WG/Facilitation/Minutes/24 Oct 2011
start of meeting
facil- daniel
stack- bill
notetaker- arya
daniel: welcome to our WG meeting. im daniel
rya: im the notetaker
bill: i will
question: is this the 9pm meeting people told me to attend for whatever reason/
d: no, this is a facilitators wg meeting. lets get started, with our facilitators wg giving their proposal
daniel now explains the GA consensus process
greg from fwg passes out copies of the proposal
allison from FWG: explaining consensus process of this meeting leading to the GA consensus. if it passes here, it will be presented to the GA on saturday
we are constantly looking for ways to make this consensus process better
people are feeling frustrated with proposals being presented- people may not be ready, it may not be proofread or owned by the community
maybe there hasn't been enough of a process ahead of time
this proposal is an attempt to see if we can find a solution to this. its not perfect, we may make amendments
the idea being established is that once a proposal is presentred to community, its not proposer's proposal anymore, its the groups proposal. we want to build something better together.
proposals should fulfill a need which exists
greg: reads the proposal being presented by the FWG
daniel: lets break up into groups of 2 now and discuss the proposal. if you have any ideas, CQs, POIs, concerns, etc, bounce these ideas off of each other for the next 3-5 minutes and we'll come back to the process..
5 mins pass
d: lets begin with CQs
cq: in these public meetings is there any concept either of a quorum or a minimum size if theres a working group of 3 people and 1 more shows, which the earlier part of this suggested might be problematic, then what would happen?
a: i hear your question, its something well have to figure out. maybe in the amendment section we can add something
cq: what happens if you have a topic and you don't have a wg?
a: you can make a public meeting as an individual however/whenever you want
cq: does anyone know if tomorrow is guaranteed here? because it isn't. so if we post it in a week in advance, will it even get to ga?
d: sounds like a concern
asker: could be both
greg: my simple answer is no guarantees in life, were just trying to get a schedule. some people interested, some people not. we have to move forward either way. the thinking is so people can prepare to be there for the proposal at the GA
cq: for point 1, what sort of documentation of this effort is required to outreach to all the wgs? how do we know when you've done that?
a: the thinking is that there are email addys for all wgs. we understand its an imperfect communication system and nothing we do is enforced by law, so the idea is to make our best effort. its not perfect. hoping the transparency working group will be able to figure out a better system of communication as well, they should be meeting tonight. as long as you're on the schedule for any kind of meeting, you've officially let everyone know
cq: whats a proposal?
g: there is no real concrete definition
D: next we have POIS
poi: i think relevant to the question earlier, im not going anywhere!
poi: as a member of the media team, a major point of contention brought to the role of the media team is monopolization of internet. im concerned the community will feel left out.
D: PoP, that is a concern.
poi: regarding the def of a proposal or even the function of the block as a member of the FWG, we can and probably willaddress all of that i the near future as different proposals
poi: in my experience, it is not easy to contact WGs by email or have them respond or add you to their list.
D: this is more concerns, we need facts for POI
D: any statements of concerns?
POI: im joey and i was told we raised 8,000 dollars. now thats wonderful, but, isn't this supposed to be like low budget and not about money??
D: this is CQ, not a concern.
concern: i was just about to say 8000 is a small amount of money
D: POI, not concern
concern: im angela and part of multiple WGs, i say that just because i would like to get people more and you all can know me. my concern is that i have tracked this on email and now see it in front of me and im still not convinced that giving all of our genuinely best intention efforts, that we are hearing from "on-site occupiers" who make a majority of low income poverty stricken population, that this isn't nearly streamlined enough for them (?). too much verbiage may stope people from
concern: i have a concern about starting this process with no safety place if a group meeting gets cut off by weather or any other problems that are sure to face us in the coming days
concern; i have 2 but will say 1: on what people said, i think there are too many barriers in the process and it will stifle and delay proposals. the working groups are mostly flat out doing work. the WGs don't all meet regularly. and this process depends on someone doing a lot of hosting, outreach, and accounting for the process .and right now in my experience, its hard for groups to manage the basics.
concern: very concerned that without a def of the word proposal, that this entire proposal in meaningless. i think the def of proposal which is clear and universally applicable, could affectively replace this entire prop
concern: so in a minute, im going to voice my strong support. but i am concerned that the infrastructure is not quite yet in place so that this proposal could be most effective. specifically think some people need training on how to utilize the wiki, website, email groups, etc. not sure if it should be included here or part of another proposal.
concern: just reiterating my previous point about lack of internet access and the other point about individuals in our community that might not be savvy enough to understand the whole process. whether its literacy or the ability to use a wiki in general.
concern: my concern is that the audience should not get the impression that if they aren't part of this WG that they are late to join the party, so to speak. and i don't want to create the impression before the GA that a lot of work has gone into this dot dot dot…
concern: my extreme concern that the most important things afe being forgotten. that the most improtant thing that we keep this camp running. everything else is almost fluff. i like the process, i like the GAs, i think its imp that we have them. i think props re imp but the most imp thing is that we are occupying and they we have to keep camp running. the most imp thing to me after that is interacting with all the people that come to visit us. who talk to us and support us and want us to stay here no matter what. this is the most important concern.
