Performance Review Nathalie
- Check-in
Date: 2023-10-18 BigBlueButton pad
Facilitator: Pia (SoFA)
Minutes: Nick
Participants: Nathalie, Nick, Bruno, Pia
- Consent to Agenda
Understand
- Contribution to Karrot, what I’ve been working on (Nathalie)
- wanted to prepare a bit more
- don’t have clear roles
- so do all round kind of role, minus development
- started joining weekly karrot calls march 2022
- quite involved with nlnet funding application tasks
- approved role
- writing up roles and agreements feature
- release planning and creating videos for new features
- planning karrot days online event
- was doing the sociocracy academy, and using karrot as playground to practise skills
- started facilitating some of the meetings
- bringing in more sociocracy into the karrot team
- focused on governance parts
- we made quite a few agreements since Nathalie joined
- money agreement
- membership agreement (with FOSC)
- database agreement
- also dealing with previous conflicts
- took over replying to emails, now handed over
- vasilis and nathalie applied for code for society funding (unsuccessful
) - planning and attending luxembourg event
- new seed engaging with more technical aspects of karrot, git, etc…
- time/compensation
- since joining SOFA, have been recording time
- no data for last year, but this year 12-18 hours/month
- peak months march/september, summer period quite low in time, summer
- not really having a project to work on…
- around 150-200/EUR/month compensation
- wonder how much it’s a factor having an income source, it’s nice
- not on a scale that feels it covers needs, just one puzzle piece
- Bruno: ooh a lot of things!
- Nick: nice to see the reflections
- wanted to prepare a bit more
- Did well round
- Nathalie:
- [preparation ends here!]
- having constant contributions, reliable at joining calls
- bringing governance topics to karrot, and gently bringing sociocracy
- paying attention to governance and picking it up again
- bringing membership topic with FOSC collaboration
- using connections with SOFA through FOSC
- in the beginning brought in some energy, in the middle of funding stuff, and karrot days
- contributed to culture of karrot, honesty, navigating through tensions
- Nick:
- bringing new governance stuff in - especially with sociocracy - is a resource
- bringing methods in when to decide which is the next feature
- bring in a learning resources
- connecting with FOSC - very nice
- very helpful to seeing through the membership topic
- help to get somethings solid
- solid, reliable participant
- taking responsibility
- being supportive during the conflict
- discussing features and surroundings very useful
- Bruno:
- not sure if I can add to it can reiterate/recap
- agree with what has been said by Nathalie and Nick
- overall the level of commitment
- brought a nice set of learning and practise, has contributed a lot
- a lot of focus on the governance aspects, has given has more structure, and thinking more about how we work
- shaping the meetings and culture, adapting how we do our meetings, more conscious about the rounds and process of consent decision making
- bringing up different policies to get more explicit
- the energy in the beginning, organising karrot days
- general input on features and how karrot works, ideas
- not sure if I can add to it
- Nathalie:
- lovely
- thinking about how contribution in karrot is aligned how I generally try and organise my life, with constant/stable things
- nice to hear about the governance aspects, and feel some tensions to go into later
- lovely
- Nathalie:
- Could be better round
- Nathalie:
- struggle with being free flowing, tapping into creativity, where the structure can feel restraining until some aspects are resolved
- sometimes don’t know where is the place to put ideas for karrot features
- aware if there is a long list of things, don’t want to add to burdens
- when I know I have expertise, sometimes struggle to… not wanting to push it on people, want to be an expert but not better than others, don’t know how to best bring in my knowledge, so hold back to let the group discover something, giving space to get up to speed… but holds me back
- how can I better share my knowledge? and feel confident I have a specific knowledge
- Bruno:
- on your arrival, some aspects of karrot were very loose free flowing and undefined, esp. with governance, noticed that these things had bothered you, might not have refined governance without you (although probably eventually, much later), hard to put in terms of what could be better… how to be more free flowing? e.g. in meetings we have structure… if we put to much structure it can be constraining of the free flow, and space for chatting… where is the space for free flowing creativity and where is the space for structure
- Nick:
- finding a thing to focus on
- you had a time you were uncertain about your participation - that left some uncertainty
- making sure that there is still enough space for free flowing states - if there is grounding and then make some space for free flowing; probably everyone in the group has different wishes for free flowing
- progress the coding - support this curiosity how to go on
- sometimes it feels like you are not confident enough that you can bring in things and contribute
- Nathalie:
- give me more!
