Free Ride! Meeting Minutes, Sunday, August 19, 2007, 1 pm at Erok's

Scribe's comments are marked with {} (square brackets make pbwiki think you're trying to create a new page). "FR" means Free Ride.

 

{This was a special meeting to try and fix the flat tires, lube the chain, etc. on the old coordinator roles discussion. More generally, we talked a lot about creating documentation and experimenting with a governance structure that included committees.}

 

Urgent business: Discussion of Financial Crisis at the Merton Center

 

The Merton Center is having major problems resulting from damage caused by their leaking roof. The MertonCenterHelp page has more details.

{General feeling of the discussion was that FR needs to get a better idea of what's going on and what kind of help is needed before committing a bunch of money, but people wanted to help out.}

 

Proposal: Should FR become a member of the Merton Center now, at a cost of $40, as a gesture of support?...Approved, yes, Erok will take care of it.

 

Proposal: Stuart will head up a group to talk to Kevin Amos (for finding out more details, but not for committing $$$)...Approved

 

 

Calendar

 

There was a request during a Saturday open shop that meetings be held in a more public/accessible location.

 

Discussion:

- Concern: Meetings can be long and sometimes stressful. It's important to have a space that is comfortable and relatively free of distractions.

- It's not easy to find good meeting meeting places; houses work pretty well.

- Have meetings at the shop? ...Heat is a problem in the winter, and the atmosphere there is not that good compared to other places (see the first point)

- We need to pick something for September and move on with the coordinator roles discussion.

 

Morgan is going to look for potential new meeting locations.

 

Proposal: September meeting Sunday, September 9, 2007, 1pm at Erok's house (7 Beelen St)...Approved.

 

 

Coordinator Roles: Discussion of Problems (Motivation for Changes)

 

Openning Go'round:

 

- The wide range of experience among people in the shop creates a power imbalance. Working open shop feels draining like a job. Open shop is not conducive to teaching.

- Do we want to continue open shop? There isn't a formula for transitions of roles.

- Roles and responsibilities are unclear. There is a lack of transparency in reporting. Jobs are inaccessible because they are so big; only people with lots of free time can do them. There are not clear definitions for the scope coordinators' decision making power. We're getting a lot bigger than before (time to start using committees?).

- Lack of diversity of coordinators. We've totally failed at term limits. We are very dependent on people who give a lot of time for free; that is not something that can be relied upon for future sustainability.

- Working open shop feels like a job. Agree with previous speaker's points.

- The shop is so big that it's hard to run in a non-hierarchical way. Limiting the number of people in the shop is good.

- It's so busy in the shop that there is little time for teaching. We need to make time for sharing skills. Many people just pay for Earn-a-Bike bikes rather than sticking around to volunteer at the shop.

- People coming to the shop do not understand the non-commercial aspects of FR ("We're not here to do your work for you.").

- We need to make sure that FR governance is effective and fair. It's good for FR not to be structured in a supper efficient corporate way, because that can easily head toward concentrated power and unfairness. However, we also need to administer things in a way that supports FR's goals and makes it possible to get things done. Committees?

- A shift at FR feels like a shift at my minimum wage job. We're not just another bike shop. We need to help people understand what FR is.

- It would be nice to do more youth programs. Getting disillusioned with open shop.

- People think FR is a bike shop. Open shop feels like a job. Meetings and governance seem detached from how the shop functions. How can we decentralize the current governance? Collective of collectives?

 

 

Responses and discussion:

 

- We've been talking about concerns related to open shop and about administrative stuff. I think we should table open shop stuff for now.

- Agreement with: Open shop seems disconnected from the coordinator roles

- Let's not get too deep into open shop

- The number of people in the shop is putting pressure on volunteers.

- Let's talk about governance structure

- There is no time other than open shop and meetings to learn about who is doing what

 

{break, followed by summary of discussion so far}

 

{Chaos for a while as we try to define a format for the rest of this meeting}

 

Conclusion: Let's allow the next hour for talking about solutions, and we'll try not to get too deep into open shop stuff.

