🛠️ Voting to approve Worker Memberships

[resonatecoop]

Moved by @Hakanto discussion

WHEREAS The minimum qualifying contribution to become a Worker Member is:

20 hours of unpaid work as a volunteer/intern of Resonate over a three month period

WHEREAS the following workers have dedicated countless hours to the community and operation of Resonate Co-op

THEREFORE the following people be up for vote to become worker members:

Ordinary resolution to make @Sam_Martyn a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @ode12 a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @remst8 a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @piper a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @replygirl a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @tshiunghan a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @matt_burnett a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @LLK a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @Hakanto a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @richjensen a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @brndnkng a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @psi a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @jeremy a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @peter a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @sganesh a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @zetto.plus a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @melis_tailored a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @auggod a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @Nick_M a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @angus_personal a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @Timothee a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @alexcrane a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @thehouseorgan a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @boopboop a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @tamimulcahy a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @Thom a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @SueJ a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @jackhajb a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @KallieMarie a worker member

• For
• Against

Ordinary resolution to make @terry a worker member

• For
• Against

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Click here to return to voting on all other Ordinary Resolutions and Special Resolutions

[psi]

Hey everyone! Everyone here got voted into the worker member group. You can activate your Worker Membership by requesting to join the Worker Member user group here on the forum. (look for the request button in the top right corner of that page). Alternatively ping any of the @moderators to add you.

@terry @KallieMarie @jackhajb @SueJ @Thom @tamimulcahy @boopboop @thehouseorgan @alexcrane @Timothee @angus_personal @Nick_M @auggod @melis_tailored @zetto.plus @sganesh @peter @jeremy @brndnkng @richjensen @Hakanto @LLK @matt_burnett @tshiunghan @replygirl @remst8 @piper @ode12 @Sam_Martyn

Please check out the details about worker membership and its implications too.

[Hakanto]

An update on Worker Member onboarding

I set up the Worker Member onboarding process to happen via requests to the Worker Member user group because I firmly believe there needs to be a clear moment of consent in order for someone to become a member of a co-op, even if they’ve been approved to claim membership. It also was a good opportunity for folks to review the updated information about Worker Membership while joining, since changes happened at the AGM.

from 7 Cooperative Principles - Values of a Co-op | NCBA CLUSA – 1. Voluntary and Open Membership - “This principle protects the fundamental human rights of interested individuals and members. It establishes that no person or organization can turn an individual into a willing co-operator and that their involvement has to come from a place of genuine interest. The voluntary membership also provides individuals with freedom of association. They can exercise their free will and decide if and when they wish to join and leave the organization”

I’ve also received messages from folks who were nominated to become worker members but did not want to join. Setting up the onboarding process via the group seemed considerate and respectful to those who did not want to join, as they wouldn’t have to do anything to not join.

However, I’ve gotten some messages from folks who are concerned that unless everyone who was approved at the AGM is automatically added to the Worker Member group and immediately considered active Worker Members – that the user group will appear or be accused as a barrier to folks joining.

I used my best judgment to set up the simplest process I could think of which would put agency for joining directly in each person’s hands. I believe in giving people information and agency, and that’s what I sought to do.

I’ve passed off management of the Worker Member group to @psi @piper and @LLK who were the first to join the group. I’ll leave it to y’all and others to sort out how you want to handle worker member onboarding and group ownership, whether to continue with the current process I set up or to implement a change.

[auggod]

I think I’ve stated before that I didn’t want to be a worker member anymore.

[Hakanto]

I remembered that @auggod, which is one of the factors I considered when setting up this onboarding process. If folks continue with it, then you don’t need to do anything further.

[thehouseorgan]

Hi (been a while), I’ve been intentionally watching from the sidelines these past few weeks.

I started re-engaging (lurking) a little since the AGM and neither especially want to be a worker member or don’t want to be a worker member.

I like the idea of trying to contribute again but also find it all a bit daunting.

I find tracking this forum overwhelming but don’t feel I can fairly contribute without trying to keep on top of what’s what etc.

I’m also confused by the expectations. What are the goals or roles within which to align my work? I get that this is probably simple - if I’m uploading, that’d be a role etc. but goals seem more opaque to me. Staying informed is also part of the code of conduct and so is keeping abreast of the forum trackable hours?

With the overwhelm that I find here, when I was contributing, it was like an hour or two of uploading/coordinating here and then a couple of hours tracking the forums there. It was like for every hour of work there was another hour (or more) of trying to follow and contribute to the broader culture/discussions. I’m not sure I find that very sustainable for me, or beneficial to you all either.

Maintaining regularity of contribution is/was a thing. Like, it is more beneficial for people to, e.g., upload an hour a day (or every other day etc.), rather than just a big burst of several hours but infrequently. But, to maintain even small amounts of regularity seemed to come at a cost of all the extra hours of forum-ing. There’d be an aspect of an upload (like how we handle covers) that would then lead to hours of trying to track down information, to then discover there wasn’t a clear policy, to then discover it had sort of been addressed at some point in the past, to then discover that something had changed since then so it wasn’t clear what version of approach we were working to anymore, followed by waiting on a key stakeholder to answer a clarification, to then try and corral engagement on how to move forward, and so on.

