you get highest quality of mathematical figure.
Morwen: If we want to do SM fallback, we can decide that and define conditions and decide on quorum numbers or percentages tomorrow.
Jimi calls for consensus on whether to do this.
Jason: If we were to propose and pass this tonight, we can try it for next few weeks and see if it works.
SW: We can pick a time to modify it if necessary.
Morwen: Propose that Part I, we discuss using SM as fallback. Part 2 would define quorum. Part 3 would define conditions for use fallback.
Consensus Proposal: Part I: In cases where consensus cannot be reached, our fallback decision making process will be supermajority.
Consensus Proposal: Part II. A quorum is 80 percent of the current council and SM consists of 80 percent of the attending members, assuming that quorum has been reached.
Rodger: If it’s 80 percent and we have 10 members, that’s 8. If we have more than that, everybody except 2 becomes the quorum, and if you’re below 10, then everybody minus 1 constitutes quorum. So if there are 9 present, 8 is quorum. If we’re in a SM position, then 7 of those 8 could ratify the decision.
Tao: So are we choosing ¾ as constituting quorum? (?)
Rodger: Those 2 numbers are definitely separate. SM could be 75% and quorum cold be 80%. I can email you the whole chart.
Sylvia: 80% makes sense with larger groups but with us, won’t 70 or 75% serve us better.
Morwen: Assume 80% for quorum. Practically, one person alone isn’t enough to block something but 2 people can be enough. Setting bar high is good for a group aiming for consensus. I might argue to have SM high and quorum a little lower. I might be comfortable with 70% for quorum.
SW: If you define quorum as 80% of 80%, then decision is made by smaller % of council.
Rodger: With 10 people, 8 people makes a quorum. If 8 are present, then 7 can make decision because you’re rounding up.
Jimi: And if there are 13 people on council…
Rodger: Then 11 is a quorum and 9 is a SM.
Jimi: So 9 out of 13 makes a decision. That leaves 4 out.
Morwen: But that’s assuming that only 80% only show up. Hopefully more will show up.
SW: What happens if council is smaller.
Rodger: 6 out of 7 is quorum and 5 out of 6 is a SM. Its always going to be a -1 thing.
Jason: And that would probably prompt us to rethink number of people on council.
SW: Leads us to consider if there should be a minimum number of council members.
Rodger: Bylaws say minimum 5, max 10.
Morwen: We can add something about how if we drop below 10, we revisit this policy.
Rodger: Our choices are that we can use consensus, fall back, or we can table the decision when we don’t have to push for a decision right away.
Jimi: We call for consensus, open up for discussion. Then at some point we call for consensus again.
Jasper: So how does 3 times work?
Morwen: But we didn’t call for consensus until concerns have been addressed already. People can try to shortcut the process by asking for consensus if there’s a lot of discussion going on intensely and we’re having trouble coming to agreement.
Tao: At no point have we gotten to a second round of consensus, right?
Jimi: Yes.
Rodger: Sylvia said at some point she made a quick call for consensus before discussion went on forever.
Morwen: But this was not a formal second round. Must reach a block before you go around again and see if block is still there.
Jason: If it’s coming round to 3rd time and you ask for concerns and realize it’s not going to pass, at that point it would go to supermajority and with those concerns, it wouldn’t pass.
Jimi: When you go around and call for concerns, most people respond right away. This person, if they have concerns and there’s a process of concerns addressed and they block and have it go around a second time. If they start pushing for consensus then, you know they’re not right. It’s so transparent. But I’ve never seen this happen.
Morwen: Want to reiterate difference between personal block and a block made in best interest of group.
Consensus Proposal: We use fallback in two situations. First, when there’s a time constraint requiring action and we don’t have consensus. Second, when we can’t reach consensus after 3 blocked calls for consensus.
~~~~ Remember to include tabling as another option in our manual.
Una: Can we not put information about tabling information in our book without having it go through consensus. We don’t need to get consensus on everything we write there, right?
Rodger: The consensus process we outline and write out is not something that we must consense upon, but we will get council’s consensus on document as a whole.
To be covered tomorrow:
1. Organizational Structure
Council Board v. CPT, and staff.