concern: that it doesn't say after you go through this whole process if there is a block, how much time we have to wait after you amend everything to put it back on stack.
conerns; some of the most imp issues do not i think have WGs. for example, strategies and next steps. i do not believe they have a group. i think we need a fluid process.
concern: one is similar, that with al the steps and limited access to cpus and english only, that this could default to decision making by those who have most access to cpus and the most time, which isn't necessarily who wed like to think of ourselves as. the 2nd concern is what a block in a subgroup means.if imoverruled in a block in a subgroup, i should leave the movement?
concern: im concerned that the full process of passing, amending, proposing in general, is not clear. for instance, i don't think anyone has discussed at length how amending previously passed proposals is exactly supposed to work.
d: everyone ready to move on?
concern: in between expressing concerns, CQs, and POIS, people are going to want to talk amongst themselves about all of the above.
POP: this is not related to the proposal, cant we move forward
another member: this is not a time for discussion
d: any more concerns?
concern: im concerned that although this proposal is imp, in the future, there may be proposals that are deemed to be more important by a large majority of the group and holding public WG meetings in trying to bring everyone up to speed on the proposal thats being discussed, will take far too much time and bias the ability to propose something that has been worked on to those that will enough time to bring a large portion of the group up to speed on a proposal.
alliso: what think im hearing is the steps in this proposal are too difficult?
concern: ill resubmit . the steps in this proposal will cause too much time to be taken by WGs who have been working on ap proposal to bring up to speed other people who are not involved in the prop.
concern: please don't PoP me, i am extremely concerned that i am so confused i was thought i was sitting in the transparency group.
d: no more concerns? next is statements of support
support: i think the most relevant sentence is : wgs and individuals may still bring props to the GA without submitting to this process. what this prop does is create a way for people and groups who have committed themselves to this process to jump to the front of the line. now yes that poses some concerns, but i don't think it outweighs the problem at hand. which is we have far too many underworked proposals at GA
sup: i agree with everything there, and i just want to stress that WGs already come first in stack order at GAs, all this doc does among other things is request more forethought goes into proposals, which i don't think is much to ask. this doc is not perfect, the porocess is not perfect, think this excellent place to strt.
sup: as someone who commutes 40 mins directly from who is interested in the process, think there is a great value in ebing able to schedule which gas you would like to attend based on the issues at the ga
sup: also as someone who works and commutes, having some encouragement for groups to put proposals online for preconsideration is very helpful
sup: this prop is the beginning of al lengthy process of constantly improving our GA. many of the objections here are valid in my opinion, and will hopefully be resolved thru amendments of this proposal. also many of these objections do not involve this proposal in any way. facilitators are not the lords of GA or the kings of OB, all we work on is facilitating the GA
sup: i support this proposal because it only considers those who have gone this process prior to others and with no longer having a time limit to proposals, quorum is the only thing that will stop the propsal process. and so, it is not binding in anyway.
sup:i support this propbecause for the past 4 weeks i have heard some really underworked proposals. and someone has been working on organizing GA since day 1, i am excited, for this who want to take on this work of finding people, talking thru propos, getting consensus before GA, it will actually empower them because GA is a scary place when you propose. if you haven't proposed, i reccomend you try it. i really like this and i lookforward to heard amends and changes to incorporated the great ideas we've heard.
amends: one week is too long, 2 days is all you really need. slows down process too much. the language should specify the meeting is done partly to see if the proposal should be an autonomous action. this is question we should ask when we go to all our wg meetings. the concerns of internet access and WGs are also relevant. facil should provide a way to publicly post your proposals until we have public internet. as a member of tech we are here 3 days a week and we should set up a CPU thru transparency to get people to post their proposals on a working CPU here onsite.
amend: id be even more supportive of prop if we had an amend that would somehow say or commit that somebody from the FWG was open and available to help them craft their prop as to help them move it forward
amend: my amend is to include a line or paragraph that deals with emergency proposals, the one that cant even live for 2 days.
al: its in there, 2nd to last paragraph.
amend (Same): my amendment is that if we explain why we want this used besides just being first in line.
amend: to piggy back on that last amend, perhaps some language of how going thru this process builds a larger body of owners of the proposal which will then make it more likely to be passed.people realize props are 50 50 if they pass or not. if they go through this process, the odds are higher they'll get passed.
amend: pigging on the last 2 amends, this prop turns into a stern recommendation i the form of an announcement for the FWG
al: you mean a stern announcement one time or all the time?
amend: to clarify what happens if consensus is reached in WG and doesn't make it to GA, do these still get preference.
amend: the amend is to allow proposers to bring forward their props whether or not they're supported by the open group meeting
a,\mend; instead of giving priority to props using these rules, just have it be a particularly named proposal like a wiki proposal, or the internet proposal.
d: no more amendment, firt phase is over. 3-5 mins for the next segment, restate proposal and continue process.