2009.11.10 14:00

Play as Being Working Group Meeting

Present: Eliza Madrigal, Eos Amaterasu, genesis Zangsun, Maxine Walden, Pema Pera, Storm Nordwind.

Reference: this week's agenda

Facilitator: Eliza*

Minute taker: Storm*

* See also item 0 and item 0 redux below

Minute taker's note: Due to the sporadic nature of two or three attendee's connections this week, the meeting was partly in voice, partly in text and partly a mix of both. The minute taker offers his apologies if he has not correctly credited or included all the comments, or if he has recorded things out of sequence.

 

 

Minutes

Meeting opened at 14:04 SLT.

0 Chair and minutes (pre-agenda item)

Pema had offered, via email, to do chairing and minute taking for a six month period, as he felt he was the WG member with by far the lightest load. We noted that his voice connection was very poor and so continued as planned with Eliza and Storm taking those roles.

1A Name Tags over avatars

PaB Host tag installed by Storm at Pema's suggestion. Email sent by Pema to the main guardian mailing list announcing it and declaring it optional. Around half of guardians are already wearing it in PaB pavilion meetings.

[Storm noted wryly that during this WG meeting itself there were two members wearing Host tags, two wearing Guardian tags, one wearing Cultivator tag, and one tag was not visible.]

 

1B Disruptive behaviour

With the current example under consideration, much discussion on the main guardian mailing list had resulted in a possible three months ban. However it was noted that the person concerned had been behaving well recently! What do we do?

Agreement was reached in the WG to recommend suspending the ban and have it immediately instated in case of recidivism.

Maxine suggested we talk to him about a ban and follow through if disruptive behaviour resumes. That would be respectful to all parties.

Pema suggested we email the main guardian mailing list with the proposal and ask for voluteers to do the talking, with a fallback of the WG group doing it if there were no volunteers.

Maxine agreed to draft the email for submission first to the WG and, after approval, to the main guardian mailing list.

ACTION: Maxine

 

2 Donations

Thanks were given to Pema and Maxine for their very generous donation commitments of $1500 per quarter.

Pema said he had sent an email to the WG very recently about which organization pays for what (PaB and Kira) and where the donations from himself and Maxine should be directed. Pema reminded us that only Kira is tax-exempt but that since PaB is a bone fide Kira project then donations could go to Kira and then quite legally be distributed as the Board sees fit - which is likely to be to PaB.

Eos mentioned that now would be an appropriate time to differentiate the general donations and the specific purchase of services on our website. Appropriate buttons will be installed on the Kira website by Storm.

ACTION: Storm

We decided that we would not ask Kira workshop attendees to fund Kira; it would take a lot of effort and have little hope of useful success.

Pema prefered his and Maxine's donation to fund Kira and for the PaB practitioners/attendees to fund PaB. We agreed that we would need to make it clear the priorities of using any money received:

1. Retreat coordinator's costs
2. Second Life land usage fees ("tier")
3. Accountant (to keep us legal)
   

The estimated cost of these was $15000 per annum. Whatever was raised above $15000 could go to a final priority:

  4.     Scholarships

$12000 was already covered by Pema and Maxine leaving $750 per quarter shortfall.

Eos added that non-US people could assign the tax deduction to a US person.

genesis pointed out that PaB events may attract funders so we might get direct contributions to the last priority category (because potential sponsors, as we have found in the past, are not interested in funding operational costs).

We decided that we would hold a quarterly funding drive to raise the rest, targeted at PaB attendees. Quarterly would be better than annual as the amounts would be less daunting.

Pema agreed to draft a letter for submission first to the WG and, after approval, to the main guardian mailing list.

ACTION: Pema

 

0 redux Chair and minutes

genesis raised concerns regarding the chairing and minute taking, in contrast to Pema's offer. She still thought monthly rotation of the chair and minute taker roles was better. She cited leadership role learning opportunities as being one reason to make such rotations.

Pema mentioned that he was making his suggestion from a pragmatic point of view of efficiency.

Storm said he didn't personally feel the need for leadership role learning opportunities as he had plenty already! However he was concerned that outside the WG it might been seen as though Pema was still the overall leader again.

Pema countered by opining that if he were chair forever, that would reinstate him as "leader" in image but for five months he believed it was a different matter.

Some discussion followed, but this matter was not entirely resolved during the meeting.

 

4 Retreats (pre-amble - out of sequence)

Eos said we may need to restrict some information on the Wiki regarding retreats.

Storm said he needed to know where the public viewable threshold was so that he could correctly populate the Kira website (since that could not be restricted).

Eos and Storm agreed to coordinate the extent of publicly available information.

ACTION: Eos, Storm

 

3 Chat logs

The problem remained of identifying who is (and by implication who is not) a guardian in chat logs. This was a separate issue to the tag above an avatar live in SL and needed a separate solution as one cannot solve the other.

The autologger could be modified to prepend some agreed text onto the front of a speaker's name that it recognized as a guardian.

We agreed as a preliminary proposal to use "PaB Host" as the prepended text.

Eliza agreed to draft a letter for submission first to the WG and, after approval, to the main guardian mailing list.

ACTION: Eliza

 

4 Retreats (in sequence)

Eos gave the following report on retreat organization progress.

2010-01 Malta: There's a detailed page on the Wiki. Up to 10 attendees if all "maybe"s show up.
2010-04 California: No venue arranged yet. Perhaps this will be an urban retreat.
2010-07 Hawaii and Nova Scotia are possibilities and maybe for 7 days. Eos was investigating Nova Scotia.
2010-10 Germany: Wol was investigating a venue.

We need to reserve 'proper' retreat centers a long way ahead. For example, if we wished to return to Pema Osel Ling we would need to be reserving now for 2011.

There was the possibility of a retreat in Japan but the interest level was not yet known.

Storm offered to investigate venues in and around the Rocky Mountains (US) for 2011 as there were lots of good sites available. High altitudes would need some acclimatization, though we noted that strenuous activity was not an issue in meditation retreats!

Maxine offered to check out sites near Seattle.

Ongoing.

Agenda items 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 were not addressed.
There was no item 6 on the agenda!
Item 9 was partly addressed by item 0.

AOB

None.

Meeting closed at 14:59 SLT.