2. Job Descriptions
3. Unfinished burning issues
4. Nominations and Elections.
5. Revisit Email policy draft
6. Address bookmarks or make a plan to address them.
Council Meeting 2/24/07
Organizational Structure
Morwen: Realized yesterday that we skipped asking for clarifying questions in the course of asking for concerns. We did this as one step yesterday but in general, you first ask for clarifying questions because often, people’s concerns are based on not understanding the proposal.
Shana: reads agenda.
Morwen: I suggest moving email draft discussion off agenda today. Draft group will print and distribute and then we can discuss it via email rather than take time here. If pieces feel like they need discussion here, we can do that.
Tao: Distribute at lunch.
Jimi: Let’s give time allotments to agenda items.
Jason: If people have burning things they need to talk about before we leave, I’d like there to be space for that.
A round to address org. structure.
Morwen: First share information. Some of this follows James. Might be productive to think in terms of roles and functions that need to be filled before we ask, who’s doing them. Coming from non-profit org. structure perspective. There’s a group with ultimate fiduciary (financial and legal) responsibility for org. There’s also the piece about being steward of the vision and the public spokesperson for the vision and the organization. Future planning piece and the thorniest for us: traditionally, the board hires the staff but we’ll have a different system. But built in there is a check and balance system. Then there’s the staff function. We’ve used staff to refer to people working onsite on the gathering. In this case, I use “staff” to mean people who make the organization programming happen, including the CPT as well as onsite staff and volunteers under that. Those traditional functions for staff are to manifest the orgs. Program, solicit, train, and manage staff and volunteers, manage expenditures under the budget approved by the board, report to board and larger community, and produce annual financial statements, and registration and management of nitty gritty of gathering. In traditional non profits, board and staff aren’t same people so you have checks and balances. Conflict of interest arises when board votes to pay themselves. Can avoid this by having separation of functions or not paying themselves. If staff is board, and if any staff people are going to be paid, they cannot vote on their own compensation.
Many ways to fill these functions but good to keep their distinctions in mind.
Also wanted to start list of what staff functions are. In brief, production tasks are: website, registration, materials, PR, operations, onsite management, meal plan, programming, packout final cleanup, and coordinating the whole thing.
SW: Difference between ops and overall coordinator?
Morwen: Ops is onsite tasks. Coordinator coordinates all pieces together in big picture way.
Jimi: What came up for me last night is we need to have an active available live evolving knowledge base for this information. Our bylaws, manual, meeting notes, job descriptions, evaluations, committee reports. All need to be somewhere we can all access and update. Perhaps organize in a Wicki format. Could use ideas on tech to make this work. More than just email, we need a repository. Will serve as our memory base but also to refine job descriptions.
Echo concern about big planning functions and board level stuff not getting lost in rush of production jobs. Latter must get done but we have lot of organizational development to do too. Doesn’t all have to be same people doing heavy duty production and organization.
Tao: I work on an open source software package designed to do that collaborative work.
My comfort with relationship between board and staff: I’ve run into thinking the best place I can contribute is to be staff coordinator and then I think I won’t be involved in policy and will just be an instrument of a board that I didn’t trust at the time. This is evolving but it’s still a point for me. Made me happy to hear idea that power devolves down to lowest levels. I’m conflicted about traditional structure model. I listed useful point persons and came up with 20 but this can’t be 20 different individuals. I served as staff coordinator last year and if I did nothing else, it would be a lot of work. Each new person added adds to this work.
Jimi: Piggyback on that anxiety. None of us had clear definitions of what authority we had. Usually a board member gets a policy and bylaws packet. I was frustrated that we didn’t have these things last year. We can’t do everything, we have to make choices. I cook for gathering if I wanted to, but then I wouldn’t be at the fire.
We need a board development committee that is bigger than just doing the event. I didn’t want to leave policy up to the group because I didn’t trust the group at that time but have more faith now.
SW: Many questions. Since CPT took most of the load last year, where does the board share those responsibilities with staff. Should there be staff working under each board member or a separate area of oversight for board? What are feedback mechanisms for staff and how does that happen in real time, on site. We had extra volunteers available last year; how can we organize them so people burning out can get relief.
How do we resolve committee issues if no one wants to serve on a particular committee?
