WG/Transparency/Minutes/20 Oct 2011

= Transparency Meeting, 20 October 2011 =

Present: Farhad (media), Anna (Facilitation), Jess (OBIT), Michael (SPP, safety), Leah (women's caucus), Daniel (Outreach), Storm (media), Will (outreach), Katie (outreach), Steven (outreach, facilitation and everyone), Matt (OBIT), Christine (outreach), Alison (facilitation), Pete (medical), Dan (Occupy Boston Globe), David (entertainment), Alex (media), Eden (freeschool uni, library), Randy (SPP/ideas), Dan (Food), Nicole (Direct Action), Clara (observer), Will (facilitation and legal), Tim, Noah (facilitation and ideas)
Facilitator: Farhad
Scribe: Matt

== Next Meeting ==
Nicole: When and where are you meeting? Missed some
Farhad: This is only the second meeting
Nicole: DA is primarily f2f

At the end it was announced that the next meeting will be Monday, 24 October 2011, at 7pm EST in E5, 33 Harrison Ave, floor 5. It was unclear if we'd gather at Ghandi first or not.

== Agenda Hacking ==

Farhad: Agenda as proposed:
1. Goals & recap from last meeting
2. List of all working groups
3. Look at WGs functions and what they are (e.g. media has photography, film, writing and editing, etc, different skill sets)
4. Consolidate and reduce redundancy if possible
5. Write this all down

Farhad: Next meeting we'll work on the interconnectedness.

Ravi: Map out the functions of the groups and see where we can go from there.
Farhad: that's my 2 and 3
Anna: I wanted to get everyone up to speed on facilitation's wiki page, also we're considering another proposal and we wanted to run it by transparency
Eden: let's set timing for next meeting
Farhad: let's do it now, proposals?
Eden: Monday following GA
Farhad: Consensus? proposals for time? 6pm?
Anna: Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday for GAs
Storm: Meet at 7 on Monday?
Anna: There will be a debate night that time.
Daniel: As long as one person is from each group
Pete: Is monday night meeting needing facilitation
Nicole: Consensus for Monday night at 7pm at Gandhi
Daniel: Can we get phone numbers for those who are committed to being there?
Jess: I stayed back for 15 minutes and picked up four more people. Let's have a volunteer do that.
Farhad: We'll have Ravi recap

== Recap of Previous Meeting ==

Ravi: We talked about what the different groups were and what they were doing. We didn't get much beyond listing out all the groups.
Farhad: The goals listed on the wiki page is pretty good: facilitate horizontal communication between WGs.
Farhad: Also looking at WG internals, for those WGs that are interested, we could look at their internal working.
Anna: Facilitation proposal has language about weekly open meetings each week with time and space reserved
Anna: They must use consensus process in public meetings
Anna: Facilitation can help on that.
Farhad: We tried to get in touch with all WGs to get a few pieces of info
Allison: The survey?
Ravi: yes
Nicole: DA is mostly onsite, all day and night.
Anna: Library is working on getting public computers, there's one there already
Nicole: We need everyone to respect that we don't get online
Katie: Does DA have a phone number?
Monica: Can we have someone from other WGs come by and check in with DA?
Nicole: Leave forms in the tent, or use the whiteboard
David: I went to DA the last two nights and told them about this.
Anna: How are you planning to make the meetings public if you can't put stuff online
Nicole: We put them online via media
Pete: is survey info intended to be online?
Farhad: Yes

== Listing of Groups ==

Farhad: Let's read through the groups in the doc right now, add those that we know are missing

Groups:

Tech
Direct Action
Facilitation
Food
Free school
Music entertainment
Media
Ideas
Library
Logistics
Medical
OB Globe
Outreach
Spirituality
Volunteer
Info
Finance
Signs
Research
Anti Oppression
People of Color
Safety
Arts and Culture
Comms (separate from media, semi-exists)
Legal
Homeless -- Sherry
Students
Conflict resolution and mediation
Transparency
Really really free market
Affinity Groups -- not detailed
Women's Caucus
Queer Trans
Anarchist Caucus

