dave can help designing flyers and reaching out in his network
good to be prepared for a possible influx of people interested
also hackaton in Siegen in April (hybrid)
self-hosting
luxembourg migration
export/import so users have palces and statuses
backups on the coopcloud
coming across what features might be necessairy
better support of self-hosting
add more tasks on self-hosting
costum instances input from Nick and Daniel
the plugin system is actually usable now
sweden instance
working with a guy to do the landing page of foodsharing sweden and this will be a Karrot instace
making a draft of it atm
one thing that will come out of it…how to make it easy to design landing page or have a general menu, surface and karrot under the surface
would be nice to have a meeting with this person and Nick, to get together so he knows what is possible and what is not
great work Nick! amazing!
nlnet, legal entity, new tasks… MoU (memorandum of Understanding)
we need to progress the next bit…
re-engaging with them again
add new tasks
formulate these in mou task
all things around self-hosting…
Vasilis: there was a call/discussion with …?
- we could double the budget from 17.000 to 34.000 Euro as we understood
- some more features are possible, e.g. the Karrot-manual is possible (there needs to be development in it)
Bruno: what is the time frame?
there is no hurry to get the MoU done but still by Feb will make sense to have it signed
there is flexibility in it / some day in 2025
the legal entity is due, when the payment is due
Nick: we need to get deeper into the topic of fiscal host and legal entity
butze:
have business law background, but not area I want to work in
can sense nick feels weight of responsiblity
can help if there are specific tasks
can write text for a legal entity
bruno:
mou, etc: nice to aim to have it done this month, or latest february, could do our internal work to have it worked in the coming weeks, e.g. tomrorow in co-working
would be nice to come up with clear suggestions of tasks we’d like to add, then bring proposal to our weekly meeting for consent
legal entity: not highly motivated, very confused about it, do want to support and work on it, and in my interest to further formalise income, helps getting flat contract, currently cannot show income, questions about fiscal hosting and whether we can sign agreements
could make a list of our needs as individuals, a group, and as a project, to help decide between fiscal hosting or legal entities, and which country
need to find a clear process, how and when are we going to work on this, naturally a task for co-working, maybe some extra time
nathalie:
a lot of topics! would prioritise the MoU to get us into the working mode
leaning towards what is already there, maybe adding one or two other bits, maybe think about 6 months, and check in after that, to be able to modify stuff given there is some flexibility
don’t have full overview of tasks
best to make fiscal host / legal entity thing separate topic, more leaning towards fiscal hosting option, wondering if everybody is clear about implications for ourselves personally
being aware of implications, e.g. not giving out money randomly, but via a bill/invoice (accounting)
also still an option we all get on nlnet agreement, and donations get transferred to different team members, then have to do more maths about how they match up
mou: seems like funding/agreement is setting what we’ll work on the next time, wondering how it interacts with the board, maybe nice to get the tasks onto the board, to get some transparency
vas:
mou: we’re in the stage we might need 1 co-working to finish up and prioritise, we can drag it, but think we can do it way faster
fiscal hosting etc: lean towards setting up our own organisation, feel it would be easier and more possible in the UK context, and what I suggested, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, could invite someone who has the expertise in the UK and pay the person, ideally a mate rate, and they give us some support, so don’t have to go through all the burden of learning everything ourselves
Nick:
I also think we can get the MoU tasks done soon
all tasks for the MoU came directly from the board
it is already tasks that Nick is working on
legal entity / fiscal host: it could go eather way
fiscal host takes a charge (5-10 %)
likes the own entity idea, if enough peole are there who support it
time scale: Mou work on it driectly. working on legal entity and fiscal host in the background
we could ask for support and would be still ok with our DiY approach
butze
founded two Vereins (charitable organisations) in Germany, and wrote a nice solid constitution
only thing would have to write is the goal, half a page
could support setting it up quite quickly
charitable organisation in germany, can’t do anything that is not charitable
bruno:
unsure when it comes to thinking of a place for a legal entity, germany, UK, greece, sweden…
nice plan, focus on MoU for now, tomorrow in co-working, bring it back to weekly meeting next week
work in background for legal entity, nice to have some clarity when we are discussing that topic, if we have some clear objectives or things to research
nathalie:
long termness and responsiblity, don’t currently want to shoulder, can’t say if I’ll be here in a year for sure, so don’t know about commitment
a bit afraid of doing own legal entity, feels like adding some burden, feels like maybe some people have access to, difficult for new people to get into it
do see a scenario where an own-legal-entity is nice, and if people want to step out they transfer knowledge, etc. feels like something that keeps people responsiblity that they might not want to carry all the time
fiscal hosting feels that the heaviness of responsiblity is on the fiscal host, and feels easier for other people to take over
how many shoulders does the responsiblity rest, I might have a different take than others currently, if there interest in the founding of it I’m not opposed
vas:
second all the thoughts from nathalie
clarifying q towards butze: verein constitution… is that something we could use that we could set up in the UK, or is it german-centric? a: german-centric, yet parallels
fiscal hosting vs entity, fiscal host would get commission, if they cover accountancy great, but as bruno says, could use that fee money for our own accountant
nick:
it is a good point to wonder about responsibility and long-runness
I am all in on Karrot
I do not want a hobby project / side project
I alread carry a lot of responsibility - and the legal entity would take some away
Looking for mor formalization to make responsibilities more visible
Question is about the ‘soul’ of the project
the vision of the project is important as a step forward to the legal entity
random element person
Nick was helping persons to set up SOMETHING on Karrot
they also joined the Karrot group (in case somebody is wondering)
they seem to focus on the tool not on the community
EU-funding (Butze)
had a call with the consultant of the LiFE programme of the EU funding
spoke for 30/45 mins, very helpful, gave me a lot of insights
had doubts if LiFE is the right project, for 2 reasons:
EU is looking for clear CO2 compensation through the project, would be competing with a lot of projects that have clearer impact there
LiFE project has a hard time to understand the community building aspect, not just about CO2 reduction, but socio-cultural transformation
gave me a lot of other links, and encouraged us to keep going
suggested to contact foundations, that would better understand progressive funding than the EU
vas:
q about co2 reduction, they want something measurable? e.g. that foodsaving practises reduce co2 by some amount
a: even if we can measure it, would not reduce enough co2
sidenote: connecting with import/export data, having some tools projects can use to analyse data, do measure it better, and perhaps in the future the community building approach can be measured in this way, looking in the future of data, to make sense of the groups
data used to be taken more seriously
butze:
a friend in berlin does a neighbourhood project, and presented it to the moneygivers after a year, he made a lot of numbers, events done, people addressed, etc… the money givers were very impressed and so was I (by the numbers)
28.01. Foodsharing Academie (butze)
going to next meeting on 28th jan in belgium in a small town nearby aachen, where they want to start foodsaving, but having a hard time
about bringing together eu-wide projects who are interested in setting up a foodsaving community
bruno:
wondering how it’s going with the momentum after luxembourg, regarding a foodsaving europe, think it’s a very nice valuable idea, setting up this kind of networking and sharing of experiences, maybe needs turning it into a project, or applying for funding, etc… would be nice to have a network where people can share experiences and support each other
kind of stuff like janina was doing a lot before, networking, setting up foodsaving.world website, which is kind of now dead and static, … could be nice doing some branding in general for local groups, getting more recognised
we used to have community cafes, that were kind of related to karrot, but not only
karrot being about software and community organising at large, but having some of this wider outreach too, usually people from foodsaving groups
keep us updated!
standing topic: check the board! [E]
Nick checks the board since works for the Lux instance atm
it was a nice call - he seemed to get what we were about (grassroots vibe/ gift economy) - he liked our needs-money-allocation-approach
he founded a few housing coops - he did work on the ground (with people)
it might make more sense to chat more when Vas is around
in the coop path there are 2 ways: 1. if we say a UK coop is ok. you go on the UK coop website and register it according to the rules there. If you come with your own rules you need a lawyer who checks those rules. 2. using the rules that southwest coop has developed. more complex rules - for different kind of members suitable.
he is happy to give advice
we chatted about the european cooperative - he said, when it came out, there was a lot of interest around it. he also thinks that it is fitting. but if we go down this path, he cannot help us.
task: to find someone who knows enough stuff - and he knows a lot of stuff.
