Event:2014/04/22 Communications Committee Meeting

Attendees

Danny, Jenny, Matt, Niki, Andrew, Zach

Discussion

• Danny: Alfred Twu - Don't have to worry about developers swooping in on it.
• Jenny: Margot Prado is a good ally who works for the Planning & Zoning Dept for Oakland - already familiar with CCL and Sudo
• Danny: Almost all groups (with the exception of BAPS and Sudo) are already permitted
  • Large group assembly (>60 people) requires a conditional use permit
    • Matt: My understanding is that this applies to public assembly. Sudo room is a social club with a membership system, for which I believe we can be exempt from this on many circumstances. I think this logic can extend to other group gatherings, especially if there is some Omni "membership" in the future similar to The Gilman http://www.924gilman.org/ I believe the line is drawn at "public" e.g. advertisement, etc.
  • Hobby shop route for sudo is probably our best option
    • Matt: Our insurance agent went with "social club", but "hobby shop" has been known to be useful.
• Niki: It's extremely common for commercial buildings to pay no rent for the first few months
  • Matt: especially if there is moving / shuffling taking place (e.g. over 3 month period)
• We need to be able to communicate as things are happening
  • AND get consensus as things are happening
• N: Let's try to approach this all with kindness and good faith
• J: The informational bottleneck up to this point has been frustrating, the best we can do is put effort into providing better channels for communication. We enable do-ocracy by enabling access to the tools and information to do stuff. Once we open these channels, more people will be empowered to help with all the moving parts.
• A: There's been attempts at formalizing shared values, but that hasn't been progressing smoothly
• Zach: The Omni should be the most minimal possible organization to support the most maximally free space
• Jenny: We need to define: Division of space; down-payment costs; move-in date.
• Andrew: We need to come up with things to agree on, rather than just consenting to stuff ad-hoc
• Niki: What's critical about this project and prevents total federation is that it's a matter of shared space
• Zach: Let's get in the door then figure out how we share space
• Joel: We need an office and a door that locks. We could put the letterpress equipment in the basement.
  • Matt: This could be awesome, allowing for other moves within the space layout. I did some research on staircase elevators for wheelchairs, etc. Looks like <$10,000 range for accessibility solutions, lots of local companies willing to do this work. Could be a post-consensus option, but I think it's fairly feasible to put in one for the basement, making it sudo-accessible and possible to move equipment / people down there.
• All collectives need to provide a list of their concrete needs / minimum requirements
• Danny: Putting financials up on the site implies that's the best we have; I need the finances to be accessible such that people can judge them, make improvements
• David: We need to put something out there so that people can work on it
• Andrew: We need to decide how we deal with official vs unofficial information
  • Is there any official information? How about this logic:
    • Everything is unofficial, except that which the members of the Omni Collective come to consensus upon. Meaning, unofficial notes > proposal > delegates > member collectives > member-collective-level consensus > spokes-council consensus of Omni Collective > OFFICIAL.
• David: Two things that shouldn't be public: Donor identities; owner being able to see.
• Position the wiki as it currently stands as an unofficial, informal proposal.
  • Matt: + 1
• Rename to The Omni Commons, or Omni Oakland Commons ("Collective" gets flagged)
  • Matt: flagged by whom? Would be really smart, I think to use "common" since "collective" makes it hard to refer to the member groups, which are collectives.
    • I really like Omni Common (without 's') because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Common
• David: Let's focus on internal needs and communication, rather than continually reaching out to "outside experts" - we have plenty of experienced folks with great ideas in our own groups.
• Andrew suggests a FUNraiser to gather community together. "Hacker Spa is here to say 'chill out guys!'"
  • Word.

What are the most important and consequential parts of a proposal?

• Initial down payments
• Timeline
• Move-in roadmap
• ?

Action Items

• Proposal for whether or not loans will be accepted and paid back
  • We still have not consented on even taking loans
    • Matt: +1
  • Can we come up with a plan for generating revenue?
  • Income from events and such, many ways we could pay it back
  • The owner might give us back $1k of that loan each month for 13 months
  • First, last and deposit would be paid to the Omni Collective, which would then budget to pay it forward to the loaners. OR that loan goes into our own reserves.
  • Good faith loans? Time-constrained terms?
  • Budget out eg a percentage of the cafe's profits
  • Andrew's concern is how money flows through the organization
• Proposal for June-Sep phased move-in to present to owners
  • Matt: +1
• Minimum space and timeline requirements for each of the collectives
• Request concrete budget / financial pro forma from each of the collectives
• Omni FUNraiser

Input Requested

• How do we feel about loans?
• What's your timeline over the summer?
• Minimum space requirements, potential uses of the shared space
• Request money on the table by May 15
• What are your questions / concerns?

Gratuitous Link Dump

• http://wiki.omni-oakland.org
• Danny's (informal : ) Proposal: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16nWDUhbynyx4kAoRs14n0XZ4_LxrNz3p_JyR0c_NqmE/edit
• BACH: http://ba.chgrp.org/
• Sudo Room bylaws: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Bylaws
• City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program: http://oaklandarts.org/IAP/