Alison: Are caucuses WGs?
Nicole: these ones are
Ravi: Can we categorize the groups as highly inter-group or not?
Nicole: I'd be wary of that.
Alex: Are we sure each of these caucuses are actually represented at all on the outside? I asked about the People of Color caucus, and I don't think anyone from there is here, and it may be wrong to categorize them without them here.
Eden: It could be self selecting in the survey, we could ask if they are a WG
Matt: Agreed
Noah: Would that make them not a WG? If it's just physical space.
Daniel (OBG): We're trying to interact with everyone, but we're not going to go to GA with a proposal, etc. We have one specific function.
Alison: A WG in my mind is a group working on something.
<lots of twinkles>
Alison: Spirituality has a tent, but I'm assuming that they're also having to manage the tent and the time and the space. Even if it's self contained, they are fulfilling a function to make that tent meaningful to people. To me that's a WG.
Alison: How we decide how much involvement they need is an open question.
Alex: I think every group is thinking they're working towards something.
Daniel: Everyone should just identify what organized group exists before we have a discussion of what a WG is.
Daniel: once we have that list we can talk about WGs and what they are
<consensus>

Dan: We don't have a peace keeping WG
Nicole: Conflict resolution and safety

Storm: How do we start or acknowledge a committee? Like alternative power?
Ravi: that falls under tech, we're talking about it tomorrow
Nicole: Start a new working group at GA, announce a time and place

Michael: It's come to our attention that there's a group that's not public, called Stealth WG.
Nicole: What do they do?
Michael: Seems like they set up situations where they psychologically test people on issues.

Katie: process of defining WGs is going to be tricky since we're creating new ones and splitting up, etc. We could start on either end of this.
Noah: Seems like this doc is a great idea for getting a sense of what WGs can name their purpose. If we continue to get people to write clearly about what they are working on, it may help identify groups to work together or split.
Will: if we could assign a value of communicative or not perhaps?
Ravi: I'd second that but with different labels: events and complex
Nicole: I don't know what that means. We communicate with everyone but do events.
Eden: Again, I think it should be self selecting. Free school for instance could go on without OB, we're just doing events, btu once things are smoother we could just be --
Monica: We could refine the way Ravi has defined groups a bit, external vs internal missions.
Monica: Internal like food or facilitation, while DA could be external
Pete: Classifying might be best left to the Transparency WG itself

Katie: There are lots of groups that are onsite all the time and those that aren't, and this affects their communications and creates a huge gap between them.
Katie: We could look at the specific problems, that might be a good thing to work on here.
Alison: Systems of communication are more important than classifying groups. I think the categories don't make sense and we need to work on systems

Noah: There are a lot of questions we want to ask each group. We can do that here. We might need to discuss wording before next meeting. Also there are groups that aren't here.
Noah: We should identify who is going to go to those groups and get those answers before next meeting
Ravi: Farhad and I are doing some of that and we'll continue
Ravi: As for this, we're really looking to classify what groups have problems
<temp check high>
Monica: Let's not divide them into problem or not, that makes me sad.
<no one wants Monica sad>
Monica: Let's brainstorm some of the problems and some of the successes

Randy: I was glad to hear about the split between people in the camp and online. I'm in the camp, but I can't get online from the camp.
Dan: There's wifi
Randy: Not nearly enough online time to be inclusive of those who are at camp. Not everyone can get stuff online.

Daniel: Moving forward, I don't think this is the forum to talk about the internal problems, I think we should focus on external communication problems. Internal is for your WG to deal with.
Farhad: The stated purpose was for external group stuff and voluntarily internal

Randy: The point is that this is something about the entire camp, it's related to the power budget of the entire camp. Food has problems, they cannot brew coffee electrically in the camp because of power budget from the grid. These things often come down to scarcity of resources. Inter group communication can solve this.
Randy: I was here the first day that someone took a coffee machine to media and blew a cord and media was offline for 5 hours.

