Event:2021/03/22 Commons

Commons Working Group Meeting Monday March 22, 2021

Attendees: Roberto, Vicky, Robb, Yar

Meeting Roles: Facilitator: Roberto Notetaker: Vicky, robb Timekeeper:Robb Stacktaker: Vibes Reader:

Check-In: Agenda:

• Discussion:

   What is our current situation? 
   How are the commons being used currently?
   Covid restrictions are slowly (rapidly) being lifted, what does that mean for us? 
   What are the things we need to do to safely and succesfully reopen to the community? 
   What is our criteria for reopening re: events?
   What is the overall structure of how our labor organized?

• • Make a list of action items that the commons working group needs to work on for reopening and the future.

Mediation question: Robb and Silver are in mediation and both in this working group, and there is an idea to alternate meeting attendance as a short-term solution while mediation is in process. - Roberto tried to follow up today about Silver's attendance in today's meeting but couldn't get in touch; he will follow up.

~breathing exercise facilitated by Roberto (sentipensar) to transition into meeting space~

Last commons working group meeting was 10/27/2020! Almost 5 months ago.

DISCUSSION AROUND REOPENING STATUS & CURRENT SITUATION: How are the Commons currently being used? - Robb: just three groups that are using the commons, Acta Non Verba and NOMA/Free Store. it's been like that since we closed. FNB comes in to get supplies but not using it as activity space. Just the ballroom and entrance hall are being used. ANV was having some type of kids camp in the disco room on saturdays, but not sure if that's still happening. - Roberto: what about basement? - Robb: FYE comes in and does some art projects, come and go once or twice a week. - Yar: media lab is being used for storage. - Roberto: ballroom is being used by noma? - Robb: and ANV, that's where they receive and assemble their CSA, people pick it up in the entrance hall. - Roberto: and no one is having meetings? CSC isn't using their office, think that's true for most collectives. -Robb: meetings currently not allowed. - Roberto: what is state of covid restrictions? - Yar: red - Robb: red, only allowed for outside activies. indoor activities are not allowed, that's 25% capacity in the orange tier. - Vicky: i was thinking about having limited capacity entry with an indoor free store based on the tier. - Roberto: seems like things have just been happening in the commons without any clearance from the commons wg, like the kids camp? - Robb: yeah I didn't even realize the kids camp was doing that. liberated lens was using disco room for a bit, and then i noticed that there were a bunch of kids in there. - Roberto: guess that's what happens when we drop the ball on the commons structure - Robb: yeah, don't think they knew that there was event request process - Roberto: so currently we're in red so we can't host any indoor activity, then in orange we can have some with limited capacity? what are our expectations when we open up to orange tier? - Vicky: pretty sure we're enterng orange april 1st - Yar: would feel better about waiting for yellow tier. Yellow is the best case scenario... 2019 was "yellow". think yellow will be the summer - Robb: let's keep talking about that, i don't agree that we need to wait for yellow for everything. for instance, the free store - may be ok under orange tier to have, say, 3 workers and up to 9 people from publc in the entrance hall. but i don't think we should just be open for meetings and non-essential activities. in orange tier, movie theatres will be able to open at 25% capacity, so maybe lib lens could do screenings. - Roberto: well we should talk about it. looks like perhaps summer we can expect yellow tier. - Yar: there is a chance that we would enter yellow and recede to orange in the fall if country continues as trash fire - Robb: we may wanna think about opening up for some activities if you could prove vaccination - Yar: would rather stay on the honor system - Robb: just something we might wanna consider for meetings or something. we'll probably want to wait for information about that - Yar: i'd like to say that if ppl are coming to meetings they should qualify for vaccines and we should help them get them - Roberto: what kinds of things do we need to do over the next 2, 3 months to reopen safely? Meetings, event rentals, etc? - Robb: CCL does most of their stuff in their own space, but yeah collectives meetings are different than outside group meetings. - Yar: yeah we turned off most people's key cards. seems like a delegates decision re: when we turn key cards back on. we can participate in and facilitate these convos happening with delegates - Roberto: seems like we need to clean the place. we have basic hand sanitizer and soap. we could do an inventory of what we have, checking in on the restrooms... - Robb: removing clutter, too, makes it easier to sanitize areas. in the beginning of covid, the entryway was pretty much empty and now has stuff all over the place. - Yar: we need to get rid of that - Robb: i think april 1 we're going to start decluttering. we came up with a plan to tell phat beets and spaz that we wanted to start clearing stuff - vicky: i want to help organize an entryway clean out with noma volunteers - yar: getting second vaccination at end of the month - robb: lets bring it up at next delegates meeting - vicky: do we need their permission to organize work party? - yar: no just wanna give them a heads up about stuff - robb: yeah don't wanna make anyone mad by throw anyones stuff away - roberto: we can send a message out to the listserv - Vicky - at last delegates meeting we discussed taking pictures of stuff in commons space that we may get rid of - roberto: what else do we need to do to reopen? - vicky: real covid protocols - robb: what should happen before and after an event - yar: are you speaking to shortcomings with our current protocols? - vicky: yeah, there's no temperature checking or monitoring of how many people are in the building - robb: we could have people fill out a questionnaire - roberto: we could revisit some of the back end of our reservation process, too - yar: we should have an airtable workshop so we all know how to use it - robb: we never really got it running smoothly - yar: don't even know what the deployment schedule is for them. didn't really like moving to a platform like that, but i would like to understand our system know in the event that i want to propose a different system - roberto: i liked the way we used to do it. is it even possible to go back, or have we gone too far into the airtable deepend? - yar: possible to go back, tho we'd need to think about it. i've thought long and hard about writing software for this. - roberto: airtable is cool, like it because it's mobile friendly. just gotta get the hang of it. - yar: my dream is to have an omni app that could do everything from reserving a space to opening the door to approving door cards - robb: we moved to airtable because our property tax report we file with the city was taking several days of constant data gathering for our documentation; airtable streamlined that process for us because it uploaded 501c3, ein, etc - yar: yeah, the self-hosted solutions were not feature complete - roberto: yeah, airtable stores and uploads all the information we needed for our taxes. now that we have a bookkeeper it saves us money in time, too - yar: i want to understand what's happening at the click-by-click level so i can know how to program an omni-centered program - robb: think it would be best to have a separate focus group with people who wanna focus on that - roberto: think airtable workshop would be beneficial for everyone - yar: robb it sounds like you have the most knowledge, could you write an email with the remaining bugs and problems for the airtable stuff so we can move forward?