Compensation for staff members and ops coordinator? I could volunteer a paid position for web stuff, registrar, all the positions it takes time to do.
Jasper: This gets muddy for me because brings in some vision stuff we didn’t decide on. We talked about simplifying gathering, whether we need all that staff. Because if we map this structure on what we had last year, it seems humungous. What does simplify mean? How many positions and people are we really talking about. Much remains undefined. I see sense of this structure but not yet a sane way to apply it given that we don’t have something concrete to apply it to.
Sylvia: haven’t we been creating policy as a group? Maybe this is heretical but I don’t see why these bigger policies won’t continue. I’m unclear on all policies that need to be made I don’t see why we’re not working on putting on the gathering. I like that together we’re creating the policy; we’re fleshing out the vision collectively, over policy.
Jason: I know we’re talking preproduction here but something magical happened after days of working together on that land. There’s some concern that one half of our brains will unbalance other half. If we over-structure, we won’t have flexibility and that’s part of real magic. Quality of event could be less.
Hate to invoke Adam but when he showed up, he did what he wanted. For 2008, we can potentially show up and do what we love as magical people if we have a simple structure with room for community to step up.
Una: I’m concerned as well about simplicity. I don’t want a huge production. I don’t know what it looks like. Showing up with firewood and having some sense of structure is a simplification. But I’m not in a clear place at this moment.
Round 2:
Morwen: For me, I’d like to use traditional structure to whatever extent it supports us, then adapt to suit ourselves. Bylaws say council can be staff and vice versa, meaning that you don’t have to give up policy role to work on staff. We don’t have to choose one or the other. I see us setting up something nontraditional. Yes, we are group making policy and putting on gathering, though only some of us last year were heavily involved in production. We’re in place where cast of characters wants to and is giving highest by functioning on both sides. I want framework for future that some people working at gathering can step up to more responsibility and over time end up on council. So over time, membership of those bodies may overlap or not; not attached to whether this happens.
How do board members plug in? Committees, with board members to focalize each one without doing all the work. Interested in simplifying but we have to do more than provide firewood: need to provide safety, maybe food.
As we systematize and get better job descriptions, coordinating them will get easier.
Rodger: Taking these roles, I see us systematizing and focusing on evaluating jobs after the fact. Part of this is looking at how many hours someone spent working on a particular position and figuring out how to redistribute the load. This is how things get simpler. Simplicity is simple but not always easy; it’s a refining process. This will be true on both production and organizational side. Our policies will be distilled over time and function of evaluating them will devolve over time to fewer people and not take up as much of our time.
Sylvia: Maybe my idea of how division of policy v. individual jobs is how new ideas can come from latter and then they come back to us over time. I’d like to see overall decision making come from council so it stays in the larger pot.
Jasper: Are you talking about stuff beyond the consensus level, like more of the nitty gritty?
Sylvia: Not at all. We were talking before about staff vs. board. I’d like to see ultimate decisions spread out among larger group of people but factfinding and research is done by fewer people and then submitting findings to larger council.
Morwen: e.g the business about term limits. There could be some org. development committee researching this and then bring it back to the council.
Sylvia; A subcommittee of the board. But everyone from board has input because we all want to be part of vision. But I’m happy to not be the person who does the factfinding and research.
Jason: Simplicity might not be easy but there’s still the vision. I’m worried about us creating huge body of work vs. HFT model. I’d like to see the procedural stuff could be one body but running the event could be another. I find putting on gatherings really easy. I work but it’s a high. People step up and take pieces. So what are we really trying to do? Understand value of building a legacy but want to hear from people who think this is the way to go, what are we doing here that has more value than us coming together organically and maybe only doing it this year and letting others step up to do it next year?
Tao: Keep thinking of Kat, who brought “indolence” to the circle at FTH. There’s a point where one person doing 3 people’s work: do you get 3 people to do it or do you do less? I worry that if we have a solid structure that’s great at absorbing people, it will just keep absorbing the many people who want to plug in as staff. If you’re trying to reach some external goal set by a board who isn’t putting on the event, then I worry about “mission creep”. FTH: there were 8 people, 2 got sick, so they put on a 6 person event and it was okay.
