CC Meeting 28 March 2016

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COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2016

FACILITATOR: Prost

STACK: Henry

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

ATTENDEES: Notfunnyatall, Hawk, Pixie, Izzi, Problem, Thomas, Beth, Adam, Clover, Breezy, Chim-Chim, Prost, Turtlebunnie, Princess, St. Tiki, Clovis, Wrinn, Decibel, Monkey, Bonobo

TOPICS: Review CC nominations messages (All); Increasing Community Engagement (Beth)

RESOLUTIONS AND ACTION ITEMS

MOTION: To have Q&A mixer on May 9th where we let community members field questions to the CC; MOTION PASSES

MOTION: Calendar meetings into mixers; MOTION TABLED

8:04pm AAR/LLC UPDATE (Adam/Problem)

  • Work weekend happened this past weekend; Good turnout; Many ppl who have never been to FS or work weekend; Bobcat was out there; Land is in pretty good shape; Main field was plowed six times to be leveled out; Mostly all dirt now; Most down trees have been dealt with; Island beach is too high; Killed poison ivy; Patching spots on road
  • Signing contract to have Flipside
  • Tix: Some secondary tix will be available
  • Safetyside is April 15-17th
  • Discussion over whether Burning Flipside will eventually be called a Burning Man regional; Reasonable, equitable agreement?
  •  Ticket sales/requests: Tix set aside—under 3000; 200 less requests than last year; 100 less; General participant interest is down a little; Previous was soft lottery; General number: Requests for 2901 tickets; Request number was lower; what is trend for one vs two requests; comprehensive report still being worked on

8:23pm AREA FACILITATOR UPDATE (Clovis/Wrinn)

  • Meeting next week
  • Had two TH road shows
  • Few theme camps showed up for safety thirdside

8:25pm REGIONAL UPDATE (Clovis/St. Tiki)

  • GLC Thursday through Sunday this week
  • BM meetup at Beau’s Sekrit Theater
  • BM going through a lot of changes
  • Negotiating regional agreement
  • Houston had their regional event; 185 attended; Not a Burn, but a production company + core ppl; LLC does not have enough info to produce report
  • Giant ear gathering in SF—Discussion over how to handle natural disaster event; Did not have hard time getting ppl for lead positions; Rains were more causative; Hard data will be more available near Safetyside; Expect smaller event
  • No real systemic issues this year; Volunteer recruitment is still going; Same with Lead recruitment;
  • Last year’s Flipside was already hard with 3 key volunteers dropping out before the event; Not many ppl were personally affected by flood; Lots affected by general rain/mud
  • Do good job in recognizing volunteer life cycle; Many have disengaged for many years and at some point, come back in; We do a good job at succession planning, lieutenants, sharing, etc.; Weather—No control, and a learning experience; Update on Regionals—San Antonio regional in the works

8:48pm TOPIC: Increasing Community Engagement (Beth)

  • Encouraging community engagement; Community not engaging with CC; How we can ask community? Brainstorming session of what do we change, how do we change, what are we missing?
  • How to reach out to ppl and get them to talk about what they wanna talk about?
  • In terms of basic outreach, there are bits of info; What is it you’re trying to do? Valve for politics, but decisions are made in person, and focus is on interpersonal relationships in person; If you aren’t engaged enough, then get engaged
  • Throw mud at the wall and see what sticks; Everyone working on trying new social media; Part of job is being a safety valve for the community;
  • Can look at interest of community as a funnel where only certain ppl are interested; Getting a good proportion; If it were easy, we would market as product; Ethics on communication; Most efficient use of communication?
  • Why does CC exist, and what is it for? Came to existence through addressing issues; Both regionally and socially, those groups have changed and expanded; Want to reach out and at least let them know where to go
  • There is no welcoming committee here; If you work hard with ppl, you’ll find connections
  • CC communications; Meeting annnouncements put out in more than one medium; CC is supposed to represent a broad cross-section of the community; CC is a bunch of individuals; If you feel the way CC is lacking in its communications, start by individual level
  • I think we’re doing fine; When there are issues, we discuss; Get meetings as such to where we get off topic
  • Focusing ppl to using the web; Talk to certain groups; Having consistent place to direct ppl for info
  • Reach more ppl than we think; Talk more about CC than community; If you want community to be engaged, do something that community cares about
  • Should sequester CC business and focus; Have one CC meeting a month focusing on issue; We control the agenda; No reason why we have to do engagement; Operational components of CC are only of interests to us; We have reached the point of overdoing it; Community topic of the month?; There are enough issues on list of topics to change scenario
  • Reason why adamant in having topic separate from social media was because we didn’t have adequate number of topics in the past; Feel like we’re not doing our job somehow; Used to have things to fill in calendar, but now we don’t. Where are we failing? How to get those topics so we aren’t discussing CC operations
  • Had several gangbuster CC meetings with good attendance
  • Operational capacity of CC and comm of community are unrelated; Discussions of TH are distraction from mission; Discussion of comm things are distraction from TH; Fifth of meetings are about TH; 20% discussion over internal business
  • Love idea of protecting space just for community engagement; Pin ourselves to corner if you have to wait to announce
  • Open forum where we tell community, LLC, AF, CC member; Bring topic or put on agenda item; if it’s operational, will be discussed
  • Start with dedicated meeting (Flipside Q&A) and see what we get