2 different option: cooperative society - community benefit society - choice depents who should benefit. the community benefit society would make most sense for us. good mechanism to ensure a certain mission.
bruno:
questions about potential structures of CBS vs co-op society (CBS = Community benefit society)
seems like both structures could fit how karrot works
nathalie:
questions about co-op
Nick: co-op is a general term - can also mean a business
who has signing rights in which co-op/choice of legal entity
finding somebody who knows enough, is crucial thing
if the guy knows a lot and suggests something, is a pathway
thing about legal entity, you don’t need the rules in your daily work, only need it if there is trouble and different opinions, otherwise daily business goes on
who can sign, in a german verein, can decide how many people can sign
wth sie-erein have 3 board members who can sign, in daily business only 1 signs, so could reveal a problem in a court - but it does not affect our daily business
nick:
Nick does not know all the roles. but we need his survices to answer all the questions, like who is responsible and who signs, etc.
we need to choose at one point, if we get down this path
he was interested in sociocracy - needs-based solutions - also interested in CSS model
he quized us - what is your problem to solve - and he got, what we was aiming for (and he had his own frustrations with tools)
bruno:
what are we trying to do, and how much are we trying to match our structure with the legal structure, maybe don’t need a perfect match, but enough that doesn’t conflict
trying to solve a practical issue now, and finances, let’s just look for easiest one that will support governance structure we envision for the future
keeping in mind that in case of trouble it can guide us there, worst case scenarios
jusisdiction, having support of someone who knows, nice guidance from someone in the UK, what does it imply in terms of payments and taxes, have some knowledge about things in Germany too, also some knowledable about things in Sweden
don’t have so much in depth knowledge in sweden, but could access some resources through an organisation
in sweden three kind of legal entities that would fit:
economic association: for the benefit of the members, co-op structure, board of directors
non-profit: similar to community benefit society, annual meetings with both, board elected who take care of operations, and following what’s been decided at annual meeting
social business: not very clear about it
can always get more in-depth guidance/knowledge
nathalie:
how do we treat a legal entity
a subcircle taking care of it, rest of org doesn’t need to be a member, small set of people, e.g. how foodsharing does
or fill it with life, and match the memberships with the org
second option makes more sense, as there are rights, but you need to be a member
do like a sense of giving some power to the communities, but don’t believe so much about the 1 member 1 vote, would it just be like voting random names? how would it relate to our governance?
some work in sociocracyfor all about legalizing sociocracy, but quite US-focused
how can we bring our own governance in this system
brexit! would it have implications for EU-funding, or would it cut us off?
butze:
one thought: I know we want distributed responsiblity, but… UK would make a lot of sense as nick is very invested in it, and speaks proper english but not german or swedish, would make it harder, … set goal is to distribute more responsiblity though, and away from nick… but maybe that takes longer anyway
Alex seems a nice guy, that he liked CSS/sociocracy, seems like he would be willing to go along the pathway with us, so seems a good opportunity
echo what Bruno reminded us, that main goal was to solve finance situation, yet would see a co-op would be a sustainable thing to look into the future
could let things grow for 3 years, and just take a financial host, or go down the path of the legal association now
both options seem viable
nick:
it can never met the sturcture that you want to do
echoing Nathalie - it is rather a group regulating the legal stuff - but not karrot stuff
hegets the dillemma
ilemma of progressive initiatives and rather rigid legal structures
Nick agrees with the point that UK makes sense because he speaks English
actually forming a legal entity is not a big think in practice… but it feels like it
but also its grounding
the Trustroots legal entity failed. the people from the legal entity kind of highjacked the project
Nick like the CBS - because the public holds you on account
-Nick:
next steps: a kind of action group - there are a lot of topics to frame - making sure that we have looked in all the possibilies - making a structured process, maybe sociocracy approach fits
butze
maybe gather all the info and questions in a collaborative pad
then proceed with a sociocracy selection or consent process
→ we do not esactly know how to proceed but that is ok
we need to find the middle what they care about, and what we care about… it is rather technical stuff
it funds a small part of what we are interested in
my sense is to add a small amount, and then add some more later
bruno:
quite some work I could do, especially what’s in the plan already (polls, roles, sanctions)
especially roles, a lot of work there and potential to do something nice, can be quite a big feature
also work on the sanctions can do a lot, going back to designs and choosing stuff
progressive interface, for sure would be interested in a design process for that
… but looking realistically looking at time/capacity, not sure will be able to do that in terms of life planning
nathalie:
adding two bits sounds nice, don’t object, especially the self-hosting as some work has been done already
interesting the progressive interface gained so much popularity, can also see how the manual could be worked in there
besides the self-hosting, could see many ways I could start working and help something
butze:
don’t have anything to add, sounds good
work towards MoU draft, and do consent on that
paper about CSS
outlined how CSA principles can inform CSS
butze can share the key-take aways that he has draw/written - but not sure if he can post them here, as they might be published (just ask him and he sends them to you)
philip, vas, leonie (+?) had discussions on this CSS, and have 3 main discussion points, and synthesized them into 9 takeaways, but they are TOP SECRET, as paper is still in progress
Hackathon in Siegen
butze and leonie had a call with Foodsharing devs yesterday - planning gets more structured now - a Pad will be set up and Butze will share it next week
dev updates
standing topic: check the board! [E]
standing topic: organizational structure [E]
5. Actions/Outcomes
start a pad on legal entity [Bruno]
continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
common in housing projects, but also used in other things
maybe not suited to karrot as it’s focused on still being a business that distributed profits to members
in a verein, can’t accumulate money
some constitutions prevent board members getting income
would need to not have that
Butze:
prefers the UK community benefit society
bad it’s not in the EU, good we have a connection with Alex
a verein can be a member of the community benefit society. Extra steps but could get around that a UK is not EU
Nick:
feel drowning in it
a lot of boring text on the bylaws
also likes the CBS.
not sure what the process to reaching a decision would be
when shit goes down, which court will handle it
Nathalie:
got curious generally about genossenschaft
would it work on a smaller scale?
skeptic about the e.V.
