MFPL Outreach and Partnership subcommittee June 10, 2013 3:30pm Agenda: *Lowdown - Review proposal for content committee and pass work to that group as approved *Member/Partner use cases: feedback for Democracy committee, see https://pad.riseup.net/p/mfpl-lc-democracy-2013-06-06 *Events - Identify goals for scheduled events and outreach opportunities, *Other projects - Name other projects for this subcommittee and identify members to write proposals (see Hilary's proposals for the Lowdown as an example) List other projects: (add here before or we can ID in the meeting) *Confirm facilitation and time for the next meeting, proposed as Monday July 8 @ 3:30pm Hilary: Content Committee review, and how we will relay content to the LC? Feedback from Democracy Committee - use cases. Hilary: Content Committee, looking for general feedback. Sticks out, general direction, rethink parts? Rasha: proposal looks good but the initial proposal looks at how lowdown would look on the website. This propsal looks at content creation and collection.the power of the proposal is to give people definition of what to do so they can be autonomous in their action. So including a purpose would be important. And how it could work. What need does this fill. I can add this to the description. Rasha will add her language and ideas for Aaron - are you on the call? Analia is available to help with interpretation. Stephen: still working on drupal web development proposal for the lowdown sent by jamie, please send notes so that I can update the wiki. Rasha: recommendations for content committee members? Hilary: Alfredo's group thiscantbehappening. Dave Lindorf also in this group. Ned Sublette writer. Beehive collective art, art graphics. Alfredo has more ideas? Rasha: ideas for folks to serve on committee or contribute to this committee? Alfredo: All of our journalism members: Ned, Dave. Mark Engler, columnist. Thiscantbehappening. Kenyon Farrow, Makani Thembe of Praxis Project. MAGNet, Hilary heads up that connection, number of writers there. A lot of people working around this. Probably more writers in the membership. 10-12 active journalists in membership that we've never organized. Hilary: 100 reporters, Sahara Reporters, NACLA, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, APC - Mallory Knodel, Pedro Miguel, Juan Gerardo Probably great contributors to content, but not necessarily the content organizers. We should also think about people who might serve on the committee as coordinators and implementors. Hilary: good distinction. Hard to think of, a general callout or targeting specific folks? Rasha - we can do a general call out but might also want to identify specific people for this committee. This is a great way to praise people, recognize their leadership and mobilize them. Hilary: content coordination is already in staff, we might get absorbed into this committee. Hilary, Jamie, but not expect him to organize much. Alfredo would be great. Ross has good ideas, not as much a writer. Stephen has article, Daniel is working on something. Putting call to support team for tech stuff. Specific call to LC to get involved or think of others to get involved in their circles. Bc Lowdown is internal, we haven't pulled in others. Rasha: need more support? Hilary: more people getting involved, would spread out. Difficult part is getting timely translation of articles right now; we have articles ready, but not sure whether it's scheduling, technical parts of system. Working with Internationalization team is issue. More specific schedule might help. Deadline scheduled for things in, things out, then translation committee can predict. Alfredo: coordinating decision making is the single most difficult thing to do. Most people believe their contribution is their political work, part of discussion we continue to have, contentious. Most members do believe that, we may not get much more out of most people. We're going to end up getting people who have a lot of time, requires specific selection process. Like selecting staff. I would love to get LC poeple, but I have no faith, not enough forces on it to contribute to workgroups and subcommittees we've designed at this time. Maybe a general call, and make a list of 30-40 member organizations that have highest profile and deepest level of activity, would they have a staff person to join this committee? Difficult. There are organizations like Project South that definitely have content to submit - important to think about what that will mean - about editing. clarity about ways to participate: phone call, submit by email? Hilary: staff project right now, would be great if it was not just a staff project, this would be a way to engage others. having more people and more input will allow us to expand article topics. Even if I'm the coordinator, more folks to call on for input, that helps. more content in will help us not scramble, highlight more articles rather than create. Add content to online version of the LowDown, pick some of these for the email and get us on a regular schedule. rasha: hilary as point person? Hilary: would like to invite other formations, i can run it up. Ideal formation is a group that meets every month or couple of months to rely on. Rasha: hard to take on additional phone call per month. What are alternative options for different ways to contribute. hilary: include contract for participation, put you on the schedule for participation. Rasha: next steps? Hilary: clarify the levels of participation, break out: curation of content, creation of content. larger body of people to pull from and guarantee content might make it easier. Like the idea of a committee. Rasha: continued relationship between the OPC and content committee? Hilary: like general guidance, pulling back from LC. Might be nice to have members from Support team, LC, I18n committees on this committee. Next steps: Hilary will revise, Rasha offers context text, send to OPC list for review, then send to LC before mtg at Looking at Democracy Committee to look at different ways people connect with the organization, what kinds of folks who are members and what they might do. Hilary: add Issue Areas - what kinds of stuff folks are working on, Location and regional as key issues, connecting to other kinds of movement actions. If there's an issue that folks want to find each other through MFPL, a census of members? Identify what areas members were working. Alfredo: Rasha will try to clarify. We aren't being asked about feedback on decisionmaking. The Democracy Subcommittee is looking at who are the people that interact with may first and what are their positions with mayfirst and what are they trying to accomplish with may first. It goes beyond membership. We can look at peer organizations and staff that may not be members but we work with them closely. The idea is an inventory of participation. Alfredo : may first interacts with 120 organizaions on the NPC of the social forum where only a few are members. Rashsa, we can look at MAGnet as an example that is not a member. the idea is looking at whether there will be a change in leadership and how these other relationships will change or not accordingly. Alfredo: this is a discussion that splits the organization. It's a heavy discussion, but the question is do we spread this discussion to the work groups? I'm wary of this discussion. It's a perfectly wonderful request, but it has to be phrased responsibly. This group is adhereing to the original structure. Rasha is more interesting in clarity and looking at how different members can interact with may first as a whole and the leadership committee. We can limit this to the democracy committee. Hilary - it's just hard to think about adding comments because it feels out of context. We decided to move on. Events: Follow up or action on recent events. Hilary: Next big event is AMC, a week from Saturday. message to reach out to members and LC to see who's going, see if there's ways to engage folks who are there. We have Wiki page of calendar of events, Are we looking at it? How are we strategically engaging with this list? Do we need to review them or think about them. How do we decide which ones to focus resources on or not? Interesting to see or do a callout to see if people would go, would represent MFPL in addition their own representation at other events. Rasha has't looked at wiki events. But if there are specific events, she would be willing in thinking about connecting folks to that. And if there are materials they could help distribute those materials and have them at other events. Hilary - this sounds really exciting. Hilary: there are some brochures, we can make more to have other organizations help with outreach. This is a model for what this committee would do and how to interact with members. Will send out messages to members to come by table at Discotech to meet MFPL - Alfredo? Alfredo: not sure what the ask is. Hilary: Techs who staff discotech, specific times to be at table and invite MFPL members to come by and say hello, casual. Alfredo: doing 2-3 other workshops. Send an email? Presentation is at 1:30pm on Sunday. Hilary: easier to set up time. Rasha: create 1/4 sheet with list of events at AMC that MFPL. I will pass on Rasha - many organizations create little fliers to identify all the evens they will be at during the conference and we can promote our involvement there. Decided to close meeting and move forward with July 8th planning.