 

 

Coordinator Roles: Discussion of Solutions

 

Go'round about possible solutions:

 

- Maybe coordinatorships should become committees. Have quarterly strategy meetings (ex: to set goals for committees) and separate operational meetings. Make guidelines for committee decisions vs. collective decisions. We need documentation such as a manual for how to do jobs. Potential ways to improving accessibility of current coordinator jobs: 1) maybe start paying people. 2) break tasks down more. 3) centralize with paid staff

- The LA Bike Kitchen presentation at BikeBike was interesting. They had about 50 people organized into committees (which could be as small as 1 person). Their wiki (http://www.bicyclekitchen.com/wiki.cgi/HomePage) has a lot of documentation about it. However, I'm not saying that FR ought to just adopt their model.

- We need to make time for discussing how things are going and what changes need to be made.

- I liked the Chicago model from BikeBike. They had two separate organizations; one does bikes, and the other does education. I like the committee idea

- We miss out on some potential voluneers because they just pay for bikes because it's easier than putting in volunteer hours. Maybe we should re-evaluate the pricing of bikes and the value of volunteer hours. I liked the Chicago model. Should we do more Fix-for-Sale? It would be good to make time for people to get together and talk outside of just open shop and meetings. There is a disconnect between open shop and the meetings.

- I think we should put more emphasis on classes and/or fix-for-sale-only nights where people would _not_ be working on their own bikes. A key point is that people who were there would be coming to contribute to the FR community by learning bike repair skills, getting to know each other, building fix for sale bikes, etc. This would be a good way to address the power imbalance around wrenching skills and to build a community of people who would be interested in helping sustain FR.

- We need to do documentation! Who gets excluded from helping out because they don't get paid? Maybe we should pay people. Making the FR group accessible to new people who want to join is important to me.

- We tend to identify a task and then just give it to somebody to do. This creates a lack of discussion and transparency. Paying people has a big race/class impact on who gets to participate. Hierarchy is bad.

- Committees could complicate some things. Realistically, paying 8 people would mean not much $$$ for relatively few hours.

- We could do more with checklists of things to be done and a shared responsibility for looking at the list, taking care of stuff, and checking it off. For example, whoever sells the last 27 inch tire could check the "27 inch tires" box on a list of stuff to be ordered. I like the idea of using committees; I have seen it work well in other situations. When we are making documentation, we need to allow for some non-robotish freedom for people to get things done in their own way.

 

 

Comments and Discussion:

 

- LA Bike Kitchen pays people for administrative work and for covering extra shop shifts beyond what they are normally scheduled for.

- {something about ad hoc vs. standing committees}. I like the idea of an inreach committee. Documentation would be good. I've been back and forth a lot on the issue of paying people. Currently I don't think it is a good idea in the near term.

- Doing things at places other than FR's shop (meetings) is bad for transparency.

 

Discussion of how people feel about paid staff.

 

Check in: Should we talk about having paid staff now...No

Check in: Are people open to maybe talking about paid staff at some point later on?...Yes

 

Trying for some consensus: It seems like people are generally in favor of committees and documenting tasks.

 

Proposal: Coordinators should start documenting what they do and put it on the wiki...Approved (*ammended below in the "wrap up" section)

 

{Chaos about how to start using committtees, task lists, etc.}

{Ahhh! more chaos, this is getting kind of intense}

 

Proposal: Are people in favor of having coordinatorships become committees...Yes (with some already stated reservations, such as certain things needing to be handled by just one person)

 

{break}

 

 

Wrap Up

 

Proposal: Current coordinators can try forming committees to do their jobs...Approved

 

Proposal: Deadline (for people who are here) to document their jobs on the wiki is the September 9 meeting...Approved

 

Proposal: We will have another meeting on the first Sunday in October (the 7th) to discuss committees more...Approved

 

Proposal: Committees should try to include people (pull in volunteers) and keep themselves going (sustainability)...{I think this was approved, help me out people who were there}

 

Proposal: Should we change the words after this meeting to reflect the new committee stuff...No