2011.01.18 Working Group Meeting

Proposed Agenda

1 Email discussions follow-up & confirmations

2 Donation Drive (cf Storm's email of Jan 13, Topic for next WG - Donation Drive)

3 More Wiki navigation reorg

4 SL retreats

5 What to do about Scribing

6 New Guardians?

Meeting Minutes

Present: Eos, Storm, Aphro, Calvino, Hana, Bruce

1. Donation Drive

Storm Nordwind reminded peple about his email and to look at the updated donations page:  http://wiki.playasbeing.org/Donations
He would like to organize a donations drive for Feb 1st if possible. Want to try and increase the total amount that we encourage guardians to donate regularly,  directing our requests to Guardians.  At present, financial donations are from only a small proportion of guardians -10-15% of them. At present there is always a shortfall at the end of the quarter. The target we have is for $US 800 a quarter. At present we regularly make around a third of that. The balance comes out of KIRA's reserve fund which means that we can't give scholarships to needy people who'd like to go to retreats. Contributions currently two major donors who AT THE MOMENT are giving $1500 each per quarter. The feeling is the Kira Institute Board (and with those two donors) that it would nice to encourage PaB to become self-supported. The feeling was that the WG could be a core part of any donations drive.  We have two weeks to get an increased number of small donations among guardians on a regular basis.  We have approx 60 guardians  $800/60 = $5 (1300 L$) a month each.T(That's effectively the same as the weekly stipend for premium members from LL!)
Not realistic maybe but it's doable and easy via PayPal for many people as the paypal donations button supports monthly donations of various amounts: 10, 20, 30,50, 100, 250 per month.

Action: We need to find out whether we can easily put a $5/month option on the PayPal button and find out how much we get to keep of PayPal's receipt of $5. (For $30 donated we lose 96c. For $10, we lose 52c. There are no figures for $5 offhand.)
 

It was felt that if more Guardians knew the figures that Storm mentioned, they would be more willing to contribute.

Action: Aphro agreed to send out an email call for support to all Guardians using a text request written by Storm.

2. More Wiki navigation reorganization

Eos spent a bit of time simplifying the WG area - the agendas and corresponding minutes were far from each other and consolidtated things by year, suggesting  writing minuntes as a continuation of the agenda page on the wiki.
Eos Amaterasu wrote in an email: "I have another suggestion re the items under the "Guardian Pages" menu at left. There's 4 sub-menu items there now, one of which is "Volunteer Community", which has 2 sub-menu items, "Pab Handbook" and "Working Group". I think it would simplify things to have "PaB Handbook" and "Working Group" directly under "Guardian Pages", which would give "Guardian Pages" a total of 6 sub-menu items (still a reasonable number, keeping the 7 +/- 2 rule in mind), and make access to those pages more direct.

Related to recent discussions, I also changed "Literature" to "Writing" in the main menu: less grandiose, and shorter. Some other notes (which I have not done anything about): under "Writing" we don't really need "Books", since we already have "PaB Books". We'll have to see what happens for "Scribe Project", but one idea we've previously discussed was to put a link to the month's scribe page at the top of the corresponding monthly log page - even if we're not goind to be doing more with Scribing Eos Amaterasu:  Reducing number of levels you have to descend into to get somewhere is always good
Everyone agreed that the changes made by Eos were useful and appropriate.

Aphrodite Macbain wondered whether everyone reads the minutes - it took her over 2 hrs to write the last ones. Purpose of writing the minutes:  for transparency for everyone else - and sometime to remind the WG of action items. She had listed all the "to be done" things as a reminder but if no one reads them she was unsure why they are written. She suggested  leaving it as a log, without editing but then it would be really tedious. She agreed to spend less time writing the minutes noting whatever's important and/or actionable and  highlights.

3. SL retreats
Eos reported that  Eliza and Bruce and I had an impromptu meeting about SL retreats at end of last Guardian meeting and actually worked something out. Bruce will be co-coordinating a weekend retreat he thinks the weekend of Feb 11 in retreat-land. He will coordinate the logistics, format etc. We set a pattern in the first retreat, which can be loosely followed and adapted as needed.
Action: Bruce and Eliza should announce it soon, to get an idea of who could come, etc.
 

4. Scribing

We began an email discussion on scribing that wasn't finished but it looks like we stop and start gain with something different. There was was a definite agreement to stop at end of year date; some discussion of whether to finish what's missing up to that date; I think feeling of most was to to let that drop and then to rethink what scribing/ themeing are all about. One idea was to get people who wanted to do small themed blogs instead of the "cover everything" approach. Pema had the idea of a newspaper too. We just need people to start them and manage them and perhaps small themed blog posts could be periodically harvested into newspaper. There was interest in  newspaper idea because (in the past) it can bring an inclusive feel and things tend to be read more often by more people. What makes a newspaper work is interesting content. Aphrodite agreed it is a nice idea but wonders who will take on that responsibility.It needs someone who will devote their time to it and nothing else. Eos  and Storm suggested advertising for an intrepid reporter and cigar-chewing, active and enthusiastic  editor
Aphrodite Macbain: Storm Nordwind: With a small group it usually hinges on an active and enthusiastic editor Eos Amaterasu: and in a way Chronicles is a kind of mag.  A newspaper will work if a few people like working together on it.

Action: We agreed to raise the subject of chronicles, blog posts and a newspaper at next guardian meeting on Sunday and talk among the community.
 

New Business: Hana Furlough had a theme session to propose, but will circulate by email.

Next WG meeting: Feb 1, 2pm.