Meeting Minutes for November
goo...@geekeasy.com
mailing list.
-----------------
Two of the key members were unexpectedly unable to make the meeting do
to last minute problems coming up. Though Trae shared his thoughts
with Adam on the topics before the meeting.
Jason, Vinay and Adam were at the 90 minute meeting.
It was a very good meeting, full of new ideas. I wonder if we should
start having these meetings every 2 weeks instead of every month?
1) Operating Agreement Changes
Adam - yeah
Trae - yeah
Jason - yeah
Vinay - yeah
Changes to the operating agreement have been approved.
TODO - Adam - post updated version to website.
2) Survey
We have agreed to send out surveys to find out the thoughts of the
silent majority of the tribe. The original idea was to send it out to
just a sampling of the tribe, but we decided it would be better to try
to sent it out to everyone if possible.
Trae, Adam and Jason have volunteered to each send out at least 20
surveys and tally the results.
TODO: Seek out more volunteers to send out surveys and then assign
batches of tribe members to each volunteer.
TODO: Rewrite survey question #3. Something like this: "If you are
considering joining, what is holding you back?"
TODO: At some later point later survey other groups. ecovillage?
burningman? eplaya?
3) Applications and Application Fees
We have built up quite a bit of interest in the project. 270 members
in the tribe. Many people beyond that have heard of it. But we're
not having much success in getting people to send in applications. Do
we need to start selling harder??
Trae doesn't like the idea of "selling" the project.
Jason suggested a carrot and stick approach where the prices go up the
longer you wait. Adam has concerns that this would lead to lower
prices for the leaders and hence is a conflict of interest. We also
talked about auctioning off the final 25 shares as a fundraiser.
Vinay suggested another carrot of allowing the first group of people,
to each include one person of their choice in the final group of
owners.
TODO: Suggest various carrot and stick ideas for in the tribe for
more discussion and feedback.
Vinay suggested changing our overall tone. We shouldn't be selling
anything, we should be asking for help. This really resonated with
Adam.
Let's dump the applications completely for now. Let's just ask for
donations. And any donors who give more than $100 will get
preferential treatment in the later selection of owners. These
donations will follow the same rules as before. If the project fails,
unspent funds will be returned. If the project goes forward any money
donated will be deducted from the share price.
And Vinay suggested that we aim for a core group of perhaps 20 people
committed to make this happen who would cover the costs - it's more
"ok, next expense is $2k for this, who's willing to pitch in"
TODO: Dump the application for now? Set goals by dollar figures
instead of numbers of people.
4) Trae's mailing address
Trae's mailing address has been a disaster. For some reason, letters
have not been arriving.
TODO: Set up paypal payments
TODO: Set up PO Box
5) Marketing for the Spring Burn
None of us had any particularly new or exciting ideas offhand.
Without isee present, this topic was postponed.
6) Emailing out these meeting minutes as something as a newsletter
Trae proposed the idea. Everyone agreed to it.
We already have a google group, but it hasn't been touched in the past
18 months. We can use it to send out these minutes, but also as a
backup for tribe which has been down almost as much as it has been up
recently.
Join here:
http://groups.google.com/group/floatingman
TODO: Send out these minutes to the google group
TODO: Announce the google group on the tribe? Tribe header? Website?
NOTE - All of the TODOs have been posted to the "todos" on our wiki.