Jimi: There are many models varying in efficiency. We put on dance events for 4 people and 29 people in same space. Simplicity is no easier for me because if you have 200 people gathering, you still have same amount of work. If you don’t feed people, you have shift of work to somewhere else. I hear concerns but I believe organization can overlap. Production crew thing was stressful because we had no authority. If we had, it would have been easier. I was stressed by people who said they’d do stuff and then didn’t. Substituting people into the plan can happen. I don’t see the vision leak thing or disparity between the two. It works by committee: a subgroup does work and brings it back for approval. By board approving it, that’s their input, but they don’t have to spend all that time working on it.
Jason: What do you mean by “authority”?
Jimi: We weren’t sure who was in charge, who had right to make decisions among the CPT. It was hard to delegate because we didn’t want to step on toes, but we did need policy on some issues.
SW: Job descriptions will be helpful in determining authority. Point people concept works effectively: a point person for wood. This person may not carry out the work but delegates it and reports back to council or board. What is mission creep? How would it change? Ideally, our mission and goals are in alignment with majority of people at gathering.
Tao: I meant that if we adopted ideal of minimum simplicity, mission creep would be someone saying “let’s create an organic kitchen” and then asking for reinforcements. This process could involve lovely goals but spiral out of control. I see this as board making lots of decisions.
Jasper: Or projecting expectations that if we do something one year, we do it every year. E.g. Patrick and the recycling program.
SW: this is a good ongoing question. Should be a committee on board to research and report back on. What evolutionary trends should we incorporate.
Tao: This is exactly what I’m afraid of.
SW: My point is we don’t all need to focus on those questions.
Were there job descriptions written up for this past year?
Jasper: For team leaders, not higher level positions. We got little feedback.
SW: I’d encourage us to use them in the future.
Una: Is it beneficial to talk about what we want to offer the people at the gathering? What are the basics?
Jasper: At next round. Rodger, you said we can simplify over time via evaluations and feedback. My concern is that way things are now, we don’t have 3-4 years to do that because there won’t be anyone left willing to do it. We must shift now.
There are core number of things that must happen, no matter what. But we’ve got plenty of stuff that doesn’t fall under that heading and could be dropped.
In terms of where to go from here, someone said we could look at “who have we got this year?” We could get a clear picture, then scale gathering to fit this number. Things might get simple for a few years because we lack the people but it can expand over time.
Round 3 (speaking to Una’s request for personal offering and Jason’s question about why we’re considering this board/staff nonprofit model):
Morwen: I want to clarify that I didn’t think this was necessarily best model. I experienced lots of pressure to incorporate as way to protect council from liability. This pressure came primarily from James. I thought we should have been a private association. Personally, my attitude is now we have a non profit organization, how do we make the best of it?
Also, I’m not interested in a big complicated structure needing constant tending. I have concerns about people’s fear of committees. Committees can be a way of simplifying organization if they’re set up well. Last year, we stripped down from what was done at firedance. We spent a lot of time telling people “we’re not doing this, we’re stripping down.” The recycling is very labor intensive and yet I heard how glad people were that we were doing it; walking our talk. So I don’t see that as something optional now, not just because people expect it but because it supports our vision. There are simpler ways to do things around spaces and installations but I don’t see what else we could cut out. We will be twice as big as FTH and certain requirements come just from scale and size.
I don’t think we must be bound just by doing something one year to keep doing it.
To me, it goes back to creating a safe container. Safety involves structuring to keep it from becoming a free for all. Don’t have to design and micromanage every opening ritual but do need to make sure rituals are happening because they set tone for the fire.
Jason: I’m asking everyone to ask themselves: how does it feel to make the commitment to drastically strip down the event to create a counterpoint to front-end energy we’re putting in now.
If we were to simplify, we could cut costs dramatically. On recycling, wouldn’t have to be lot of coordination.
Our mistake last year was micromanaging the fire family discussion e-group. This was a huge energy drain. Micromanaging means giving too much energy to putting out perceived fires. If you keep feeding that energy on the list, everyone keeps talking about the same problem. There’s an enabling way to respond to such emails; speaking clean straight truths that don’t have to come out immediately. Forestdance doesn’t have an email list.
Tao: I do think last year was unusual in terms of perception management.