Katie: We had a temp check on going around looking at problems, let's do that.
Noah: There were questions of problems and good things and inter or intra too.
Noah: I propose we work on ??
Nicole: Our problems in DA are related to both, can't talk to one without the other.
Anna: Same with facilitation

Liam: As for the coffee incident, it wasn't a budget problem, it's the amount of amps that we can handle. Because we're running a bunch of computers all that needed to happen was communication between groups. Kettle was plugged in without asking, destroyed hours of --
Nicole: Point of Process -- Doesn't sound like this incident has to be talked about now.
Liam: If it's a question of needing a resource between WGs, if it was communicated we could have cured it

Michael: When a media statement goes out, an official statement, it has to go through GA.
Nicole: Not seeing that.
Michael: If we make supporting statements?
Nicole: Yes.
Michael: With Charlestown bridge march, DA said we would do that --
Nicole: We didn't do that.
Farhad: Let's talk generally not specific issues.
Michael: If there's going to be direct action such as disturbing a police line --
Anna: Point of Process -- let's talk about peoples own groups now without accusations. Transparency is trying to keep those incidents from happening, to balance autonomy with transparency.
Michael: If there is going to be anything voted on as a direct action, especially if it risks getting people arrested, we should know about it first.

Anna: Facilitation has been feeling isolated. We're asking everyone to use consensus process so that everyone ends up capable of facilitating.
Anna: Liaisons have worked well for us, might work well for media too

Jess: We shouldn't necessarily bring specific situations to light, but I do appreciate where those feelings come from and we should work through those.

Michael: Safety we could tighten up some things to make stuff work better. We could use things like tent numbers, lists of where people are supposed to be, etc. There are plans for how to make things a lot tighter.
Michael: We seem to have a large population that doesn't necessarily represent the movement

Leah: Women's caucus, as a group, it's going to be one of the more insular groups. We will figure out how we'll communicate once we get a mayfirst listserv.
Jess: We were going to do a training to get folks off googlegroups

Daniel: I hope the interpersonal stuff can be worked out, but I hope you can see in those anecdotes that those are the problem. I don't think they are irrelevant.

Daniel: Outreach, we have sort of become the point people for others outside occupyboston to get involved. We don't know where to send them. Goal of outreach is to gain ground outside of camp to grow.
Daniel: We need to be able to communicate with media better.
Daniel: We feel like we're reinventing the wheel, that others are doing the same thing and we don't know about it.

Katie: Outreach has had problems internal and external, there's also on the proliferation of new groups, that are also in process. We're trying to keep track of those groups so we don't duplicate work.
Katie: Outreach doesn't have a full time presence on site. Most are coming in and out.
Katie: Alex and Steven are currently relaying for us, but all of our communication happens via email, very little comms on site. We're trying hard to bring these together.

Matt: IT internals are easy, we speak geek online together, but at camp we have very little presence.

Christine: Outreach does need better interaction.
Christine: Communicating about specific issues, you can do without getting into the nitty-gritty

Storm: I didn't see Info on the list.

Randy: Pointing out comm problems, I saw from the beginning problems and consequences that then forced the necessary communication after damage is done.
Randy: What's being discussed now is related to a problem of size, we're much larger than we were. Comm problems are a reflection of the success.

Liam: Media had a reappraisal and taken some things off site, lots of security issues at personal expense, stuff being stolen.
Liam: had a huge meeting yesterday where we realized that we drastically needed subdivisions into smaller groups

Pete: Medical, problems are things like people tweeting that we need stuff that we don't need. I have to go find people and interact, but it's hard to find them.
Pete: We've had problems with interacting with facilitation about making medical announcements at GA. We often can't stick around very long at GA.
Pete: The liaison list is often overrun with feedback about say, stuff about the GA and such. We're not sure where the forum is for us to find info about other WGs. Dealing with large groups like trans is a bit overwhelming for us.
Pete: A core logistics at Dewey Square group would be a huge help.

