Date: 2021-07-28 17:00
(participants) → coffee/tea drinkers : Vasilis, Bruno, Nick, Mariha, mystery person (?),
grab a cuppa…
Date: 2023-07-12
Attendees: Bruno, Daniel, Kranti, Nick, and Vas a bit later
Faciliator: Bruno, and then Nick?
Duration: Kranti until 18:50 CEST, others a bit longer
Agenda
- how we organise using karrot
- weekly calls, available to join
- weekly co-working sessions on wednesdays
- both are activities in our Karrot Team & Feedback group
- looking to evolve sustainable models to support us
- nobody working full time, nick increased his time lately, bruno working a smaller amount
- we’ve managed to be quite resilient over the years
- developing new methods for how to prioritise features/fixes
- how Leuven works
- using karrot for pickups
- everything else is done offline
- Kranti is leading the foodsaving group
- another team is working on expanding supermarket co-operations
- it goes onto karrot once the agreement is made
- around 300 volunteers in karrot that can sign up
- go and pickup at a time and space, and deposit excess food in hubs, where neighbours can collect
- using facebook and instagram for notifying people there is food in a hub
- 2 accountability issues
- core team itself, making sure the operation is running, karrot can’t do much there, as it’s happen outside
- accountability for the volunteers who subscribe to go and pickup food, people signup but don’t show up
- if there are a few people signed up, but only one person turns up, they have to take care of all the food, and can be a lot of weight to carry on a bike… so person feels bad
- if nobody goes at all, the supermarket manager is upset, as they’ve made a plan based on the idea somewhere will turn up
- want to make sure people who have signed up, that they go
- a framework to see if people don’t show up a few times, and have some kind of punishment
- looked at using the membership review… but they might be kicked out in one go, so too harsh
- want to be friendly to new people, and give a couple of chances before kicking people out
- summer is difficult time, and particularly difficult if people don’t show up
- use the feedback feature to collect weight
- people do mention if they were on their own, or who didn’t show it up
- potential for automated solution for it, so you could report that somebody didn’t turn up
- same issue experienced in luxembourg
- at the moment, they have an offline dispute system, and some rules
- updated group agreement with some more strict rules, and have a team to take care of the complaints
- anyone can create a dispute about another person, to create a report
- since the introduction of the report system, a lot less problems, as people are afraid of the consequences
- like the idea of the feedback options to say who didn’t show up
- also nice to have other consequences than kicking out
- one consequence is being blocked for 3 months, timeout
- see section “7. Conflicts management” in group agreement: Group Agreement – Foodsharing Luxembourg
- experiences in gothenburg
- have discussed a lot previously in karrot, software sanctions, e.g. 1 month ban
- they do this in the group, and have a board and guidelines, e.g. showing up
- issue might come to the board, and have a timeout, not so much as a punishment
- ways to prevent it, and ways to deal with after it happens
- trying to find ways to prevent it happening
- having people who are responsible for stores
- group agreement, require them to read and agree before joining the group
- doing introductions, 2 introduction pickups, but now down to 1
- started using approved role, so limited some co-operations to require approved role, depending on the demand for those pickups
- try to delegate within the group to find people to take responsiblity for co-operations, who keep in contact with the stores, and define routines
- why don’t people show up?
- don’t realise gravity of the situation
- too busy, so forget
- maybe calendar feed could help
- improvement on push notifications
- people not able to sign out 1 hour before, for example
- finding a substitute…
- maybe when you sign out less than a certain time before it’s due, you can write a message to inform the rest of the people
- … and have a system message that people can see
- similar solution in luxembourg, if you sign up less than 24hours before, you must write a post and find a replacement, co-operation manager needs to know, as they might need to call the shop too
- where would you write, or look for replacement?
- you have to look for replacement yourself, could ask over another channel
- if nobody shows up and shop doesn’t know, bad consequences!
- how to ensure people do post or inform?
- not strictly enforced, people can report others
- always an issue if they regularly breach the rules
- at least inform in the chat as a bare minimum…
- worst case is when no replacement is found
- in leuven
- 6 co-operations
- 300 shown in karrot
- not more than 50 active
- with more people might be easier, and have more slots
- statistics on active users
- shows 300 users active in leuven
- even just 1 number showing how many people are active over time
- in luxembourg
- 350 people
- 80 places
- had more than 100, but lost some because one chain wanted to put the donations as a tax declaration, but wrong org structure to support that
- lost another one as another group on karrot in luxembourg wanted a more hierarchical process, not sociocracy, and have their own group
- maybe good the group split, but tensions between them, and “co-operation wars”
- 3 people in the core team manage it, so not enough time
-
- organisational aspects to distribute responsiblities across the team
- larger groups and subgroups
- luxembourg has regional circles, and use a prefix in the karrot places, to show which region
- one goal is to not drive too far for pickups, don’t want people to drive a long way for 1 pickups, not worth it for the environment
- idea was to have a rule you can be in maximum 2 regional groups, to prevent misuse, some people are driving through the whole country to do pickups
- so local, regional groups would be useful, hard to know the people, and who is really active, who is new… don’t end up knowing most people
- one idea would be an own-instance
- also means can do database admin actions
- also would be a problem on foodsharing platform, as governed by their association and would have to stick to their rules, german association would be more removed
- need to ask working groups to create groups/roles/etc. a lot of dependencies, main concern
- one advantage having groups per store, not a holy grail
- more important for karrot would be to have a role mapped to a place, e.g. co-operation manager, or foodsharing point, contact people to talk to
- a team can be interesting, but just a role is good first step, to mark who is responsible
- how would people get the role inside karrot? don’t have a rule, or election, maybe being active for a few months… hard to put it into sociocratic structures, …
- one idea would be making it more strict who gets it, anybody could create a place
- a start could be on the place edit, you can mark the responsible people (anyone that can edit it)
- in gothenburg, they put the people named in the place description
- maybe a badge system, to make it clearer
- person has to be active to be co-operation manager, no elections, not a special process, 2 people for each co-operation is nice
- on peoples profile, could show links to place descriptions where people are mentioned on it, so showing pages where you are linked from
- tricky aspects with larger groups
- approved role in luxembourg, used randomly, no rule around it
- similar to trust system, people use it…
- for things you give, would be good if it’s valid for a certain time, e.g. why should trust be valid for people that are inactive… could be removed after 3 or 6 months
- one idea was to ask after the pickups “do you trust this person”, so being combined to ask feedback questions
- was the person present
- do you trust them
- time-based prompt, e.g. your trust is about to expire, do you want to renew it? … relating trust to something you do, more relating to what you do offline, might encourage to create activties
- maybe have it so you can only given trust after an activity? (maybe tricky at the beginning though… “small group” mode?)
- feedback from joachim in gothenburg
- malfunctioning trust…
- give trust, but the trust is for being an editor, so different trust for editing agreement vs doing a pickup
- trust for role, so trusting for editor, vs organising an assembly
- role potentials
- self-assign roles
- roles in context of places
- roles via trust
- roles via election
- exchanging experiences across active groups
- general karrot feedback, and specific points
- issue common for Lueven and Luxembourg - larger groups