Ideas Working Group Meeting Notes 2/15/2012

Four people attended tonight's Ideas working group meeting.

The meeting began with an informal conversation, as we waited for people to filter in. We touched on topics such as our individual ambitions for the Occupy Movement, Occupy Research, Unions, the Citizen's United movie Occupy Unmasked, civic activism in general, and the importance of disciplined non-violence.

We also discussed next steps for the ideas working group.

A few weeks ago, there was a discussion about whether the ideas working group should merge with outreach. We felt that the two groups should remain separate.

Our meeting schedule is now the first and third Wednesdays of each month, held in room 505 of the Boston Chinese Neighborhood Center, 38 Ash St., Chinatown. We decided to start meetings at 7:00 instead of 6:00; 7:00 pm seemed to fit better with people's schedules. Meetings will still end at 9:00 pm. We have meeting space reserved through March and April.

Over the last few months, Ideas has been trying to put together a series of town hall discussions. Unfortunately, this goal seems unrealistic now, given our low meeting attendance during the last few weeks,

For the immediate future, the Ideas WG will scale back to "town hall in the small". This would consist of holding topic-based discussions during Ideas meetings (similar to our Feb 8th discussion on election concerns), and posting writeups on wiki.occupyboston.org. If any interesting positions come out of these discussions, then we'll try to turn those positions into proposals, and bring the proposals to the General Assembly.

We should make an effort to pick topics in advance, and try to drum up attendance (both inside and outside of Occupy Boston). Speaking of which, we need a topic for our next meeting, on March 7th ...

By doing town hall in the small, we're not abandoning the idea of holding discussions/forums with other community groups. If possible, we'd like to do both. But town hall in the small could give us the opportunity to "practice on a smaller stage first".

Next Meeting: Wednesday March 7th, 38 Ash Street, Room 505. 7:00 - 9:00 pm.

Finally, a couple of reference for your reading (and viewing) pleasure.

• Occupy Unmasked
• Behaaaave yourselves
• Occupy Research. Lots of neat stuff here.