David: Music and Entertainment, we're pretty successful with folks outside of Dewey, they email us and it works out. We tend to only have to talk to media. We coordinate the stage when there are conflicts of interest. Internal communication is spotty, but we're working on it.
Storm: If there are bigger acts, please inform medical.

Alex: Media, we just reorganized, bear with us. When you get to media, try to understand that we're understaffed. At night there's often just three of us there. Excuse us if we're backed up. We're usually fairly polite.
Alex: Overall, just clear inter communication will help a lot.
Alex: Anyone can change wiki pages, we had a fake request from DA once.
Alex: Sometimes we forget to be personable.
David: We need more folks outside the tent at media during the day.
Alex: We need a receptionist real bad.
Nicole: Receptionist not being received well in camp.
Alex: With nights where there is heavy weather, we can't just let everyone come in. Nights like that may just be weird, we might just roll down a window flap and talk through it.

Michael: There's a website: http://citizenscommandcenter.org outreach, people force, food, etc it's a people force, check it out for all groups. There are people on there that just want to volunteer.

Ravi: Tech has been great.
Ravi: One problem is that we all get lots of email and we need to make sure that those that need to see them see them, and those that we don't need to see don't.
Ravi: What works in tech is that we have our own vibe, maybe all WGs can do that.
Ravi: Human contact is also important.

Randy: I'm interested in the question of division of labor. My opinion is excessive division of labor increases cost of communication.

Eden: Free School, as far as emails, I'm not fast at that and been swamped. Someone else has started taking care of email. We need people to change subject when they change topics. We've had good communication asking clearly what we --
Eden: We don't know who is scheduling speakers.
Eden: We now have codes to do scheduling, got access to calendars, split into sub groups... we're in need of presence on the ground.
Eden; Lost our space three times. We need space.
Eden: We're just two people, so those who have extras, send them to us!
Eden: We need security, stuff is disappearing.
Eden: Need to know how to communicate about the microphone.
Eden: Privacy has been an issue, insane to use google groups.
Eden: Transparency forum will answer a lot of questions, let's get it out and get it on the street.
Eden: And PLEASE use subject lines!
<twinkles>
Eden: Let's have two meetings, one about specific problems.

Nicole: We need to make a distinction between homeless and those breaking the rules.

Michael: Addressing all that: we'd like to see, once everything is situated with tent numbers, number of occupants and have a book --

Dan: Boston Coffee has been giving us coffee every morning. We don't have enough organizers. If anyone would like to get more involved we do need organizers. We have five cases of apples, but not enough hot food. We need a percolator.
Dan: I'm leaving in three weeks, we need people.

Monica: Ideas. Internal: we've had difficulties figuring out what we're supposed to be doing, what to agree upon. We've worked through some of those challenges and we've come to a cool agreement about what we're doing. In response to seeing a lot of single author statements in the last few days, Ideas has been trying really hard to collect individual ideas from around the camp. Not just campers, non-campers as well. Take those claims and assemble them into a statement of common values. Not sure if it will work, but we're using it to get a plurality of voices.
Monica: External: PR, trying to get ideas understood with other groups and members. We need people's ideas if this is going to work. That's our challenge now. If you have ideas please let me know.

Katie: How is Ideas communicating with other WGs?
Monica: Principally email and f2f. Some overlap between ideas and facilitation and ideas and media. We're working hard on it.
Michael: When does it meet?
Monica: Working on that. Mail occupy.ideas@gmail.com. We're trying find something that works for onsite and off.

Nicole: DA, the structure is decentralized, we have a tent where people can go to plan actions. People who do that should be in affinity groups those with similar levels of risk and ideologies. When we have an action an affinity group goes to DA meeting. Problem is no one is forming affinity groups.
Nicole: We're also to supply civil disobedience training.
Nicole: We can bring affinity group stuff to DA which we'll take to GA, but we don't do it ourselves.
Nicole: So, the march was an independent effort, not an affinity group.
Nicole: Camping is illegal, we're all doing that.
Nicole: Because of the diversity of tactics we don't rat them out --??