opening up to founding ourselves, but still wonders about the fiscal hosting
not motivated to do the accounting
Vas:
has an impression that the Verein is something easy to set up
good to have the support of Alex to found the CBS in the UK. Not reinventing the wheel
likes the idea of fiscal hosting but they never got back to us. A bit off-putting
Bruno:
relatively easy to fund an association/verein
also consider fiscal hosting to be a good possibility
for Karrot in general we dont need to be that concerned about…shit goes down in the future
the easiers thing would be any kind of entity that provides some kind of empl contract. Or be able to sent an invoice to Karrot
tech updates
frame options
request from Dave
putting public events on their website
public series
request from Dave
export encryption
for Luxembourg to migrate
co-op cloud backups
new release Coming Soon™️
Foodsharing Sweden [R]
had a new couple of meetings in new year, forming core group
looking at applying for financing
had a meeting talking about IT-aspect of it, with nick, talking about designs, wordpress, karrot plugins
own karrot instance, and build the public website within the instance, customizing the identity
discussed whether to make the plugin, or have a wordpress site with links
decided useful to find someone to do that word, so wrote up an ad for a tech volunteer
moving forward
meeting with another organisation tomorrow that intermediates between shops and orgs that save food, comes from more charity mindset
going to propose a co-operation with them
foodsharing sweden to help support new emerging groups
this other org to faciliate co-operation with shops
ideally finding a tech person who can work with the emerging karrot plugin system, and self-hosting customization
goal is someone comes to the karrot instance and find all the info about the project, and under the surface are all the karrot features
contact with other groups in sweden:
lund group was positive
foodsharing stockholm is dying a bit, but some contact there
otherwise, not much action happening
Östersund a dying group too, nobody is interested in doing admin work, looking for new co-operations, etc…
gothenburg is only established place, others got a bit stuck
idea is something like foodsharing sweden would benefit these kind of groups for support
looking at a legal entity?
don’t make one until strictly needed
aiming for confederation-style governance that local groups are members of
reminds butze of progressive interface feature, could be useful
wondering about the dying groups
do they do cooking events, and nice social things
or pickup machines needing admins to “oil the machines”
likely not much of the community building things happening
could be interesting contacting katie
maybe another factor from the size of the city and disconnection between places, some people said they would focus a lot more locally if they did something again
hard to build community across the city
butze:
difference between grassroots community and grassroots movement
community about local connection
movement about advocacy for social change
in germany foodsharing had a lot about the wider advocacy
some communities need the wider org to help get started
but also communities can initially become united under wider cause,
pad some coworkings ago, went through notes, a bit chaotic
on the top it has a section for additions
what karrot wants, what nlnet is interested in - nlnet more interested in technical parts, rather then social
progressive interface and impove self-hosting as two concrete ideas
we don’t need to include everything now, start with something, could include items later
more ideas would be: federeated public activities, activitiy link preview, joining public activities without account, improve agreements, activity limits (‘high demand’), user manual, more customization, group template, task board
needs to work on the formatting, add amounts
Nick responsible work self-hosting task
Reactions
Bruno
seems fineto work with that
set up plan how/when to work on the tasks
Nathalie
been here already
what is needed now? next steps…
do a clean writing of the MoU
communicate with nlnet
set up a plan: responsibilities and order or timescale
add to board once we have the clear action items
Next steps
do a clean writing of the MoU in the coworking tomorrow [Nathalie, Bruno, +1?]
suggest working plan and timescale (also work on this in coworking) [Nathalie, Bruno, +1?]
prepare the frame, maybe draw the timescale on excalidraw
bring both to next meeting
meta-analysis: Karrot for what kind of groups? - Bruno [E]
Bruno giving an intro:
connected to task: karrot for parents coop
Bruno suggested Nextcloud rather than dropbox, testing phase
their needs is documentation
abstract needs: what needs to self-organizing groups have?
we use discourse
cloud-based service for storage (Google Drive or Nextcloud)
use of a shared log-in vs many different users
no need for a personal drive, seems like a different approach here (no individual folders)
in dropbox it was adding up to personal account limit
documentation feature in karrot?
most of it is text based, for the core of organising
more important to have democratic practices and accountability in the culture
legal entity can be there to support, but can also centralize power
seems important to have members to hold board accountable
could we write in the constitution of the legal entity
foodsharing sweden contributor [R]
someone replied to the ad
we have a scheduled call next thursday with them
hope they’re still interested
bruno had a call with them (Jann), explaining the projects
he likes the cause, been involved in soup kitchens
background is philosophy, has done some python programming, data science, NLP
probably not in a position to jump right into the code, quite some learning
willing to learn some backend/frontend coding
offered nicks support
made it clear there should be some kind of commitment
questions:
were talking about a wordpress site and karrot before?
different alternative pathways
standard wordpress site foodsharing sweden project
preferred version is to build what looks like a website inside karrot instance
this is in the intersection of “karrot work” (e.g. plugin system) and “foodsharing sweden work” (using whatever systems available and project identity inside karrot)
wondering what is needed to change landing page
needs are not just a landing page, although could be a solution, using a long scrolling page
but there is more content than really fits in one page, so needing a menu, and how it fits in with existing menus
need a section on presenting the foodsharing project, how co-operations would work, what it takes to start a local group, section to find your group
split between static site and dynamic site
onboarding could be inside the application
here the plugin system can come in
modify the landing page would need fork and special build of karrot
working out what would be a good system, ideally both for Sweden and Luxembourg
foodsharing town is using grav cms, flat-file system
do we notice when someone sets up an own instance?
not really, but thinking about it
maybe add an option to deployment that sends an anonymous message
Date: 2024-02-27 on Karrot
Facilitator: Bruno
Minutes:
Participants: Vasilis, Nathalie, Bruno, Nick
1. Opening
10 min Check in
5 min ADMIN
attendance (write down participants)
duration: until 11 CET (1:12h from now)
information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
next meeting:
coworking: yes
next tuesday: yes
pick facilitator for next week: Vas
2. Consent to agenda
2 min
3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes
continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
poke vas to fill out MoU form thing [Nick/anyone]
poke vas/butze about joining next week to talk money/entity [Bruno]
update excalidraw timeline with updated MoU [Nathalie]
wrote to Open-source Collective [Nathalie]
4. Discussion points
discussing about the need for all of us to get together and plan the nlnet tasks, together with the questions about money distribution + fiscal host/legal entity [E]
liked how a fiscal host can be an interim solution
don’t somehow see the fiscal host seem involved in the ownership management of user databases, but can be worth exploring
missed the story about dave
“open source” collective sounds relevant
yes, email is a bit bland, would be happy to hear more comments about what they mean by legal things
bruno:
a bit surprised by the reply, that they also do legal guardian stuff
not sure if it would be useful for Karrot, but it could be
nice to look at the alternative, e.g. the one dave mentioned
more positive towards a fiscal host as a “solution for now”
esp. given recent experience with paperwork and bureacracy…
want to avoid that stuff
forgot to mention: can be useful that they have the professional employer option
nathalie:
appreciate thinking about the reply
reply didn’t solve all the questions, still open questions
wonder how much we’d embrace the fiscal host more widely, or is it just about finances
main thing, would be worth to contact the fiscal host we would actually consider
open collective fiscal host has high fee, and US-based
would be OK to just solve the financial question, and leave legal questions for later
data privacy stuff bothering me, maybe is a block to bringing Karrot to wider world, unsure how the fiscal host would help there
appreciate collective solutions, and less so peoples names there
have generally been more in favour of fiscal host solutions, as less willing to do the paperwork
erasmusplus thing came up, with somebody suggesting Karrot…
vas:
question opens if we have a fiscal host will we become eligable for EU-funded things [outcome!]