- vicky: noma needs to move out of the ballroom, so we need to figure out if noma will be in the building at all and if so where they will go - roberto: outreach to orgs that were using omni prior to covid that may want to come back and hold meetings. the gym, reading group, other regulars - robb: we should go back to our recurring events and compile an email list and send a letter out inviting people back. we should consider having our own omni events, putting on omni fundraisers, community meet-ups, music, etc. instead of being passive in our booking maybe we should be active in our bookings - yar: potlucks :) - robb: turn one of the delegates meetings into a potluck :) - roberto: one thing i thought about was even just renaming some of the rooms. the ballroom is so generic. putting language to the spaces we're in is very powerful, provides a message. could be example like "malcolm x ballroom" or whatever. look at zapatistas autonomous zones - they're named like full sentences of poem. it would be a cool way to reimagine the space and take ownership of it

roberto: how do we make our action items list to revisit for next meeting? yar: we need to have the restructuring convo alonside figuring out getting more people involved robb: incentivizing participation as last resort? yar: would rather pay individuals than collectives robb: but it ends up being just a few people doing work yar: we're squeezing blood from the wrong stone.. need to expand our organization

• • ACTION ITEMS

- figure out integrating new contracts into current airtable system - airtable workshop - find more people to do this work - have restructuring/visioning convo - organizing a declutter party - vicky will take pics and yar will make wiki - developing better covid protocols with reopening - inventory of hygiene supplies - figure out where noma will be relocated - yar suggests an on-side brainstorming party - make list of former orgs/groups that were renting space at omni - organizing virtual events - land trust convo - dead spade n mutual aid - community banking - safer diy spaces