Jason: This relates to stripping it down. We are still carrying that karma. We could shift this at least once, maybe not in the future.
Rodger: How much of our cost is really tied to venue.
Jasper: 10,000 dollars. It’s a flat fee no matter who comes.
Tao: 3/5 of current expenses are fixed. Can’t cut this out.
Jason: But even cutting 20% is significant and can affect perceptions.
Tao: I’d like to revisit Morwen’s statement about non-profits being what we’re stuck with. From speaking with James, legal bottom line of being a nonprofit isn’t complicated. There are a few obligations we must fulfill. On top of that, there’s a lot we can do but I feel you’re presenting this as “we must do them.”
Morwen: I’m only saying that when non profit assumes public accountability. That’s what I mean by fiduciary responsibility: our obligation to show public we deserve to be a public entity. As a practical matter, this is not onerous.
Tao: But there’s nothing that says that we, the council, can’t also put on the event.
Morwen: Yes, that’s right.
Tao: Part of me would enjoy upsetting people’s expectations. The name Phoenix Fire is about burning away the old. After that, we can come up with our real name. But we’re not done burning yet. We might piss people off but it clarifies that this is a new event. Otherwise, we’re carrying too much karma.
Re. the control issue, I’d be willing to do that kind of community proposal and vote thing for opening rituals. I don’t need to control the magic of the night. In
Jimi: Blowing up expectations, cool. Rituals in the moment is the only way I know how to do them. The more you plan, the worse. But you really want to shake it up? I don’t like
If our job descriptions say the board is the people who put on the event, my concern is that we’ll lose folks who can’t make that commitment. I don’t want 10-12 people steering. If committee is a bad word, I might also be sitting in the wrong place.
There were lots of people who didn’t know how to plug in.
SW: I don’t care what we call it. The idea is to take a large amount of work, funnel it down to a few folks, and then back to overall council in a digested way. We call them task forces and it’s a smooth process. Whatever we call them, we need them.
In terms of karma, personally I’m impatient with the whole “clearing up past”. We did it last year. We reinforce it by holding onto it. There’s a certain amount left merely because we’re still on that same land. If we had switched the venue, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d like to switch location too: Cutter’s too expensive, even if our magic is embedded there.
In terms of simplicity, don’t know how much we can do it if we’re on same land. Strip out meal plan and you introduce different complications. In terms of workshops and affinity groups, how else do we strip it down?
Re. the listserve, I feel we’re doing the work now to establish values of council in clear way so we can communicate them succinctly. Let’s bring conversation back to our core values, and a lot of those fears people have will dissolve.
Let’s let FTW inform us but we don’t need to conform to that vision.
Jasper: In all this there’s no desire for me to conform to
Where to simplify? Land is not the only issue. We can still do more. There are options for workshops that require little involvement for us except approval and setup. Then it falls on community. Same with rituals, installations. We start with nothing except fire circle; anything else we ask community to submit ideas. We still had to coordinate everyone last year on rituals, and workshops more so. We felt it was our job to contact and coordinate these people.
Una: I resonate with Jasper. I feel we should empower everyone who comes take personal responsibility for many things we have supplied in the past. We do need to form a structure and take responsibility but why do we need to be the ones to do everything? Pack your own trash out, clean your own toilet.
Rodger: I hear what you’re saying about devolving work from Movers and Shakers to whole gathering, but I don’t see this as less work. We’ll just be organizing 200 people, many with less commitment to the work than those who volunteer at the outset.
Jasper: You don’t spend 6 months preplanning. Instead, you do an onsite process of pulling together.
Jason: It goes to issue of authority and community. Devolving things makes it a real community event.
Rodger: I hear that but I still don’t think transition will be easy. Also, in transition out of Firedance, did people explore other venues?
Una: Yes. Issue is being able to drum all night long. Hard to find property that allows that, and make fire.
Tao: No systematic attempts.
Rodger: So basically, it’s not easy to find. Can we do it for next year? It will be a lot of work. I suggest we look at how to manifest that for next year.
My fear on co-creation with community is the tragedy of the commons; that which is everybody’s responsibility is nobody’s responsibility. Taking without giving. Not saying you can’t fight it, but I’m worried.