makes sense what nathalie suggested, currently we don’t have data agreement on Karrot, wondering how fiscal host could solve that
nathalie:
from foodsharing.de, there is an association which is formally running the platform, and have agreement with the servers, very relevant if somebody has a complaint, etc. board of association - always the discussion how much individuals in the board are liable. a collective solution is better here, to share out the responsiblity/risk/burden, otherwise it would legally go down to one person on the papers, not sure how a fiscal host would help, not even sure what to ask
nick:
Kanthaus is responsible for the server
need a privacy policy on the site
funny it never actually came up
recent issue with trustroots makes him think about that
default thing is just copy a default privacy policy. One solution but not good
another solution is create our own, but time consuming
Kanthaus is quite stable home for that, ultimately legally responsible for the server
likes the idea of having more distributed and decentralized power and legal entities
best solution of all is to have groups self-host
nathalie:
kanthaus has two associations
non-charitable one that owns the housing/construction/renting
charitable one (Wandel Würzen e.V.) used for funding applications and initiatives - everything not housing related, legal text is quite wide, and kanthaus used to have a strong tech focus, so karrot sort of fits, although it’s still more wurzen focused
any way to get e-mail adresses for them to do voting
that’s a about using our database policy, good to get an e-mail from an official account linked to fs warsaw
oh btw can they self-host?
proposal: if fs warsaw e-mails from a fs adress, we could send a document, and include a caution around privacy with it
bruno: sounds reasonable, consent
vas: same
nathalie:
comment: gdpr context has come up recently, wondering if it’s OK to use email addresses, would they comply with privacy expectations, maybe worth adding a comment to them, quite unsure here
proposal passes! nick can share with Karolina
wondering why they don’t use Karrot for that purpose
there was a code change to make email address visibility optionally, some groups want it required, and other things like phone number
everyone in chorus: what are the expectations/obligations on us if we joined?
who had the idea? They asked Nick
a lot of other tech collectives
siegen hackathon [E]
nick looking at trains…
looks more plausible, 4 maybes!
19-21.04.
bruno:
towards end of april? getting some motivation! if I can find good prices, if I can get some days… depends on kids and schedules, will investigate
nathalie:
still 4-5 hours on train, will be in braunschweig, so less time than from wurzen
3 topics
april is quite full, moving, maybe don’t have mindset, but could!
wonder, as it has a strong foodsharing hackweek, and karrot is invited, wondering who is going to be there, wondering how much karrot would do it’s own thing there
what would I work on?
generally nice idea, if we managed to plan something ourself, would be super motivated, and would be nice to see people
vas:
just checked driving, really long way, flying to dusseldorf is super cheap, going and coming is £170
was going to spain for 3 weeks, but cancelled it and othes are still going, so don’t feel so great going to something else in that time
technically could work, more about responsiblity
side note: nick, nathalie, bruno would be super happy if you all went, would be very happy to use karrot funds for it
nick:
would need to happen quite soon to commit, budget and time planning
deciding next week is reasonable
onboarding new developers
bruno:
got 3 replies for ad for tech volunteer to help out
jp: a german guy in sweden, we had a walkthrough together with nick
jennifer: indian living/working in stockholm, showed interested, haven’t done tech walkthrough onboarding yet
alina: from china, exchanging student living in stockholm, was very interested in frontend development, onboarded her with project needs, joined Karrot group
aiming for tech onboarding for second two and nick together
mix of karrot work and foodsharing sweden work, will depend on their interest, focused on foodsharing sweden, and may contribute to karrot directly too, plugins, content management, etc, alina might be more focused on frontend tasks for foodsharing sweden
interesting to think about the governance aspects of this, assuming it’s our goal to bring more people into this team/membership thing, so it’s a distributed team, see potential to bring people into the team, but would be quite overwhelming to join this call, but maybe start to have another circle? to have more focused areas, self-hosting part seems like a subgroup forming? would be happy to outsource some of that from this call to that group, and we could take this into account when looking at legal structures, etc.
structure to relate with other projects, e.g. fs lux, shared futures, fs sweden…
inc shared futures update from meeting
really enthusiastic arund karrot and potential to do funding
do pilot of how it could work together
knows all the different funding pots
release in shared futures in March
how do this orgs come together? also applies to fs lux and sweden etc
drawing ven diagrams
orgs having their own centre, but there is an overlap
teams working in this overlap
put shared futures work in this model
potential future vision
karrot is a toolkit that people can make use of for their network and customise it to their needs, if they want to adapt it, it might be enough to play with the options or do plugins or find devs who do the changes
potentially give money to karrot so we can do changes for them
projects have their own devs who can do changes aswell
karrot is a general enough tool so projects can take it
specific plugins vs plugins that are core to karrot
suggestion a solution to shared futures
what Nick wants
work on karrot and distribute money through karrot
karrot is a long-lasting project - that’s a really good base
projects should keep their own visions, it’s not about merging all
point from above: self-hosting circle would make sense
karrot considered as backbone structure, are we talking about a shared libray?
in this concept karrot would be base platform and sf(shared futures) builds it on top of karrot
karrot as a toolkit: build own platform on top of it
plugins can exist for everyone
‘karrot as wordpress for community organizing’
only closer relationships with the projects and not that big of an ecosystem
shared futures is a seperate code-base
fs lux uses karrot code
but use same governance model for both
build a vision for karrot from there
[lost connection for a moment]
go to groups and be a platfrom provider
more questions?
hear feedback
nathalie:
reminds me of 1/5/10 visions, which we didn’t follow up on yet
goes back to vision headspace, of what karrot is
one way could be this is specific agreements, saying what we’ll provide/receive, defining relationship without merging governance, how does value/money flow, feels quite formal way
other way I was thinking about is “who decides about what”, if we do a self-hosting circle, the way I think about it, we give some of the decision powers to the circle, e.g. which plugins do we promote as “karrot plugins” (is this even a way we’d go about it?), bring the people in who care about self-hosting to co-decide, which means getting people into our governance, still in the karrot sphere, getting people not into the core, but the self-hosting group
if we don’t do this, everything is in the karrot team, and it builds up, so a good starting point to have fewer things we decide on, and give them away
so in sociocracy, still having the link between circles, could be one or two link people
would the group take on the decision making method?
always lots of questions when things grow
take it as an opportunity to grow the governance body
vas:
definately hear what nathalie was saying, headspace was not going towards governance, but it makes a lot of sense to explore
from what nick was saying, thinking big! makes total sense
karrot has been going for 8 years, with not much funding, esp. compared to some startups that got lots of money and died, so using this as a base to think bigger makes sense
wanting to get all of work/money through karrot makes sense
from the scheme described, got the vibe of centralized decentralization maybe this is where the governance issues should be discussed
definately reminded me of juntagrico CSA project, features of this project are less rich, but operates as a federation of 20+ CSAs, that run their own instances, and share a repository of plugins, blahblahblah
nick
governancen and federation layer on top of each other
fslux has legal entity and org, clearly seperated, but there is an overlap
daniel might become member of Karrot team, already is part of karrot community
defining relationship could be useful, like MoU, non-legally binding agreement of serious intend
have that with fslux could be good
build on existin trust
‘do you want to have a fslux model?’
or other models
promising suite of collaboration options
how do orgs really collaborate, esp in a non-capitaslistc model?
