[[TranslatedPages]] = Choosing Next Year's Priorities = == Big Picture == Every year, the membership elects the Leadership Committee and chooses the organizational priorities that will guide the Leadership Committee. Over the course of the year, the Leadership Committee will choose the projects that the staff will implement. Every project must be informed by at least one of the priorities chosen by the membership. And, the Leadership Committee is responsible for ensuring that all priorities are covered in at least one of the projects. The staff, in turn, are responsible for fully implementing all projects assigned by the Leadership Committee. == Goals of the process == As a membership organization that spans both language and borders, it is both critically important and challenging to ensure that the priorities are chosen in a collaborative and inclusive way. Therefore, our process provides opportunities for people in New York, Mexico City, and online to both discuss the priorities in small groups and interact and respond to the input from other small groups in real time. == How it works == We will start by dividing everyone into groups of about five people. In New York and Mexico City, the participants in the room will count off to five, with the "ones" going to one corner of the room, the "twos" to another corner, etc. For the participants online, Mallory will be directing via our IRC chat room, with each group creating a new chatroom limited to five participants each. === Initial Discussion === For the first 30 minutes, the small groups will discuss the proposed 8 priorities that were written by the outgoing Leadership Committee, along with the feedback on these priorities from the membership at large via the survey. ''The purpose of the first 30 minutes of conversation is to ensure that everyone understands the meaning of each priority, assess priorities that may be missing, and begin brainstorming ways of revising the priorities to better refelct what you think the organization should focus on in the coming year.'' === Collaborative Democracy === After initial discussions, we will add the ability for each small group to interact with all the other small groups in real time via the Internet. Each small group will have a designated "scribe" with a laptop computer connected to the Internet (including the groups participating remotely). Each scribe will go to the site: http://mm2012.meetings.mayfirst.org/ and login with a password that depends on their location (either: "brecht" for those in New York City at the Brecht Forum or "casa" for those in Mexico City at the Casa de Solidaridad or "virtual" for those participating online). Each scribe will see the eight proposed priorities, along with a button that allows you to edit the priority. The following rules apply: * Anyone can edit any priority as often as you like. * Everyone participating in New York, Mexico City and remotely are all working on the same priorities. When you edit a priority, your changes will appear on everyone's screen. * You may not add additional priorities. If an important priority is missing you must either replace a priority that has less value or expand an existing priority to include what is missing. * When editing a priority, you may choose to edit either the spanish or english version or both. You will be provided with an ability to generate a machine translation if you are unfamiliar with one of the languages. You may also choose to improve a translation. This process will last 45 minutes. === Ranking the priorities === After we have collaboratively edited the priorities, each group will rank the resulting priorities in order of importance. The scribe for each group is responsible for sending the ranking by email to info@mayfirst.org. After the meeting, the rankings will be compiled, with each group receiving an equal weight. The final results will be sent to the full membership and used by the Leadership Committee as a basis for passing projects for the organization. == Evaluation == The New York, Mexico City, and remote participants will each have an independent discussion of how the process worked. A summary of each discussion will also be published with the results.