Sylvia: So with this conversation, what can we propose? Could we move toward suggesting something that we can approve or reject?
Morwen: There are a few issues on the table and I’m not sure where we are?
Jason: Well, are we all interested in committing to simplifying this gathering? I feel it would bridge fears about non-profit heaviness with vision of simplicity. If we focus on really making it happen, some of us would feel a lot better going the nonprofit route.
Jimi: My concern with that is that again, I have learned that the rug must be pulled out from under expectations in stages. How might simplification affect registration? There is, I hate to say it, competition for bodies. I think we need to let people down easy.
Jason: Envision worst case scenario. We get 75 people fewer and they learn to lose their expectations. We create something intimate and beautiful.
Morwen: I think we need to build our budget not on 200 people but on a more conservative estimate because changing those expectations actually could affect our registration.
Also, I take exception to idea that there’s huge divide between nonprofit model and our vision. I don’t want to be set up to hold down one side of the divide. I’ve said again and again how can we adapt the nonprofit thing to suit us and allow us to work less.
SW: I feel we have an opportunity to set stage for simplifications Jasper spoke of. We’re now a nonprofit community; we can set tone for greater participation. We can say that, this year, we’re a community organization and here’s how we do that, without changing people’s expectations of what they’ll get.
Tao: If we drop the price significantly, charge $150 a head, say, we’d fill up so fast and have $30,000, which is more than what we need.
Jason: I’m going to kiss you now.
Tao: There are some stages of simplification that are a lot more work, it’s true. So we don’t need to do everything in one step. But my big question is still: is this group of people committed to do this as simply as we can?
Morwen: Conceptually, I’m in alignment. But practically, I’m concerned about the community and the interface between it and the council, including an aspect of empowerment. If you empower people, you also empower them not to do it. Not everyone will rise to the invitation. If 200 people show up because we drop the price, we need to anticipate that their work onsite has a potential for burnout. If you have a small core group committed to simplicity and a large group around them not all that committed, you create a management problem.
Do we start with jobs and fill with people or start with people and decide what jobs we can get? We may not have accurate view of how many people are willing to work. There may be yet another tier of folks waiting to plug in. How do we identify and use them? I’m not assuming we do this with the team/team leader structure; I found this model unwieldy. I want to simplify number of point people needed and not all of them need their own organizational structure. If we strip down to core group of responsible people, we leave people thinking isn’t there any other way for me to plug in other than clean toilets on site?
Una: There are always freeloaders. For me a solution to that is a group of fallback people. We open door and allow people to shine or not.
If it was less money, more people would be available to show up and help. This is a big piece, especially hearing people talk about money as a reason why they couldn’t come.
Jasper: We came together to show people a new way to be in the world, of taking responsibility for both shitty and fabulous work. But I know some people just won’t step up. If we start with bigger numbers, we still get %age of flakes but still get enough bodies to show up and do the work.
Also, about that outer tier of folks getting stuck cleaning toilets; part of our responsibility is clarifying where people can plug in and also being clear that we’re here to create container, not that we’re holding onto all the good jobs and leaving the shitty ones to the rest. Making more ways for people to plug in via workshops, affinity groups, rituals, etc… is part of what we should do.
Jason: I appreciate having a backup plan. But worst case scenario, the first year sucks and we burn out. We’re talking about our big vision; the goal isn’t just weekend enlightenment, but life skills. Best case scenario: movers and shakers come early, we train them to be point people to then train everyone else. We step up and do less.
Rodger: In any population, 5% will do the right thing, 5% will fuck around, and 90% will do something based on the larger culture. If it’s stealing and cheating, they’ll do that. If it’s following a highest vision, they’ll do that. Thinking of job descriptions as hats, there doesn’t have to be a 1:1 correspondence between jobs and people. We can spread this out and train one another and community. They can be combined or dispersed as needed.
Morwen: Personally, I am all about building mutual caring and empowerment. I really agree that people rise to the expectations you have of them. But I personally cannot sign on to a backup plan that leaves people in this room plus Raven stuck with doing any work that doesn’t get done. I need to know the backup plan. I can’t sign on to potentially being totally burned out again, including taking on the financial risk. I did that already once.