we don’t want to buy fslux
how do we work together effectivly
cooperate better with other projects with similar vision - still big open question
one thing coming out it: form new circles e.g. tech circle
humanity project building a platform, focused platform for initial bit
fs sweden devs went through many conversation on karrot already
primarily there for fs sweden
but we don’t have all the features already
inter-organisation thing
there a two dimensions
people sit in different areas and overlap
daniel made contributions to the code in the past
unlikely that all 5 devs will join and start coding for Karrot
glocal idea, connect with local project makes more sense that connect with ‘global’ Karrot community, motivation to develop features comes from being attached to the context/ local group
outcomes or next steps
hear report how onboarding of new devs looks like
clarify role of ‘new devs’
do more processing what this might mean for us (e.g. growing the team)
wait for more tangible proposal with shared futures (or continue conversation)
continue thinkiing about MoU with Luxembourg/ Sweden
nathalie:
wondering about the role of the karrot team in these visions, and the strategy
worried that if we don’t get to a point where we are sustainable and healthy in the karrot team we could end up having core people who are taking on too much. well, maybe we don’t want to grow as a team, and give things away
seems like two paths:
staying small team, but trying to work on lower how much we do, giving it more for the groups. wonder what is left in the core team in this model.
distribution by getting more people involved, with more circles, getting more people into the project
“what is the karrot team for” as main question
nick
this two paths are the same thing to me, it’s a both-and-model
standing topic: check the board! [E]
standing topic: organizational structure [E]
what ways of organising are we looking to support? where isn’t karrot a good fit(reverse exercise) [E]
5. Actions/Outcomes
continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
will we become eligable for EU-funded things with the OSC [who?]
look more at all for climate and contact them, maybe at discord? [Nathalie]
chat with wandel wurzen about legal state with karrot [Nathalie]
share email export decision with Karolina [Nick]
think about hackaton in siegen until next week to reach a decision [all]
write to Butze and Leoni to ask about the hackaton [Vas]
co-working Nick and Daniel, data exported, imported
now they have control over their instance and database
a comment from Bruno that we went from a non-hierachical on the admin level to sth that can be seen as more traditional admin
karrot.world instance
thinking about roles, maybe a predefined “web server admin” role
could clarify how our governance structure is around data
new features become availabe as updates but its on the hands of those running an instance to incorporate them/deploy them or not
siegen hackathon [RED]
1st hackathon in a chain of hachathons we want to run
15 people who can join, sleeping in a fablab, more comf we make some flats available
Leooni and I doing want to push the agenda much
there is not clear schedule yet
we ll now the agenda in some 4-6 weeks from now
see what serendipity brings between fs and karrot ppl
Nick: Karrot ppl are coming a lot further, needs to work out if its go or no go. I d like to get that spoted out soon if and how Karrot can come into play, does karrot fit there, are we an ‘afterthought’. if all Karrot ppl and Lux we ll be 5 more or less. I like all the spaces between the sessions. It’s quite a long way to travel, potential to hang out longer? Having 5-6 days would be nice
Nathalie: I dont have anything to add, I ll be nearby on the map. How OK would it be if we had a little Karrot corner?
Bruno: interested to focus on Karrot, most def connect with ppl from foodsharing, I m willing to go if logistics work, other Karrot ppl join, do a bit of gathering/working occasion. have been checkign train tickets, get the traveling costs covered
Butzer: will look for ways to maybe cover some expenses through Uni
Nick: possiblity to extend hackathon?
the idea is not to make it very dev centric, but blend the community side with the dev side
What’s the role of Karrot? It’s up us to define it. Can’t predict it. Hopefully we do more hackathons in the future, extend it
Nick: limit of 15? what is the nature of this number? Responsibility from the ppl running the space we ll use. Maybe we can push the boundaries a bit
idea to make a thread and ping ppl about the hackathon and who is up for joining and think through what we want to work on?
Progressive interface - possibilities for a students work
sometimes Karrot feels too sophisticated, hard to understand it rightway, young communities, start small/simple and in a kind of a modular way the interface could be also progressive
resonates as a concept with ppl we chatted with
there is quite a lot in that idea
two directions:
as a whole group, when a new group is starting
a user wants to help a bit so its not drown up to the neck with everything that goes on
we might be able top-up some funding
how attached are you Alan in this idea? topic? concept?
Alan: get with Butzer to discuss,
a round
bruno: (veeeery sleeeeeppppyy) see the potential for working on progressive interface if there is motivation and time, usually divide tasks into design process with community and team (sketches, prototype, etc…), development, and then documentation. could do the first part, the design process. a very promising feature
nathalie: unsure of how many tasks we can open on the same time…might take capacities from other tasks
butzer: you been engaging with free and opsource, if u like the community here you could focus on the progressive interface, still up for debate
nick: i can agree with everything, give Alan overview of the four things we have on our NLNET things and to put them in context as well so might be sth else that is very interesting to you. But self-motivaton is key.
nothing much to add, but well done, functionality sounds good
Nathalie:
question: new repository or embedded within a karrot one?
either could make sense, leaning towards having a standalone one
question: what role for myself (Nick)?
setting it up
theming/ customizing
help anyone that want to contribute
writing documentation for self-hosting and dev documentation
vacancy for user documentation
Nick:
unsure if people engaged with wider docs site considerations or want to contribute
but makes sense just if using as an updated tech docs site, like the current one, as need somewhere to write the self-hosting docs that is nice!
bruno:
was wondering about what to do with user documentation, would try to imagine how it would look on vitepress, and how to connect it better to karrot itself
time will come when we’re needing to do some communication
then good to have a clear decision on where to put the documentation
would be nice to have it at the same place, if it’s not too confusion having it need the tech documentation
nathalie:
this is good helped to understand the need for self-hosting documentation
still interested in user documentation, but would need some more thought, and maybe moving things from the forum
interested to look into vitepress, but pretty sure I can use it
a bit unsure when to tackle this, maybe motivation will come if it’s easy/nice to use
more topics, where do we link it? (as current docs site is quite hidden), if it was more for users it should be more findable
about blog… wouldn’t merge it all into one thing, didn’t really know about the blog or where it’s linked, ok to keep it… maybe would need to talk about the blog on its own, don’t really have energy in this circle for blog posting, lets leave blog out for now
proposal: Remake https://docs.karrot.world site using vitepress with some of the existing tech content, initially self-hosting and dev. Leaving space for building user documentation.
full consent
siegen hackathon?
bruno keeping an eye on prices, although still can’t book for his route, when the tickets become available would need to be quick
looking for temperature check
should we make decision regarding funding the trip
round
Nathalie:
I can come!
would also visit parents
can stay a bit longer
esp. combining with dortmund
have it on radar, kind of planning it in
willing to say yes!
Nick:
counting on others energy
willing to make it happen, spend time with others
would like to stay a bit longer
hopefully no boat trouble
funding trip makes sense
should we fund FS Luxembourg?
