Meeting Agenda / Year in Review

[Tim Roust]

Hello New Orleans Free Skoolers.

So I guess there is a meeting next week.

And so i am beginning this discussion thread as a place where people can openly and collaboratively discuss the goals and the agenda for the meeting.

Since it is to be the first meeting of the season, it will inevitably set a precedent and set a tone for the rest of the meetings for the season. And so it seems reasonable to try to have an open discussion of goals and agendas before the meeting happens.

First of all, there should be open discussion about the time and location for the first meeting of the season. It is unreasonable to simply announce that there is to be a 6:30 pm Wednesday meeting at an undisclosed location. It is a very important meeting, so it should be a very public and a very open meeting.

Secondly, the meeting should be held at a public space, and not at the household of any of the organizers, and please, especially not in the household of Kate or Hillary or Aviva.

It could be held at Floras, like it has in the past. Or at Mardi Gras Zone, or at the Nola Arthouse on esplanade, or at one of the community rooms in the New Orleans library (I'm sure that Missa would hook us up with that if we asked.)

Thirdly, I propose that we start the tradition of having two  kick-off meetings every season.... the first one can be a YEAR IN REVIEW meeting, where we look back at the previous year's activity and set goals for the coming year.
And the second meeting can be a PLANNING MEETING for the upcoming season.

This is a very simple way of creating a forum for two very separate group decision making strategies... divergent and convergent. The first meeting can focus primarily on divergent (brainstorming/reflection)  discussion and decision making, and  the second can focus more on convergent  decision making.

I have a lot more to say, but i'll end here for now.

I personally would like to see the meeting held much earlier or much later on Wednesday. Either before 6pm or after 8pm.
Why 6:30? that sound like a very arbitrary time, which probably only works for a very select group of people. Could it reasonably be made earlier or later without any impact on your lives?

also, once there is some open discussion and group decision about a meeting time, than it should be posted around the community, before the meeting takes place. At least Floras, Mardi Gras Zone, and Fair Grinds, and any other public location that has supported the free school in the past.

As far as the wednesday meeting goes, I propose Wednesday at 8pm at either Fair Grinds or the NOLA art house. Any other proposals?

I have lots more to write. I wanted to write a year in review of my own freeschool organizing, and also give a report back of organizing i did this summer. but i guess i'll have to save that all for another email. because i know that attention spans are short on email.

in general, my goals are the same as they've been... to build a network of community music classrooms, where people can learn music for free together.

I've been building temporary music classrooms in random spaces in new orleans since 2007. My first was at 511 Marigny. My second was at Mardi Gras Zone. At the beginning of last year, I was building one at a squat in Holy Cross, and then I moved the classroom to the Art House on St. Claude, and then when that closed, i moved the piano classroom to the Esplanade Art House. Since then, i have continued investing in pianos, and this fall,i am hoping to build another classroom at a more public location.

I'm interested in collaborative media, and want to create an old-school computer lab, where people can focus on media production rather than media consumption. I think that class proposals for the New Orleans Free School network should be developed collaboratively, based on an open exchange of ideas. I would appreciate it if you advertised the google discussion group in all of your press releases, because right now this is the only forum for real open  discussion.

the last point i want to make is about NETWORKS. the job of a network is to MANAGE DIVERSITY.  That is the key. If you are going to call yourselves the New Orleans Free School NETWORK, than the job of the organizers should be simply to act as NETWORK ADMINISTRATORS. the job of an admin is to keep the network open, and to keep the exchange of ideas open, and to empower people to SELF-ORGANIZE. The network should support diverstity over homogenity; PERMAculture over MONOculture.

Does anyone have any objections to having the meeting at the Art House? does anyone have any objections to 8:00 instead of 6:30? please speak up now.
sincerley, Tim Roust

[Hillary Brown]

Tim, I'm excited about your music program. I think that would be an awesome addition to the free school network.

