#5.7.2020

July 5, 2020 - Day 16

Things that were bought up in management WG:

Issue of participation.

Issue of voice (some members feeling unheard/lost in the noise).

Issue of structure and organisation (siloed management structure with no shared database of information).

Issue of information and its availability.

Issue of learning curve for skills like chairing meetings or taking minutes.

Solutions and ideas

Instead of purely using email to organise: creating a centralised database - containing information types such as general information about the co-operative, newsletters, minutes and agendas, existing working groups, how to get involved with those working groups, proposals, upcoming meetings, and more - that can be accessed by all. Becoming 'out-of-the-loop' was identified as one possible obstacle to participation if a member misses a meeting, however if there was a posterous repository of information easily available this may go some distance towards helping. It may even be worth overhauling communications first and seeing if the above issues improve from that alone before taking any further action. I believe Google Drive to be the best way to accomplish this - all it would really take is identifying the types of files the Co-op shares and then building a file structure around that and the different groups that the Co-op is divided into.

It was raised that one of the biggest obstacles to changing a system is learning the new processes. This is where video tutorials could come in in order to make the learning process as painless as possible. Educational videos can be made and provided for each new platform in order to showcase navigation and usability so that people can easily get a handle on some of these things.

Additionally video tutorials could be created for other subjects such as chairing or minute taking.

An incremental moving over to shared working documents through services like Miro and Google Docs, complete with training videos to ease the transition. For example, if a working group is working on a google docs document that is then stored within a google drive it means that that document can be accessed between meetings and changes can be proposed that can then be approved by the document admin during said meeting.

A shared forum for the co-op (possibly google groups, but there may be better options available) where people can make their voices heard, discuss issues in a public space, propose ideas, share projects, start projects with other members, and comment on any current matters. In our WG meeting it was talked about how there is much frustration around certain areas that is often discussed outside meetings with certain individuals feeling as though they are not being listened to (01:36:55 of the WG Meeting 01 VOD). I feel this is something that having a forum space for these things to be discussed if people so wish would go a long way to remedying this.

Integrated documents through a service like Miro in which things can be set-up so that, for example, if one document references another a direct link between the two can be created. For new members this creates an ease with which they can understand context for current projects.

I believe that it is about making people as empowered as possible to participate, get involved, and further the social principles of the co-op by:

Making as much information readily available as possible.

Equipping people with the skills to access said information as well as make themselves heard.

Equipping people with the tools that enable them to work more efficiently together, before putting that work out into that same, shared ecosystem as everything else.

Go through Helen’s meeting notes and extrapolate ideas I am able to take action on from those

Go through livestream video to extrapolate ideas from that/fill in any blanks

Read participation experiment

Put themes and questions into a Miro board

I wanted to record a quick troubleshooting experience I’ve just had for posterity’s sake. I encountered a conundrum with Journlr where the ‘dates’ directory on the side had extended past the boundaries of the screen whilst setting up the page for today. This was not a problem I had anticipated. As you can see, there is no way to access dates past the 2nd of July. An issue to be sure.

This is a workflow in which I find myself naturally falling into as an artist, which is ‘fix what I’m working with whilst I’m working with it’ which can make for some strange, as well as interesting, situations. In that fashion, I quickly dipped out of what I was writing to locate the <div> class for that panel and the CSS styles it was referencing:

From there I located the CSS style in the code editor:

Before locating this forum post on the topic. I followed the thread and added the appropriate CSS classes to the style.

And voila! The dates directory is now a scrollable panel that should be future proof for all future journal pages.