Butze:
very happy to host us here, getting excited about event
good thing helping with serenity, don’t have a lot of projects locally at the moment
only event in planning at the moment, so have capacity
I think we can co-create some activities, indoor/outdoor, etc…
karrot will fund all karrot team members (travel costs). People in karrot groups or related projects can request funding which we will decide by consent in a meeting. We can also request funding from the university.
bruno: consent
nathalie: consent
butze: can still try for funding from university, if it doesn’t work, pay from karrot.
question: when would that happen? need to ask overwhelmed secretary, will ask today
nathalie: we could book tickets, and present tickets for reimbursement
consent!
progressive interface with Alan [R]
met alan last friday in office, had nice chat
really interested in the topic
needs to learn more about the context, willing to learn
planning to start somewhere in mid-April, as has other exams, then would like to engage
was quite fascinated about this culture and working environment
bruno: let us know when it’s time for a meeting, etc, or whatever is appropriate, or more dedicated session on it, can play and sketch, fun sessions
nick: did focus stay within progressive interface or wider?
explained not so goal orientated, but walk towards horizon and see which fruits to pick along the way
sound good to support them, how much would it be formality rather than actual connection? but maybe a bit deeper connection as nick is already connected
not very clear to me what participation means in practise, which voting, or decisions
good in general
butze:
up for you all to decide, I’m fine
nathalie:
sounds good
would be nice to engage different people from the karrot team, is there general meeting? or maybe it’s all online as it’s just tech people
would be nice if there was a video conference to build different connections
it’s nice, would go for 60EUR/year
nick:
interesting for us to see how this federated model works
already a conenction
would like to join
proposal: We apply to join federation for 60€/year and ask for a video call with them to welcome karrot.
bruno: consent
nathalie: consent
butze: consent, and will join
nick: consent
tech update [R]
lux
codeberg, docker, releases
plugins
catalyst chat [R]
standing topic: check the board! [E]
standing topic: organizational structure [E]
what ways of organising are we looking to support? where isn’t karrot a good fit(reverse exercise) [E]
5. Actions/Outcomes
continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
chat with wandel wurzen about legal state with karrot [Nathalie]
ask overwhelmed secretary about funding for Karrot people [Butze]
Date: 2024-03-26 on Karrot
Facilitator: Nick
Minutes: all
Participants: Nick, Rafael, Nathalie, Vasilis
1. Opening
10 min Check in
5 min ADMIN
attendance (write down participants)
duration: 11 CET
information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
next meeting:
tomorrow co-working: Nick, Nathalie
next week meeting: Nick
pick facilitator for next week: Vasilis
2. Consent to agenda
2 min
3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes
continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
chat with wandel wurzen about legal state with karrot [Nathalie]
wrote a message to them about it in KH slack
so, maybe they’ll chat and return
sit and wait
ask overwhelmed secretary about funding for Karrot people [Butze]
4. Discussion points
commons management sofware/funding
how it started: ppl attached in the commons com, had some contant with foodcoops, foodsharing, not so much with bikesharing, fablab ppl in hamburg, 3d pritners and soldering equipment. we found that soft available might not be adequate, improve things:
links to examples: So funktioniert's | depot.social (not open source not federated, cannot make an instnace) https://commonsbooking.org/ another one os, to make a bike sharing operation work, hard to mantain, work to replace frot-end (merged recentlty) from UX not ideal, lots of work to be done, dont have tasks that karrot holds, mostly focuisngo n the time slot booking
would want to request sth for a certain period of time
limit usage or the time ppl can book
communicate bookings, a calendar overview or sth like that
Maintenance Task functionality
tasks in karrot, but havent used them yet, we d have to play around with that on karrot, one thing would be reccuring tasks, a saw that needs to be cleaned regulary, a 3rd printer to be calibrated regularly
Search for shared things
look for sth outside of a group context. Where can i find an item? outside of a group. that’s sth we are interstesd in exploring
Group openness
on karrot you can interact with groups only if u join, good model as a default, can we find a middle ground, to be able to approach withough joining
Federation
saw on smedia that u r working on federation, we d like to have federation basically, contribute to that, working on a project to build sth new, doing that with django
Nick:
sounds so fitting, topics are quite familiar, a feel of good fit, oh my god this is amazing for the project feeling, pace of change of our slow steady approach…finding a way to work with that, fits with my sense of how to free the Karrot, self-hosting, less stuff channeling to me, in some way becoming a facilitator of otehr ppll working on karrot is nice. It sounds that you got knowledeg and skills and if there is funding on rails that might mnean things will move forward,
how we colaborate, bring things to the core or work on a plugin system
vasilis:
we’ve been discussing all these things
have been looking for years looking to de-foodify karrot from foodsaving
personally involved in a makerspace, so interesting on personal level
would like to hear a bit more context of the case, sharing all kinds of resources, and a makerspace, and equipmenet
got a bit confused with the bikes? so an everything sharing platform? is there a physical space that is involved in the project that want to use it
how attached is it to reality?
exciting!
like the idea you want to look into federation, assuming having an instance of karrot, hard to get people on karrot, but easier to say we have our own software with an instance with the name of the project, so karrot fading in the background, with nick as faciliator of process
nathalie:
agree with many things, exciting, on our list of ideas, idea commmons, using karrot for sharing resources, a project i was involved was around shared bikes, for foodsharing pickups for example, karrot is very group focused, I use commonsbooking, so question is how much we want to push the idea of commomning vs more individuals sharing resources.
main questions on the level of colllaboration, curious how u found karrot, share a bit of the overwheming status,
about tasks, we dont have tasks on karrot, not sure what u were talking about when refering to tasks
Rafael:
mistook issues for tasks,
who are we actually: a loose association, someone else (robert) is the facilitator well conected with acitviists organisations, ton of concrete use cases in mind, 3-4 dif locations where they wanted to try this out, I m mostly a dev myself, getting more into see how soft works and get in touch with real ppl. We have a group on matrix where other ppl are involved, depends if we ll get other ppl onboard.
regarding the working together: application is ddline is the end of this week basically, we have a draft for an application, if u d like to try that, we d write that we ll work on karrot speciffically, or built software for commons sharing, if application gets accepted, 30/40% chance (relatively low). the dev starts around fall this year, around oct and goes for half a year, called a prototype fund, have a tight working style, very active working style, not nessesarily have to impact the karrot project a lot, good starting point to build a plugin, good way to get in touch with each other
network of indy sites that interoperate (instances I guess)
sudden thing and a lot of stuff coming in advance
another round:
if succesful its good news that it starts later on, its not a growth oriented mingset,
sounds like a nice case for the plugins, I love the idea of deep plugins, next cloud: isolated apps, interaction between the plugins is someties very seperated, using django singals,
one thing i like about Karrot, critical pedagogy, discuss things a lot, the political implications, dialogue process, I want to do doing not talking ← weaving of these is a nice process
the idea of debranding Karrot, what the hell is this karrot thing? makes more sense that the url of a project has its name, its not signing up for karrot, fs sweden now will move to their own instances
federation staff: always comes down to how the groups will make sense, use, enabling cross-collaboration between groups
the inside outside of the group: breaking the silo, permeable boundaries, doors not walls, public activities a tangible example of using the public activities
trying to think of next thinngs
wondering what happens if funding doesnt go through
funding comes and goes, build resilience on that, css where ppl contribute in money, be accountable to users and less to funders
Vasilis:
you covered everything nick, you went on a rant!
very practical, transparency, how much is funding, how is karrot involved in that? directly involved?
mentioned about submitting application by the end of the week, and on fence about building from scratch or within karrot
like the idea to mention karrot, and building on top of something already there
that’s it
nathalie:
more practical now… how to continue?
same question as vas, regarding funding, did you thought about contributing to karrot with the money?
how to go about it, given the time and that we barely know each other
going with plugin option sounds fine, as it’s more contained work, is the plugin system feasible
how easy would it be to move code from plugin to the core?