I also note, it’s not necessarily just forum-ing as there’s some other stuff like Mattermost, and a chat bubble, and GitHub, and maybe others (I think there was Keybase in play at some point, maybe still)?

I’m not saying any of the above is bad. An international, distributed, online co-op is going to be messy. It should be. It’s not a criticism, or a moan, it’s just that I don’t feel comfortable even attempting to take on worker-membership without thinking about all of this.

40 hours over 6 months is about 1.5 hours a week. Not a lot at all. But… Only 1.5 hours a week isn’t enough time to keep on top of forum-ing let alone doing any kind of specified tasks and so I don’t realistically see how I could be a worker-member without putting in more hours. Likewise, trying to keep abreast of this messy, distributed, congress of voices needs dropping in at least a couple of times a week for an hour or something each time. To then actually contribute to tasks is pushing that up.

Those aren’t huge amounts of time but, I only feel I can spare a couple of hours a week and so fitting in a bit of work and keeping on top of everything, plus having a weekly check-in, plus trying to show up to some big roadmap meetings/discussions, etc., seems beyond this available bandwidth. That also leads to, e.g., dropping out for a few weeks which before you know it becomes months (and which I feel guilty about).

Some of these things are clearly me issues. I struggle to compartmentalise a place like this, I find it hard to cherry-pick what to follow and what not to and so I try to at least skim most things. But then even that’s not so straight forward. I don’t have the capacity to engage with, e.g., the reading/discussion group around dismantling white culture right now, but at the same time feel it is super important and not something I could just ignore.

So, again, none of this intended as a criticism as such (though it is nice to get some concerns and frustrations off of my chest). I do feel, though, that it could be clearer what worker membership might actually entail. I get the policy and guidelines (and they seem fair to me), I don’t get the subtler aspects of what is needed, where, and what work is classed as work (within this context).

But maybe that’s just me (peace y’all) xxx

[Hakanto]

Howdy, @thehouseorgan First off, I’ll emphasize – we are figuring this out together as we go.

Second off, I’ll empathize – as I’m on record for having read over 8,000 posts in this forum

Here are my own thoughts on how we can get the most out of “goals and roles” time tracking, and how to treat that.

Roles

any title that suggests a set of responsibilities, recurring tasks, etc. For example, I am a forum admin. I could track hours toward forum admin with the implication that I am doing… whatever it is a forum admin does.

Naming the role here is valuable because:

• it is easy for folks with consistent roles and activities to track hours. All they have to put is “Uploader” or “Forum Admin”
• it invites conversation about what “being a forum admin” entails or should entail, leading us to common awareness of each other’s work and decisions about what to prioritize. This understanding can be formalized into role descriptions like the Maintainers

Goals

Inviting folks to track hours toward goals is useful because it encourages thinking about what end we’ll achieve by our efforts. When I was doing work related to publishing the AGM results, I took a moment to think about why that would be important. I settled on the goal: “members know AGM outcomes and next steps”.

I hear ya loud and clear with the concerns about how much effort it takes to keep up with this forum. I think goal-setting can help us here too. If it is important that worker members be aware of current projects and priorities, perhaps someone would identify the goal that “worker members can quickly get up to speed on what’s going on at resonate without reading the whole forum”

If worker members are coming up with goals, tracking time toward them and talking about them, this also leads toward opportunities to collaborate. Above, we have two goals both related to making sure co-op members can get informed about important stuff without tons of effort. Perhaps those two goals could be united into a new communications initiative?

Collaboration

I think with how much complexity and information there is to sort through at Resonate, the easiest way for worker members to self-organize without exhausting themselves is to have occasional check-ins about current roles and goals, and to publish those things somewhere we all can refer to. Time tracking combines that record-keeping with a measure of effort so it seems a decent place to start (even if I admit tracking hours is annoying). But it slows me down in a good way, encouraging me to think about what I’m working on and why.

[Hakanto]

As a footnote, now that the forum chat has been tested and seems to be working fine, we could move toward closing down Mattermost. Forum chat isn’t as feature-rich, but it does have the strong advantage of being right here and uses a platform we already engage with all the time

(hopefully not all the time)

[Hakanto]

All that said, it’s wise for us all to be realistic going into this Worker Membership adventure. I am so excited about it, that I myself haven’t been too realistic and others have had to reel me in a bit. As was discussed at the AGM, the co-op is in a rough spot. There are big questions up in the air. No money in the bank to pay worker members with – and so no dividends either. Being a worker member is – for the foreseeable future – an intrinsic reward affair. The horizon itself is also not too clear, with some asking the important question of if there is a future.

I think it is culturally important for worker membership to be a role with work expectations, so that worker members can have a sense of who they can depend on and there is clarity about “who is on the field” ready to have the ball thrown to them. But, we should face these vital existential questions of the co-op first – or at least in tandem – before going full throttle on doing more work around here. That’s the most courteous thing we could give each other during this tough time, respecting too all the work that’s already been put into this project.

[richjensen]

@thehouseorgan

Some of these things are clearly me issues.

Great report on a reality so many share! Thank you for the work of posting here!