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 and 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 and 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 come from two major donors who AT THE MOMENT are giving $1500 each per quarter. The feeling by the Kira Institute Board (and with those two donors) is that it would nice to encourage PaB to become self-supported and that the WG could be a core part of any donations drive.  So ...we have two weeks to get an increased number of small donations among guardians on a regular basis.  We have approx 60 guardians who could be asked to give $800/60 = $5 (1300 L$) a month each. (That's effectively the same as the weekly stipend for premium members from LL!)
It is 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 these figures they would be more willing to contribute.

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

2. More Wiki navigation reorganization

Eos has spent quite a bit of time simplifying the WG  Wiki - the agendas and corresponding minutes had been far from each other. He consolidtated things by year, suggesting  writing minutes as a continuation of the agenda page on the WG 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. Thank you Eos.

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 sometimes 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. Aph agreed to spend less time writing the minutes, only noting whatever's important and/or actionable and highlights.

3. SL retreats
Eos reported that  Eliza and Bruce and he had an impromptu meeting about SL retreats at end of the last Guardian meeting (Jan 16) and worked something out. Bruce will be co-coordinating a weekend retreat the weekend of Feb 11 in "retreat-land". He will coordinate the logistics, format etc. with Eliza. We set a pattern in the first retreat, which can be loosely followed and adapted as needed.
Action: Bruce and Eliza should announce the upcoming retreat soon, to get an idea of who could come, etc.
 

4. Scribing

During the past week 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 the year 2010; there was some discussion of whether to finish what's missing up to that date; the feeling of most was to to let that drop and then to rethink what scribing/ themeing are all about. One idea was to find people who wanted to do small themed blogs instead of the "cover everything" approach. Pema had the idea of a newspaper combining the material from the small themed blogs. We just need people to start them and manage them. 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
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 it by email.

Meeting Adjourned. Next WG meeting: Feb 1, 2pm.