could be like a separated project, and report back from time to time
could be a usecase for a helping circle, like one person with their team, so don’t need to join all calls, can have a bit of separated work structure
could try it out for 6months/1year
in the future, interested putting karrot in a sustainable position, financial and team
potential to start with this, and potential for people to move into core team, so would prefer some communication or linking, but could also agree to just delivering a plugin, but prefer linking
can bring to proposdal today
thanks nick will take over again soon, ah sorry yeah I was in auto-minutes-mode
-Rafael: would be up for having some close communication as well, do thins together, someone who knows the project t b availalbe for calls, transfer knowledge in both directions, question regarding karrot be involved in the funding, not sure about the legal framewrk, u declare a team that forms a company, only exists for the timeline of the funding, they disperse it anywayy they want to it, hours-based funding, this is how this is received, happy to have one of karrot in the team and give some of the money this way to the project. not sure if u can have german citizenship, would have to talk to robert with this as well. Regarding what happens if we dont get the fudning, robert has been working on this vision for longer, I m sure that we ll continue to look for funding to workk on this, myself and rob have a lot of other volunteer projects we contribute on. vibe is matching,
-Nick: would be happy to input things for the funding bid. like the idea of building sth on top of existing stuctures, some funders might like that more ecological approach as well
now thats the main place, all deloyments, migration is complete, removing some of the old CI infrastructure, closing the issues and linking them to codeber, make a mirror site to github, some messy bits left, encourage you to make accounts, happy to show you around, has its own nice open governance stuff
server maintenance
nick and tilman chatting
restart server, server upgrades, restart the new kernel
Date: 2024-04-02 on Karrot
Facilitator: Vas
Minutes: all
Participants: Nathalie, Nick, Vasilis
1. Opening
10 min Check in
5 min ADMIN
attendance (write down participants)
duration: 11 CEST
information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
Nathalie less available next week
next meeting: 03/04/2024: Vas, Nick, Nathalie
pick facilitator for next week: Nick
2. Consent to agenda
2 min
3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes
4. Discussion points
updates Vasilis PhD chapter on Karrot (management, dev, governance)
3 big topics/themes
unnamed as yet
a lonely programmer (nick) having a silent partner (tilmann)
safeguarding mechanisms, multiple doors to get into Karrot, having to knock the door, removed some of the more public information, reflecting experiences of people joining calls without connection, so more onboarding
accordian structure of team, making it a bit more official, roles of faciliator, giving space, collecting consent
selective growth, removing from up-for-grabs, not on maintstream social media, mastodon account, gender imbalances
karrot team and karrot users collaboration, hits, misses, and challenges
karrot team & feedback group, and how this played out
navigating superadmin-like requests, e.g. fs lux
potential of having higher level administrators, with self-hosting
design negotiations, majority of features come with conversations from groups, but karrot team also has own agenda, e.g. logging in with social media accounts, middle ground of public activities
breaking the silo, community cafe and karrot days
cultivating a counter-culture
checkins/checkouts as community rituals
beyond capitalist norms and startup culture, karrot vs startup values
equity-driven distribution of karrot funds, not time shifts, money distribution calls
towards opensourcefullness, open source being hollow/abused, how karrot is positioning itself within opensource ecosystem, critique towards hollow open source
will share document
tech updates
server upgrade
nick and tillman debian 11 - debian 12. scared and happy to do it with someone else
hackweekend prep call next week? e.g. tuesday evening
space to share things about hackweekend
a good idea to have a call
good to do it this week
co-ordinate siegen hackathon [Nathalie]
every potential cantidate replied, Dan mentioned to have a planning call
there is an activity on Karrot on the 19th of April for the actual event
Nat not sure how much time I can spare, decomitted a bit atm
gender imbalances on Karrot
more like: feminist take on karrot
breaking cis-male culture
not secret that tech is male dominated
usually dont notice so much but more when ppl join who are also male
selective ‘growth’ interesting
we do have measures to prevent more toxic-masculinity, mansplaining
had little uplesant moments
comments or jokes
someone draws a penis, these jokes was more frequent in the last months
centering care
we do that already to some extent, focus on emotional health, we can improve
gender diversity, welcoming queerness
in the team
as a team
in the software?
as a software
who is doing what?
gender roles
stereotypical female roles but having quotas
breaking roles
a project more focused on fem ideas and queerness
I dont look karrot being the queer project I m imagining of
no clear plan on how to go forward
I really welcome the discussion
there is a realm of theory of books and podcasts, when it comes to a living practice, there might be a gap on how
to incoporate these values, dialogue rather than conclusions
wondering if we can do sth like a book club to build on that
centering care is a lot in my life atm, getting it bigger than numeric imbalances, what does it mean to bring in some feminist practices, tick we got some women in the team, we can still have dominated culture, with queer to me there is a whole range of definitions with sexuality and more broad challenging conventions
diversity becomes broader as well, whiteness, neurodevisty, disability, fit into care and feminist practices
i m happy with the input
idea forming: a workshop that do things with this topic, engaging sth more practical, leipzig has a huge queer community, maybe I will look around
mostly men attending calls, including call visitors who drop in
also a few things noted about male-ish behaviours on calls
chatting on personal level about gender
could find ways within design to not reinforce stereotypes
how to make karrot more queer-friendly
we talked about the tokenist version as well, having quotas, gender diversity but all the women are doing sevice roles and men eng work,
we don’t look into ethnicity topics, neurodiverisity
connect with an org to do a workshop to explore the topic deeper
Butze: is worth exploring
Bruno: interested in propositions, what can be done
NLnet updates
everything is sorted, a bit to check
got an email saying that it is all signed
Nick’s work (Karrot’s haircut and more)
obv doing a lot of work atm, would like karrot to be the only soft project I do, in my morals makes sense to work on Karrot, only one put that amount of time, work on a team, doing work on the detail, calls and work outside, I m mostly pushing through requests on my own, I d like that in Karrot, we have nice disucssion philosophy layer, higher level topics is nice exchange, material work gots a gap in there, for me I enjoy doing work, get stuff done.
redesign
should it be an experiment or go forward with it?
proposal: go forward
reactions:
it’s pretty!
like it too
like it, consent!
official consent round:
check in with Nathalie
would like some beta-testing to see if it’s working, it affects a bit functionality
michigan student joining
no-one had replied to their application, wrote on the forum during the call, reached to Butze as well,
Nick has no capacity to give assistance at this moment unfortunately. There’s also a bad past experiene with university students looking to engage and disappearing later and not delivering anything
change policy:
change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students
review it next week
siegen prep
Nick communicating to Elisa and making her feel welcome
what are our intentions?
Nick: see what others are into and start a design task for NlNet
Butze: would like to know when Elisa is coming and get a room for her
Bruno, Daniel and Nick would get Butze’s flat, Nathalie at Leoni’s and find a place for Elisa
Daniel stated what his intentions are
defining with foodsharing team what they want to work on and doing a more fixed schedule
there is space for open discussions, communal events, so it doesn’t feel like Karrot and FS are working totally separate
have a pre-hackaton call with Karrot people
brunso intentions
spend time together bonding
do some nlnet related tasks
have a nice collective sense of plan, orientation for Karrot
connect with foodsharing people, getting to know each other, maybe something more solid might come out of it
Next meeting:
co-op cloud federation
policy/rules/agreement library
chatting with ntnsndr (Nathan Schneider)
5. Actions/Outcomes
continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
membership payment coop-cloud [Nick]
put the fully signed MoU somewhere [Nick]
check in with Nathalie on Karrot’s new design [Nick]
tell student we can’t take anyone on for now [Butze]
change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students [?]
organise a pre-hackathon karrot-focused pre-prep meeting [?]