Happy to hear about developing other ways people can plug in because some people want to get into what we do: creating the container. And I want to make sure our structure enables them to do that. They want to step up, and we need them to.
Jimi: I also need a backup plan.
Also, about cleaning toilets, the people who clean them should be rewarded, maybe more so than people who get dressed up as high holies.
Una: You may not agree, but I think everyone here should clean toilets.
Jimi: This is more of a paradigm shift than getting more people to come in and step up.
Also, if we are herding 200 cats, clear communication and accountability on the spot becomes very important. Also, re. meal plan, I see more work in separating meal plan and off-meal plan. We should just fold it into part of registration. You register, you’re on meal plan. Other chefs are also easier to work with in the kitchen.
Tao: The way
Jason: I’d like to see organic and native food as part of the move toward holism.
Idea for making sure core group isn’t stuck holding ball: if price goes down and more people come, which we need, if we change name from Movers and Shakers to Village Builders and Deconstructors and offer a discount, it would be incredibly appealing. It would be great to know I could run around totally free at a gathering just by putting in 2 days of work at start and finish. That’s the plan I’m interested in developing: letting people know they’ll have to make certain commitments at start or close of gathering and letting them decide.
Una: We need to put this information out there so people know what they’re signing up for. We haven’t totally severed Firedance past from ourselves in mind of community. Maybe put it into words.
Tao: Actions will make it clear, not the words.
Una: The more we give out the message, the more people will get it.
SW: Where do you see those cords needing to be cut?
Una: On the discussion group and the overall community, there are still misperceptions about what we are.
Morwen: I hear what you’re saying about residual energy but I suggest that the work of dealing with people’s feelings and expectations can be done one on one in a loving way. Shouldn’t ignore it. As a body, though, we should talk about what we are and not what we’re not. Many people came to this gathering post Firedance and have no clue what happened. Our focus should be on our values and intentions.
Jason: I want to agree with defining ourselves this way, and also to lead by example.
Also feel that we need to learn from mistakes we’ve witnessed and been part of, and lovingly look at our own shadows. Severing cords, an example: the Sunday business meeting. What do we own or not own from that? Those were deeply injured people from the process before. We need to become the bright example and then turn around and hand it right back to the community.
Sylvia: Can we summarize what we’ve got? I assume we’re moving toward simplification and diversification. Include community. Not have it be so much of a staff-run event. There will be people who may or may not be on the council acting as point people for different community task forces. The council will oversee these point people, so there’s some oversight. The point people then delegate duties down without us overmanaging them.
SW: The objectives are up to the teams themselves. As long as they’re accomplished, our oversight job is done.
Re. the Sunday business meeting, that karma was about people’s projected fears about what we were going to do. I see us now coming out of this weekend saying: We are now a community organization. We couldn’t say that before. I think this will clear up a lot of fears and mistrust.
Jimi: This is great but Rainbow was a community event and there was dysfunction there. As a community event, our responsibility to guard the vision now becomes greater because we have the overview and a larger perspective than any one person’s ego trip.
Tao: These are good concerns. Actually, we might need a group of guardians if we’re going to be this open.
Jasper: Guarding the vision is exactly what we should be doing. If we’re saying the job of the council is to guard the vision, then we’re on the right path.
Morwen: Given that we recognize that board functions include being stewards of vision as well as accountability to public and our own community, the other piece is figuring out what is the council’s role in the production of the gathering. I have a proposal written down in “mushy” form.
Consensus Proposal: The board/ council holds stewardship of the vision, ultimate fiduciary responsibility, and accountability to the community and the public. The core production team/staff is responsible for manifesting the gathering. These may or may not be the same people. Production is organized by teams and/or committees, each with a council liaison. Additionally, there is a Coordinator who is a member of the staff and is not the same role as the Council Chair. This person serves as liaison among the committees and between the committees and board.
Proposal: The registrar is a paid position. As long as that person recuses herself from votes on compensation, this person can be on the board. These are still functions, not separate job descriptions yet. But we need to make sure these functions are filled.
Rodger: Where does the website coordinator fit in. Can we go back to task roles?
Morwen: Some are roles and some are committees.
Registrar, website management, coordinator are roles not necessarily involving liaisons to committees.
