2014/05/03 Omni Hackathon/Report Back

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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