Date: 2024-04-16 on Karrot
Facilitator: Vasilitator
Minutes: all
Participants: Nathalie, Bruno, Jay, Butze, Nick, Vasilis
1. Opening
10 min Check in
5 min ADMIN
attendance (write down participants)
duration: 11 CEST, Nick, Jay and Butze leave at 10:30
information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
next meeting: weekly meeting and co-working
pick facilitator for next week: Bruno (tentative)
2. Consent to agenda
2 min
3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes
continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
did not work on that. I would like to involve the fs ppl so added that to the hackweekend schedule. free slot sat aftenoon, 45mins. finish the draft
write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
membership payment coop-cloud [Nick]
put the fully signed MoU somewhere [Nick]
put it in the discourse chat randomly, it is somewhere
prev made a public post
check in with Nathalie on Karrot’s new design [Nick]
try some co-working on it during the siegen, work in progress
tell student we can’t take anyone on for now [Butze]
sent a message
2 questions from Nathalie:
open application on the KTaF group we should do sth with
refered to a task assigend to me, shortcuts task and got a bit unsure how much they ve started to work on that
I dont remember chatting, not very responsive to communication [nick], created more confusion, havent seen any code, indication of ‘progress’, nothing we can do atm, if there is some com u can ask [butze] if they started working on anything
look at it in Siegen
change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students [Vasilis]
summary is that we dont have capacity for dev contruvutiosn but HCIish things yes
4. Discussion points
Siegen hackathon last questions
what to bring
refers to sleeping bags, sleeping mats
arrive and then allocate
try to make things as flexible as possible,
everyone can stay in Butzer’s apt and the fablab works
flexible with multigen house
Nathalie can also stay at the multigen house to avoid cat allergy
time schedule
thursday nothing scheduled yet. Do we wanna do something?
Vas prefers morning sessions. Quite flexible except Friday 1pm
Jay works in the morning and a couple of hours after lunch (Thu, Fri, Mon)
thursday as an arriving day
nick will get some tech things to make vas present more convinient :D! thanks nick!
karrot ritual? initiate the congregation
co-op cloud federation
latest decision:
Large Decision 022: Budget 10: Abra integration suite automation - 2024-04-04
Deadline for votes is Thursday, 18th April – let me know if you need more time to vote than that.
we joined, we ll pay the money, participate in the votes, all disc, negotiations on a matrix chanel, if anyone wants to be another person from Karrot (except for Nick).
how are we deciding and voting?
there is a specific vote
incomprehensible tech things mostly
suggestion would be: everytime there is a vote I put on the Karrot group
nick as a delegate on the coop cloud fed [Nathalie].
not much to add [bruno], agree with Nick’s proposal
check in after a few months
have an overaching summary of what coop-cloud is and
policy/rules/agreement library
a disc on the main wall, down down scroll scroll,
discussion with Nathan Schneider
on the topic of governance,
policy rules with an open API, for example we got the agreements feature which we want t furhter develop, with Katie
now interconnecting projects, and platforms, library of some kind
templates, existing agremeents, projects, adapt, prefilled forms
was talking about where to get started with development
had own ideas, also would like to know what are priorities
went through the feedback forum section and how to choose something
using own motivation to choose something
have a little process for choosing development tasks in the weekly meetings
previously nick went through tasks, then based on some criteria would choose something
maybe it would make sense to do that process, or is there something in mind already? or focus on nlnet tasks
proposition:
my tasks can have two sources
nick assigns to jay that seems relevant
I come up with idea and talk to developer team (aka nick) to make sure it makes sense
reflections on the process (how to assign tasks to development team):
bruno:
from governance perspective and also design and values
where are the boundaries of deciding on tasks and assigning compared to others outside the development team
some things are clearly questions for developers, e.g. updates, without direct repercussion on usability and how users experience it
on the other end of spectrum, developing a whole new feature, need to work through with community, maybe a design process, and weekly meeting discussion
we had criteria, all took a look at the board, not just for development, but other kinds of tasks, good to keep the process and the clarity
maybe thinking in sociocractic ways, teams/circles, a certain mandate for a circle/working group/subteam, etc. important for them to keep that autonomy, and some things might be a bigger scope involving others
been a long standing topic, how to organise karrot, and governance system, would be nice to define for other people contributing in non-development tasks
nick:
also thinking about the sociocratic circle, a clear mandate to the dev circle, and what is to the general circle
fine defining a task for Jay now
also liked the process to define the tasks
we’ve also got the NlNet tasks ahead, so maybe no need to do that process now
jay:
not much to add
everything said sounds good
butze:
seems to be summarized well, thanks for bruno for bringing it up
Nick’s contribution
one epiphany is that need to activate burnout avoidance mode
works a bit frenetically some times
needs to spend a bit less time, but more focused time
be a bit more clear on what needs to do
what are his responsibilities? maybe a process for everyone
for example taking care of the server or responding to e-mails
ongoing responsibilities and tasks, loads of them!
could use board on forum for the tasks, but also codeberg, where it could be more detailed
more focus on the “Ready for development”
round:
bruno:
thinking
would create some more structure, maybe it’s needed
gives a bit more support and focus for all of us
up for trying that
not sure on details or how to proceed
could look at codeberg
board on discourse is quite full and could do with some organising
maybe codeberg is useful for more development detail
could be once moving tasks into ready for development could go to codeberg?
butze:
very good to come to this ephipany, honest and vulnerable, have to take care of self
have to figure out how to support you in this, and get some of the tasks more distributed
see some more capacities for myself coming up, end of june onwards after thesis is submitted, then need new tasks!
jay:
really good idea to keep track of the tasks that are currently being developed and who is working on them, esp. if wanting to expand team of developers
nick:
likes to recognize the limitations in capacities
would like solve everyone’s problems but also needs to say no
looking at codeberg features
currently github for operational things
maybe a working session to figure it out
also to make clear for others whether we want to prioritize something
could work more during co-working…
started time tracking karrot work
want to only work when on a specific/assigned task
What to do with github repo?
was wondering what’s up with that? Do we keep pull requests? Usefullness in keeping it? Any thoughts?
Nick can give some useful info/context: everything is migrated to Codeberg, mirrored with Codeberg to update, turned off the issues, but all the links broke, got links all around the forum (important context), makes the project look active atm, you can archive the project on Git, was thinking to replace/have a message saying that “move to codeberg”. Sometmes ppl say dont’ open issues here but on Codeberg. Asked to chat with some prof to ask to take us out of their student assignments list.
Proposal: stop mirroring, replace it with a msg saying its migrated to Codeberg
bruno:
yes, also brought it up as I was away when the move to codeberg happened
doesn’t look like it makes much sense to keep the GitHub repo
see the history point
consent to the proposal
confusing to have both, just have one official one
vasilis:
hear what nick is saying, record of issues, and removing it leads to broken links
did issues migrate? yes issues in codeberg, but still lots of links to github
accept proposal, maybe also archive it
if we add a note on readme page? maybe worth writing a line explaining the reasons we move, that is to some extent a political decision
butze:
all fine
jay:
agree to archiving, better to have it all in one place, easier to find
nick:
stop mirroring, put warning messages, and archive the repo on Github
vasilis:
would love to manually replace the github links to codeberg links, and look through the issues too in the process
next time:
review money amounts
check notes what we said last time
for when butze is back from hawaii:
membership for butze process
5. Actions and Outcomes
continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
membership payment coop-cloud [Nick]
change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students [Vasilis]
summary is that we dont have capacity for dev contributions but HCIish things yes
summarize design session on polls [Bruno]
notes and actions items from Siegen on the forum [Nathalie]
continue working on draft for a vision [Bruno]
do mine and Jays travel cost payments [Nick]
start evaluation of task/board system, maybe adding other topics/tasks [Nick, maybe Jay]
(not sure if will attend calls), away until 2nd april
[RED]
