COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING
MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2016
FACILITATOR: Cooper
STACK: Decibel
SCRIBE: Chim-Chim
ATTENDEES (21): Tasha, Pippa, Cooper, Princess, Problem, Kat, Thomas, Chim-Chim, Adam, Monkey, Turtlebunnie, Breezy, Beth, Prost, Decibel, Notfunnyatall, Clovis, Wrinn, Bonobo, Breezy, Henry
TOPICS: Fireworks (Prost); Social Media (Monkey)
RESOLUTIONS AND ACTION ITEMS
ACTION ITEM (Prost): Put into the Flipside Flame: You can buy fireworks; No you cant take it to Flipside; It’s everybody’s responsibility; Prost will write a blurb
MOTION: Suggest that the Social Media team review the original Social Media Plan; MOTION PASSES
MOTION: Move Fall Town Hall to Sept. 24; MOTION PASSES
ACTION ITEM (Cooper): Contact Mer and request to start Scribe nominations process
ACTION ITEM (Kat & Beth): Kat will make FB event page and post on website for the CC Mixer; 7:42pm; Beth will post event
7:52pm MEETING BEGINS
7:58pm AAR/LLC UPDATE (Adam, Thomas, Problem, Princess)
- Contract signed—WE HAVE LAND!!!
- Safetyside is this weekend; Bad news—IT’S GONNA RAIN!
- Global Leadership Conference occurred last week
- Met with AFs; Everything proceeding as planned
- Scheduling Fall Town Hall: Set for October 1; Discuss in OLD BUSINESS
8:05pm REGIONAL UPDATE (Clovis)
- GLC
- Cheyne McClaskey meta regional contacts admin;
- Everyman stepped down (previous admin)
- Meta-regional representative for Austin: Scott Claskey
- Schedule time to get together and discuss GLC; Wrinn, Russell, FTC, Serious, Jimmie
- Serious, Ghost did panel
8:11pm AREA FACILITATOR UPDATE (Clovis)
- Had work weekend this past weekend; Additional 13 loads at site; Placed 7-8; Filled potholes; Found more infrastructure that had floated downstream (mesh green flooring); Cleaned up along 428 outside (6 bags of trash; Pallets); Lots learned how to use a bobcat; Main field was plowed six times and cleaned; Lots of screws, towels, keys found in cleaning process
- Safetyside this weekend; Orders are in for everything
8:16pm TOPIC: Fireworks (Prost)
- Why LLC loathes fireworks so much; Fireworks policy in SG is clear; They are PROHIBITED; Reason to bring this up—fireworks sales laws in Texas have changed; You can now buy fireworks; for Memorial Day; On a county-by-county basis; Must approve each vendor selling; Now have situation where someone driving to Flipside may see the sights of fireworks stands
- Survival Guide states it is also grounds for ejection; Cannot get insurance if ppl setting off fireworks; Don’t have Flipside if ppl set fireworks off; Motion to keep it the same
- How to communicate it to the community, and what’s our last line of defense in the event, and what are we gonna do in this situation
- Last line of defense: Gate; Can ask Gate to ask about fireworks; Once in the event, it’s harder to deal with those who have fireworks
- NO fireworks sign? NO. Also, need NO firearms sign; Start telling people (operational issue)
- Fireworks policy is reaffirmed; If insurance situation changes, re-discuss
ACTION ITEM: Put into the Flipside Flame: You can buy fireworks; No you cant take it to Flipside; It’s everybody’s responsibility; Prost will write a blurb
8:28pm TOPIC: Social media (Monkey)
- Have Social Media Lead (St. Tiki); How we address social media; 2 categories; 1) How we as an org use social media, whether we are using the right things, and doing it in the best way; 2) Whether or not it is responsibility of org to take on maintaining communities social media
- 1) Do we Tweet, yo?
- 2) Flipizens page?
- Majority are on Burning Flipside Flipizens group page; Community created/Community-run group; Should org take hand in moderating community for group
- Assessment of current social media we use: There is competing problem with #1; When we started social media thing, there have been a couple of starts and didn’t know exactly what to say; People need to know there is a burningflipside.com website; Don’t pay FB; As a point of information on this convo, may need to be discuss; Original plan—put images, news blurbs, etc into fb page that direct back to website; Ppl look and share those posts; Whoever is subscribed to page will upvote the visibility/reach of message; Have some traction; Gets more fun on #2 side; Official plan—let ppl REACH
- Twitter is something we’ve had for several years;
- Who are we most concerned about reaching? 2 groups: Detailed/complex info to veteran/highly engaged ppl; Or, less-engaged ppl, or, new ppl? Require entirely set of focus; FB is excellent spot to reach ppl you don’t necessarily know at all; Which area of social media are we most worried we are not doing well?
