Ideas

Working Group Meeting Times

Ideas Working Group meets at 6pm on Wednesdays at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, 38 Ash St., Chinatown. We also meet at 2:30 pm on Saturdays at E5, which is on the 5th floor of Unite Here, 33 Harrison Ave, Chinatown. The Saturday location is subject to change. To sign up for text updates of meeting locations and times, text "@OBideas" to 23559.

Cooming Soon: The ideas working group will be holding topic-focused open political discussions at 7pm on non-GA nights - Monday, Wednesday, and possibly Friday. We need indoor space for these discussions! If you know of any, let us know by emailing ideas@lists.occupyboston.org

• Ideas working group meeting notes

Stay Connected and join the conversation

• Join the Ideas email list - email your ideas, join the online conversation, and view the archive of discussions

• Join the wiki. Have some ideas you are developing? Consider putting a link to them in the group workspace: User:WG-ideas You can also create your own user page by clicking on your name in the upper right.

Ideas Working Group Materials

• Public Meetings/Public Discussions
• Concerns Data
• Ideas working group values data
• Declaration of Occupation
• 100 great political objectives
• Occupy Boston Summit Notes
  • Notes from the Overflow Room

Public Discussion Minutes & Notes

Friday, November 4

Facilitator: Marty Facilitator: Forest Minutes: Mallory Stack Taker: None

The discussion followed this format:

• Introduction (10 minutes)
• Breakout Group Formation (individuals on stack) (20 minutes)
• Group Discussions (45 minutes)
• Group Stack/Presentations (10 minutes per group x 3 groups = 30 minutes)
• Conclusion/Summary

Breakout groups were formed after an opening discussion about what people wanted to talk about. The three breakout groups were:

• Local Issues
• Occupy as Paradigm Shift
• Functional divisions in the movement and occupy boston (i.e. offline/online, onsite/offsite)

Some noted questions/comments that resulted at the end of discussion:

• How does occupy reach into rural areas? Also, what about occupy gardens/farms?
• How to include people whose time is filled with work obligations (i.e. how to occupy time the same way we are currently occupying space)?
• "laboratory space" to describe our ideas discussions.

Two functional issues with discussion format identified by facilitator (Forest) were:

• Breakout groups for the most part lacked facilitation, stack taker, timekeepers, or minute recorders. In the future groups should ideally follow an established process for discussion.

• People who tended to agree seemed to clump together in the smaller groups. Maybe experimenting with starting groups with members randomly assigned and *then* applying law of two feet would be worthwhile? Also, instructing group initiators to make sure their group has someone taking stack?