2014/05/03 Omni Hackathon/Report Back

Public Relations / Outreach / Interfacing with the Community & Gov

• Incorporate a persistent acknowledge of risk wrt outreach/PR
  • Different levels of nuance.
  • No PR for the next week (zero)
  • Tailor outreach to audience - specifically no drafts / circulation to city gov & planners
• General narrative that doesn't get into super-specifics
  • Generic entree into the project, then one that's more specific
• Introduction to collectives and radical projects for those who're not exposed to this ideas
  • Something we can deploy that's more suitable to those audiences - just an idea
• Calendar of events (eg; business improvement / redistricting / neighborhood etc;)
• Permanent lawyer who's used to working with the city and has a lot of political capital, to advise us on our messaging
• Retaining control over the narrative especially during this formative period

Finances / Business Model / Income

• Rent
• Determining how to pay each of our own proportion (factors)
  • Square footage
  • Profit sharging
• Monetary vs Non-monetary "value"
  • Needs vs actual usage
  • Use value vs space value
• How do we determine value? How do we lay down policy around this?
• Messy issue: Profit-sharing between for-profit and non-profit projects - voluntary? necessary? percentages?
• How to reduce tension btw the collectives by defining how we pay for rent - need to create agreements
• Schedule of costs and revenue for each collective / member groups (creating a relevant data-driven model)

Fund-Raising Workshop

• Contingent on having a goal
• Eliciting not soliciting
• Knowing our audiences
  • Inner circle / wider audience / larger events & stunts
• Showcase month of the collectives for media and other audiences

Safe space / Dominant Culture

• It's okay to have some kinds of exclusive events (eg POC- or women-only)
• Denominating spaces in a non-exclusive way
  • Non-gender-specific restrooms (naming areas in general)
• Supportive of "Challenging Dominant Culture" group to draft safe space policy
• Share our collective resources to outreach and challenging dominant culture
• Work with groups that already have experience in this (eg; Qilombo, Critical Resistance) - and letting them know they're welcome to use the space, work out of it, become Omni member groups etc

Values

• Identified two threads of values - 1) from the front page of the wiki, 2) processed-bases values on /w/Values
• Conversation about how we develop our values:
  • What we want to acheive?
  • Ways of talking to different audiences
  • Political value vs processed based
• Initiation / welcoming vs process
• Triggers for us to be identified for those "shopping" for a community
• Unchanging vs changing values
• No reducing some language for defining our values (racism, sexism, capitalism, etc)

Bylaws

• Purpose a bit overly broad - Omni collective purpose is to lease, own and manage property
• Diversity clause added
• Membership WG needed
• ABC No Rio & Brooklyn Base are the only ones we could find similar to Omni- ask for bylaws
• Limiting powers of the Board
• General decision-making of membership

Omni Membership / Access / Public

• Good access control systems needed to accommodate the variety of spaces and public/access-controlled times
• Common space open to the public at certain hours
  • Concerns: Are there areas that are common but not public?
  • Really clear signage of where people can and can't go
• General Omni policy re: access and usage
  • Eg; If your space is open, a member is present to be accountable and steward the space.
• Would like to be able to schedule another walkthrough before June 1 so we can have a more concrete discussion on this
• Stewardship and Maintenance could be representatives from each group, or paid jobs in their own right
• Using membership as a revenue source
  • Paid membership problematic, but contributions --> perks (discounts to events; magnets; petri dishes; massages)
  • Tension over whether monetary gifts should translate to access
• Bans - should they translate to the whole space?
  • Addressed by the larger collective
• Re: Habitation & domestic use of the space, important to have resources available for people that we don't have serviced dedicated to helping them

Internal communications / working groups / process

• Communications working group charged w/ making communications tools empowering and accessible
  • Curriculum around usage and norms
• Accountability and vision as an accessible discussion
• Working Group Protocol - [link]
• Work to facilitate access to the tools and resources necessary to engage in best communications
• Spectrum of comfort with technology
• Asynchrony really shapes the kind of conversation that takes place
• Collective binder of printouts of all of our meeting notes
• Ask existing working group about these options

Using the common space / events

• Overlap with the definition of membership
• Policies that would be used by all the collectives (omni policies)
• Process and defition for those who take care of space and events
• Input and output management (donations)
• If a donation is made and we don't want it, then it can be traced back to the donor (accountability)

Working Group Protocol

See http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Event:2014/05/03_Omni_Hackathon/Working_Group_Protocol

Action Items

• Reach out to Critical Resistance
• Compile resources for the houseless
• Schedule of forecast costs and revenue for each member group
• Print out meeting notes
  • Maximum time allotted to print out notes
• Ask for bylaws from ABC No Rio and Brooklyn Base