Committees:
Operations (including fire, guardians, clean team, materials and supplies)
PR and communications.
Materials and supplies needs point person and committee.
Meal committee can have 1 or 2 people.
Rituals and workshops, scheduling and content, orientation, opening and closing circle:
Packing up and leaving site.
Healers.
Village builders could be part of operations or its own group.
Organization and development is a board committee, not a staff committee.
Rodger: Which is not a code word for fundraising, but for developing an org. structure?
Morwen: This board committee would not routinely draw people in from larger community but we might tap resources in the larger community, who might not want to be on council.
SW: Should we set up formal structures for these community advisors?
Jimi: Usually these are ex-board members but doesn’t have to be limited to this.
Morwen: Well, for us, advisors are people whose counsel you seek. In nonprofit world, it’s people whose name you want on the letterhead. I don’t think it has to be where ex-board members go out to pasture.
I’d suggest advisor business come after this proposal.
Jasper: Could this proposal reflect our commitment to simplicity?
Morwen: I think it’s in the notes.
Jimi: It needs to come out in a public statement.
Jason: Our work we just did reflects this model. The concept of liaisons works well with the simplicity model. But I’d like to see it added in a later proposal.
Rodger: We need a clear vision statement of what we as a council think gathering looks like which is much more community-run and simpler than past gatherings.
Morwen: I suggest we put on our list of action items to delegate to PR committee responsibility to distill a draft statement of simplification for us to review, with goal of putting it out to community as one piece of what we worked on this weekend.
Tao: Can we state in the notes clearly and get consensus that we are going to put out a vision statement to the public?
Jimi: “Moving forward with the energy of transformation, FFC is committed to creating a community-accessible gathering operated by and for the people. Our intention is to simplify things so that all of us become the gathering together.”
Tao: “We as a council are adopting as part of our policy that the council and core staff will be responsible for putting on the bones of the gathering, which is the fire and safety, and for creating structure for others to come into. Through that, we empower the community to create the event with us.”
Jason: What are the parameters for bones?
Morwen: In principle, I like it, but we should be careful about specifying. I’m not sure it’s just the fire and the safety.
Morwen: “The vision we hold is that Council and core production staff are committed to providing a simple structure and to empower the community to fully participate in the co-creation of the gathering.”
Sylvia: Add something about how “the community is empowered to create content and beauty.” We’re the bones, they’re the meat.
Morwen: I’m going to suggest we give these statements to our PR committee and let them work on them.
Job Descriptions and Elections
Morwen: Suggest focus on council only for now.
Jimi: First piece is that people stay in communication via email. We talked about having meetings on regular basis. How many “absents” can someone have before status revoked? Submitting notes in timely manner. Suggest everyone volunteer for at least one board committee.
Morwen: Board responsibilities I’ve described earlier should somehow end up in job descriptions.
Tao: Suggest that one requirement for council be that you attend gathering.
Jason: And if there’s a separate annual meeting, you attend.
Morwen: Should we build in this mid-year meeting to job description as well as on-site meeting? To say that board formally meets twice a year in person.
Tao: At a minimum.
Morwen: Suggest saying “full participation in council meetings and decision making process, including email and phone conferences.” Leery about specifying how many meetings there will be. Chronic non-participation without explanation constitutes resignation.
Sylvia: Even if you call and say “I can’t make it” repeatedly.
Jimi: Must be a piece about consensus. New members must come in and do training at one of our 2 meetings.
If someone calls and says they can’t make it 3 times, council should call a question as part of a performance review.
~~~~This year it will be hard to bring new people in. We should think of how to do this later on.
Una: Are we bringing anyone new on?
Morwen: We did commit to bringing on 1 new person this year. But if we come up with nominations now, we’re not necessarily electing those people to bring on now, but identifying people to talk to and ask them to consider before formally bringing them onto council at summer meeting, but we can talk about it.
Jimi: Board development committee is tasked with interviewing prospective board members. The committee then reports back to board.
Tao: To bring it back to job descriptions, if someone says they want to join the council, what should they know they are committing to?
Jason: Chronic absence should mean the triggering of a review, not automatic resignation.
Tao: If someone signs on, they are taking responsibility on their side to educate themselves on consensus and other decisio