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BackgroundHum

2007-11-10 ~12:00 - 2:00 PM

Participants: LionKimbro, BrianDorsey?, Kristi, John, Jason Guel, Linda, Conner, Sakura, and some others coming in and out.

We talked about Lion’s proposal to IncorporateGroups?. The idea is to officially recognize groups as the Saturday House, as a sort of “initiation” ceremony, and to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to speak about the group activity, and to raise and settle concerns about the group identity.

Brian raised, “How do you recognize when a group is a group to be recognized? Are the Carcazzonne players, who play regularly, a group that needs to be recognized?” Linda seconded that. Everyone agreed: The Carcazzonne players shouldn’t have to be “registered” as a group. But 6 Hour Startup – that’s easily recognizable as a group, somehow.

Lion offered, “Well, if they have a whole separate mailing list, a web page, and if people are coming specifically for that other thing, … There’s a subjective component to this.” Brian focused on: “A good litmus test would be: does the outside world perceive it as a separate group.” There was rough agreement. Groups are subjectively felt, a good litmus test is “does the outside world perceive it as a separate group.”

Then we talked about decision making. Brian and Lion started talking about “When is ConsensusPolling? appropriate?”

http://consensuspolling.org/

Lion explained to everyone the basic idea of how consensus polls work: You work on a document together over time; When enough people flip over from “not yet” to “YES”, according to some pre-determined “static contract,” the document can pass. But it has to remain untouched, for some (pre-determined) time, before it can pass. So for example, a document is modified, a few people say, “OK: YES!”, and it passes. You still have to wait (like, say) 3 days, before it actually passes. That gives people the time who had previously voted “YES,” a chance to see the new document, and change back to “not yet!”, should they have a problem with it.

For some things, this isn’t the best way to do things. What are those things?

We decided to test consensus polling out as a method. Cleaning duties, getting house donations (for things like toiletries,) public disclosure policy, wiki page editing policies, were all brought up as things that we could test the consensus polling with.

Brian Dorsey would like to talk with TedErnst?; “Can we use the AboutUs? space for doing Consensus Polling?” Lion called Ted, left a message, and gave Ted’s number to Brian.

Afterwards:

Kristi brought up that the NE & SE rooms can switch places, because the NE room can close both doors for classes, but open up the windows. We can move the couch into the main space, and then move the table from SE to NE.

Brian brought up: “Kindergarden for adults; Play day.” as a motto for Saturday House. We agreed “Adult play day” is probably not a good idea.

Lion talked w/ Linda & Kristi about what Saturday House might look like if there were 50,000 people present.

2007-11-10 12:10 AM

Participants: LionKimbro, BrianDorsey?

Summary recorded by: Lion

Lion & Brian discuss opening the house tomorrow. Brian is going to go to the Drupal barnraising, so he’ll be at house late. Will Lion open? Lion says, “Yes,” he’ll depart for House at 9AM, access codes in hand.

Lion raises his vision for Saturday House with 50,000 people.

Lion & Brian agree that fragmented conversation is a good idea, just as long as someone keeps notes. They further agree that occasional grand meets at the House, and using the list as a “reading expected” place, are good ideas as well, to complement the fragmented conversations.

Lion keeps notes for this very conversation. They decide that the wiki would be a good place to post the notes, because posting to the mailing list would just be too much mail traffic. Something passive, searchable, referencable.

Brian will donate some computers to the House.