- Communication is a two-way streak; Have official Flipside page; People are asking that they should be asking organization on Flipizens group
- You have to know the system in order to game the system
- Using Instagram and Kickk; Getting ahead of social media thing
- Kate Ludlow and St. Michelle do good job of pointing ppl in the right direction
- Although we should do more outreach, we have to come up with the message; Message matters, or maybe it doesn’t; Always have had barrier to entry to get into Flipside
- Recruiting not so much the issue, but it is establishing/creating dynamic culture with certain expectations; Need effective strategy; Medium is the message; Need something more deliberate
- Need prescence; Getting ppl to pay attention to you is expensive; It’s always been repetition; Cost of medium has become cheaper, but doesn’t necessarily mean overall communication costs; Traditional advertising doesn’t work anymore; Have to craft content to get ppl to hear it; It’s EXPENSIVE; Going to cost us many volunteers
- Expensive in tickets; Best that could be done would be 40% reach; Kickk has similar stuff now; Group posts are the only thing that don’t have limits
- Reluctant to put resources into doing social media; Has to be measurable; Must know message/goals
- We should declare FB a secret society, and we’ll be fine; Make it harder to go to Flipside; What we want from social media is EDJUMICATION; Put a strategy together
- Not trying to grow brand, but grow culture/volunteer base, and this is how we should use social media; As CC body, need to figure out how we use social media
- 2nd DISCUSSION: Community-Branding vs Whether we care about our brand; Poll—How many ppl believe we have a severe weakness that needs to be addressed in regards to social media? One and a half voted; Flipside the org has a weakness regarding official messaging; Now, four votes!
MOTION: To bring to the attention of social media and communications that cc believes there are weaknesses in strategies; BLOCKED (2x)
- Social media is trying to be improved; Should revisit original social media plan five years ago to meet the needs of 2016; CC suggesting that organization revisiting five-year plan…; Communications—George said, let’s do social media; Time to revisit operationally; We’re allowing them to re-visit their fucking policy
MOTION (Revised): Recommend that the Social Media team review the original Social Media Plan; MOTION PASSES
- 2ND DISCUSSION (again): Burning Flipside Flipizens on Facebook; Question—nature of community-building as it relates to our social media use; Issues—It’s useless, misleading, mean, full of jerks, trolls, problematic assholes; Our community is not that different from other communities; Discuss taking hand in community management
- Scope of community management: Actions that admins on page would do to maintain community space; Scope is within Facebook page; Managing what happens in that sand
- Flipizens are regional Burn that are snarky
- Don’t want org to take responsibility on convos on FB; We would have to police with level of rigor; Can’t have contingency plan for every detailed situation; Must be prepared; Not only Flipside-related group
- How can we form opinion when we need to revisit strategy? Starting point—What do we want to accomplish with social media
- Issues: Misinformation, trolls, lies—don’t care; Biggest concern—When someone misses the point, and we nudge them back in the right direction to the point of where screenshots are reposted after conversation was deleted; If there’s not a certain amount of moderation or self-moderation on part of flipizens, then trolls win empirically; community suffers as result; Spills over into real community as proxy; What do we do? We are nicer at Flipside than we are online;
- Important to not be in role where we are limiting self-expression no matter how unpleasant that may be; What do we need now? We have to let it play out
- Policing the page is difficult
- Question—Are the bastards winning? Are we looking at Flipizens where it’s not good anymore? Are we talking about shitheads taking over? It’s not worse than what it was; Is it causing direct problems? Ppl have left community; Ppl who could’ve been—Majority say it’s not worth trying to look at the Flipizens page; What can we do? Why should we try to fix it? Yes, there are things happening that cause ppl to leave community; General feeling that it is not a positive part of community; There is no fixing that because it’s not meant to be fixed; It was created for a certain reason; Historically set up by a person—Has anyone told him? Because of personalities involved, it’s suggested that he deleted it; Point is, it can be re-done. Mailing lists are mailing lists, and we get to have them
- Discussion over codes of conduct in other web forums
9:59pm OLD BUSINESS
- TOWN HALL DATE
- Oct. 1 conflict; several CC and AAR members have a conflict on Oct. 1 that would limit or prevent their Town Hall participation that day
MOTION: Move to Sept. 24, as previous discussion has focused the date to one of either Oct 1 or Sept 24, on the (not serious) condition that Kate Ludlow MCs the event; MOTION PASSES
- RESPECT
- Chat session during burn at Spin Camp; Unofficial Flipside event
- Open to those who missed last discussion
- SCRIBE NOMINATIONS
- Need to start scribe nomination process
ACTION ITEM: (Cooper) contact Mer and request to start Scribe nominations process
- PICTURE DATE
- On Doodle; Patrick has volunteered to take pictures; Taking pics before Flipside means ppl can know who ppl are; Best day thus far is Monday, April 25th, 10pm; 4 ppl who are happy with their picture; Does not cover most of the AFs
- Q&A MIXER
- May 9th: Get topics; tell community so ppl can show up
ACTION ITEM: (Kat & Beth): Kat will make FB event page and post on website; CC mixer (meeting); 7:42pm; Beth will post event
NEXT MEETING: MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
TOPICS: Leave No Trace (LNT), Volunteer panic
FACILITATOR: Cooper
STACK: Breezy
SCRIBE: Chim-Chim
10:24pm MEETING ADJOURNED