 

Everyone, I already spoke to several folks about coming to the meeting and we've announced the day and time on public forums. I think it would be confusing and detrimental to the open nature of the meeting to change the time now.  6:30 next Wednesday is unfortunately not an arbitrary time and it would be disruptive to at least mine and another organizers life to change it. The meeting space also was not an arbitrary decision, we have had a lot of discussion surrounding meeting spaces this last year and I agree with a lot of your input, but we have been choosing to hold our meetings as more casual dinners instead of at places of business to make them easier, more fun and more productive for those who attend. We should definitely explore meetings times and places that work well for everyone in the future, either on here or at the next meeting if you all can attend. For now, lets keep the 6:30 at Wednesday dinner. Any objections?

[Tim Roust]

On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Hillary Brown <hillar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Tim, I'm excited about your music program. I think that would be an awesome addition to the free school network.

 

Everyone, I already spoke to several folks about coming to the meeting and we've announced the day and time on public forums. I think it would be confusing and detrimental to the open nature of the meeting to change the time now.  6:30 next Wednesday is unfortunately not an arbitrary time and it would be disruptive to at least mine and another organizers life to change it. The meeting space also was not an arbitrary decision, we have had a lot of discussion surrounding meeting spaces this last year and I agree with a lot of your input, but we have been choosing to hold our meetings as more casual dinners instead of at places of business to make them easier, more fun and more productive for those who attend. We should definitely explore meetings times and places that work well for everyone in the future, either on here or at the next meeting if you all can attend. For now, lets keep the 6:30 at Wednesday dinner. Any objections?

 

Ok, Hillary, that's cool. I am unable to attend the meeting tomorrow, but I posted the meeting info at the Esplanade Art House, and hopefully a few people here will show up at the meeting to represent this house as a potential classroom location for the future. There is already a community classroom space being built here, and there is also the possibility of holding classes at the St. Claude Art House. I've talked with people about the Free School, and everyone here agrees that they'd like to see classes here more regularly. But there needs to be much more in depth discussion about what that would mean, and what the potential pitfalls could be.

I would also like to encourage you to get involved with the organizing for BikeBike 2013, which is the annual community bike shop conference, which will be held in new orleans, October 3 - 6.

Victor from Plan-B is one of the organizers, and I've reached out to him about holding workshops at the esplanade art house. This would be a great networking opportunity for the Free School Network. Maybe there could be a special meeting of the NOLA FSN specifically for organizing workshops for the conference. Here's their website: (http://www.bikebike.org/)

As far as the Music Department goes, this is not a new idea. It is something I first proposed at the very beginning, in 2011. It made sense to me to have similar classes be grouped together into a Department structure.

I hoped to get help in developing a music department (i've reached the limits of what i can accomplish on my own.) and i hoped to see other departments emerge, such as a History department, a Language department, an Art department, etc.

To promote this vision, I created a WIKI for the free school network, which i hoped to be used as a tool for developing classes collaboratively. Here is a link to the wiki I created in 2011, which hasn't been touched since then. It is a good snapshot of what the FSN looked like at the very beginning.
http://nolafreeschoolnetwork.wikispaces.com/home

As far as specific classes goes, the first class I tried to develop was a Suzuki violin class, which I tried holding at Mardi Gras Zone, using their out-of-tune piano. I even went through the trouble of creating a whole seperate wiki sight just to share the materials for this class. Here's the site. Please check it out:
http://suzuki-violin.wikispaces.com/Volume+1

and here is another site I created specifically for sharing the sheet music I'd be using for the class:
http://musescore.com/groups/2053

So obviously, it is something I put a lot of thought and a lot of work into.

Now it is two years later, and I have managed to create multiple teaching locations for myself, and so I am eager to try this class idea out again. I want to write more about my original idea for the class, and how the idea has changed over the years through trial and error.

I would love to see my Suzuki violin class fit on the upcoming calender, because now I am in a much better position to make the class work than I was in 2011.
But for this to be possible, you guys need to work with me. The deadlines and the organizing structures that you guys set up seems to do much more harm than good. There needs to be a much more dynamic feedback loop between teachers, students, and organizers, to figure out what actually works !

I have lots more to write, as always. But I'm late for class.

Hope you guys have a productive meeting.

Sincerely Tim Roust