- relating to period of uncertainty, where to stay or go, not overthink too much… more doing/trying, struggling with wondering what the vision is, and whether it fits with personal vision, needed to ground myself more in the doing, having too many critical questions loose sense of what it is
- tension between is it work or life project, karrot has tendency to speak of intrinsic motivation, not sure if I do, but believe enough to work on it
- not having a clear role, wheres my place in the team, governance person? but if only doing governance is that satisfying, could do that as external consultant? so maybe need something else, wondering what I’m doing here and my position
- at the beginning was involved more in the software, but don’t seem to have done so many big features lately
- Nathalie:
Explore
-
Areas of improvement
- what aspects can we focus on in the next section
- Nick:
- What is the role/responsibility of Nathalie?
- feature work
- creativity/free flow
- governance (external/internal)
- finding area of motivation/fire
- Nathalie:
- seems like a nice list
- seems like a nice list
- Bruno:
- shifting from governance expertise to creativity/features
- still keeping a role for governance topics
- other areas for project as a whole: funding, recruitment, engaging with community, design
- finding areas of intrinsic motivation
-
Concrete ideas for improvement, things to try out
- Nathalie:
- feature work
- I’d enjoy to go more into features
- concept → design → programming levels
- concept level could be nice, was doing penpot designs before
- am interested in coding level, doing that as a side project, and if that progresses would feel comfortable doing more in karrot, wanting the groundwork first… want to understand the concepts first
- struggled, as there is an existing idea of where the software goes
- recently got motivation in how we deal with admins, have some ideas, making it more configurable for the groups, how to deal with editor rights, and more options, maybe their own policies, “policy not permissions” idea
- didn’t commit to nlnet funding things when we did it, but would be motivated to join some of them now
- governance work
- will stay, but maybe take a break for a bit, e.g. 3 months
- we did a lot of governance work, so maybe time to harvest the fruits
- looking at legal status, find it difficult to operate in non-legal flowy state, server privacy, etc. although could be for a later time
- finding area of motivation / fire
- tricky, as it’s on me, wondering where my fire actually is… find it difficult to choose
- from the other side, what I don’t want to do, don’t want to engage with the groups themselves so much, more focused on the team/software, not being community building person
- feature work
- Nick:
- feature work
- design programming flow
- learning penpot skills and then bring that knowledge in
- pick up a feature you want to work on - work on one card
- What is the role/responsibility of Nathalie?
- bring in it to a form what you are working in
- organize your work around working on cards
governance work - legal thing to work on would be helpful
- finding area of motivation / fire
- personal work
- feature work
- Bruno:
- feature work
- like what you said, can only support that
- roles in karrot software and trust system, policy not permissions, one concrete thing to do and interesting for us as a project and personally
- also thinking about the process to work on it, we had design process before. getting from brainstorming to concept to design/prototype, our basic design process structure we had before
- would be happy to contribute/collaborate
- maybe some other tasks, simpler design or coding tasks
- governance work
- leaving it aside for a moment, but not abandon, as it will be needed
- dealing with our illegal status
- be able to step in if we’re avoiding a governance question
- leaving it aside for a moment, but not abandon, as it will be needed
- feature work
- Nathalie:
-
Write up improvement plan
- Instead on focusing on governance work focus more on feature work at the moment
- Nathalie picks up a feature she wants to work on - One card is assigned to Nathalie after the consent from the group.
- Consider learning more about penpot tool
- Observing area of personal motivation / fire and checking in with myself periodically and if it’s needed bring this topic up in the group
- Feel welcome to collaborate with Nick and choose a task that fits Nathalies level for programming
Comment:
- would like to connect learning programming with Karrot, but not clear how
Decide
-
Consent to improvement plan (Term: 1 year)
- we all consented!
-
Check-out
- do we want to carry on with the performance review?
- glad that Nathalie brought this in
- enjoyed the meeting / facilitation
- funny and cool to be in the focus
- find out alignment in the group - big benefit
→ Nathalie review the notes and put in on the forum