MOTION: Schedule in near future a CC meeting specifically on open Q&A that includes LLC

  • Amend that we make this May 9 for pre-Flipside topic;
  • Call it a mixer rather than a meeting cuz a meeting sounds like it sucks
  • Let community know in advance in as many mediums
  • Do more than just one meeting; Dedicate time at every meeting to discuss what everyone wants to talk about; Went on tangent in GLC convo; Free-form conversation; Own topic for certain amount of time; Figure out what needs to be actual CC conversations
  • Mixer instead of calendaring meeting
  • As calendaring mixer, it’s a good idea cuz it gives opportunity to bring ppl back in

MOTION (Revised): To have Q&A mixer on May 9th where we let community members field questions to the CC; MOTION PASSES

MOTION: Calendar meetings into mixers; MOTION TABLED

  • Back on original stack: Listen and learn luau; More interaction in street than in meetings
  • Conversation that TH—Differing evaluation of TH; Best characterization of interest to FS is through TH; Encourage CC to think about having possibilities at TH; They’re already there; What is the measure of success that we are looking for? Perrenial convos are important
  • LLC/AF/REGIONAL UPDATE are useless? I disagree. This is only place you can hear info on things such as regional burns and MGP;
  • Amount of communication nowadays is multichanneled that it’s hard for anyone to communicate effectively; Attention span has degraded (tl; dr); Need to do Cliff Notes version; Now we are headline writers!
  • Challenges: Business update sections can be long
  • Opening aspect is good for transparency; Not marketing, but branding of CC; Brand issue; Brand recognition not there

9:55pm OLD BUSINESS

  • Doodle
  • Review CC nomination email: TABLED
  • CC Scribe nomination process: Get ppl at mixer
  • SUBTOPIC: Streaming CC Meetings
    • How long to wait?
    • Privacy issues?
    • Create secure wait to interact
    • Hardware is inexpensive; Certain infrastructure involved
    • Logistically, we tried Google hangouts; Need to look at WebX as solution, means stream to server, they stream out more; Ticketing; Transparently non-transparent; Talking at GLC easier to talk in person; Stack on WebX? Would change our meetings
    • Things to look at if given options: Perceived burden on those who live near; Does have some benefits, but has limitations
    • Philosophical comment: Decide who can be at meeting through streaming; Only CC members; Community attends actual meeting; Philosophy is what matters; Don’t worry about technology
    • 3 points: Who would participate first? Just CC? AFs? Or public? It squelches conversation; Screen Captcha? Only CC members can attend; Certain topics shouldn’t be necessarily discussed further outside of room
    • Have had meetings in past recorded without consent; It’s not impossible to have these recorded now; How much do we trust; Logistical nightmare; Philosophically, not immune to it; POI: Legal to record; Not legal to publish elsewhere
    • 17 CC members; If we all attended, we would have much longer meetings; When you are remote, potential for distraction
    • Remote: May take away from participation
    • Terms of service to offer to community? Would have to have thorough review; Phone teleconferencing might be best way; Video streaming is more restrictive to openness and honesty; It’s the lube that keeps the organization going; How to get community to teleconference
    • Problems with streaming: Any time you call in to meeting, you are already considered 2nd class in convo; $1000/yr for 14 ppl total; Where does line end?
    • Leveraging participants discussion; Proposal is trying streaming once; Limitations in execution (first 5 ppl); Number of hot topics are limited, therefore do ‘in-person’ only; There should be some kind of middle ground; Bridge to greater participation
    • Presented with unique situation
    • Not all CC members live in Austin; Community members cannot participate unless in person; Only St. Tiki can participate?
    • Extend CC membership to outside realms outside of Austin; Wouldn’t be fair to only have St. Tiki participate in streaming; Non-disclosure agreement not to release/rebroadcast to community; Have to be willing to take seriously; How to establish level of commitment and trust? Can’t change community perception
    • Do we want to go into corporate culture? More immediate and less corporate; What makes a CC member and deserving of this privilege? Where do we draw that line? If 20 community members and 10 cc members, how does that make us look?
    • Currently seeing 3-4 ppl that cannot participate; Monitor and revisit
    • Limitations: If kids are involved, you won’t be able to make call; Place for people to meet in person
  • CC Scribe nomination process: Mer makes call for nominations

NEXT MEETING: MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2016

FACILITATOR: Cooper

STACK: Decibel

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

TOPICS: Fireworks, Social Media

10:45pm MEETING ADJOURNED