Anna: DA needs to put that info on wikispaces.
Anna: How many people in DA, how many groups?
Nicole: Two AGs that I know of. 12 people at camp who come to meetings. We meet Mondays and Thursdays.
Nicole: So, we need more AGs. And communication in DA cannot be the same as in other WGs, we don't necessarily do things that are legal. We have a security mindset.
Nicole: The gap between onsite and offsite is huge for us. We need a way to communicate off camp without email.
Nicole: We also have trouble communicating with other groups, we easily communicate with medical, legal, logistics, outreach, but we have misconceptions about what we can do and what we're allowed to do.
Nicole: Also some have mistaken us for security.

Katie: About AGs, what are the distinctions between groups? Tactics? Or actions?
Nicole: A single AG is people you trust with similar ideologies and acceptable levels of risk.

Michael: When we as a group, OB, to go to media, those have to be passed by GA. But if DA comes up with things, whether it's a small group or AG, that is going to cause a lot of press, pro or con, through their actions make statements about what we stand for and are doing --
Nicole: GA has passed diversity of actions, we ALL have the power to act on our own. Messages we don't have that power.
Farhad: We do have some things from media that do not need GA approval.
Michael: I understand the secrecy, but do you feel it is --
Nicole: I'd like to stop now.
Anna: We should de-escalate this, let's have a facilitated discussion between safety and DA.

Nicole: We will be starting with affinity group training.

Nicole: Remember everyone can do actions on their own.

Ross: Tech, we actually have so many people that want to participate, and we've struggled with structure to get people to participate. Our first meeting lasted 12 hours for some of us... division of labor is a good thing sometimes. We don't have enough of it.

Tim: I want to stress the wiki as a tool for transparency, it's a perfect analog for what we do offline --
Nicole: Not everyone has internet access.
Katie: True at camp especially. Half don't have access.
Tim: Given that we're going to have a website, it should be as transparent as possible.

Noah: Facilitation has been covered well, but a few things to add. We are a new group, just today I put together the email list from people who contacted me, more to come for sure. Not sure how many will actively participate.
Noah: We've had difficulties figuring out division of labor between SPP/ideas. The same, separate? We're not necessarily on the same page, so view them as independent for now.
Noah: And Ideas group was around the proposal of having one single document. We haven't talked about what we'll do after we get that document. Maybe an ad hoc WG? How do we communicate that? I go to most GAs. Don't know if someone else can represent us at GA.
Noah: The wiki we use, but people move stuff around and destroying links. Not good.

Anna: I want a temp check on stuff for next 15 minutes to brainstorm on solutions or setup an email or onsite communication about what -- ways to solve "this". Brainstorm some ideas.

Nicole: Walkie talkies
Anna: facilitated discussions between WGs
Anna: social works for homeless

Liam: media took a lot of shots, but we allow double, maybe triple digits of people in to use it every day. If people need to use things for the wiki, it's available in the media tent.

Storm: Google+?
<temp check low>

Leah: Onsite vs offsite membership, we need solutions for that, I'm struggling.

Katie: About future meetings: we thought last time that we could go through group by group one per meeting. That seems reasonable.
Katie: Prioritizing problems they need to be general problems to deal with here. Some problems: GA not working the way we want, onsite/offsite, coordination with DA. How ever we want to move forward, I think it's worth it to start with an explicit agenda.

Michael: Vacant tents for volunteers. When we do outreach we could say to a college or something that we can look in a calendar and say we have X spots available on Y day. And we can send them forms about volunteering and check off interests.
Michael: Outreach on site: ushers. 2 ushers for helping people in and out. Introducing ideas.
Michael: GAs have 5-7 ushers, have ushers help people with process, etc.
Michael: Citizens Command Center volunteers. Check it out. Our Ops manager helped to put it together.

Dan: Next monday 7 in E5.

Adjourned

WG/Transparency/Minutes/20 Oct 2011

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