General Assembly organization

agate

Hi there,

I'm opening this thread because we're supposed to have our yearly general assembly by the end of september. Since we have to notify all the members of the collective a month before, we need to pick a date for september, and an agenda 🙂

When

EDIT: Survey closed. GA will happen on September 17th, 19:30 CEST

I've created a survey to find the best date for the assembly itself, you are free to vote here: https://www.when2meet.com/?12421588-L113q, the survey will be closed by August 15th.

Where

As per usual, the assembly itself will be text-only, probably on a dedicated Matrix channel. Active members of the collective with at least one year of membership will be able to vote (though we may change this during the assembly, see the agenda below).

Why

This yearly assembly is mandatory as per the Funkwhale Collective statuses (https://funkwhale.audio/en_US/collective). It's an occastion to discuss big picture stuff about how we organize ourselves, distribute responsibilities, elect members of the various bodies, etc.

Given my resignation and the many, many changes that happened recently, in particular @gcrk and other people stepping up as maintainers, one important discussion we should have during this meeting should be about the collective itself. Should we keep it, should we aim for a lighter structure? If yes, of what kind? https://forum.funkwhale.audio/d/10-legal-state-of-the-funkwhale-collective/5 might give you some context and ideas.

Our collective will also we two years old by the GA, and some of the rules and protocols we agreed on may not be relevant anymore. Some are also discouraging the involvement of new members (for instance, the 1-year membership requirement to be able to vote). This is a discussion we should also have.

Depending on the structure we choose to keep, we may want to elect or reelect members for various bodies :

The Steering Commitee, that is responsible for coordination of the community effort around the Funkwhale and Retribute projects
The Board, who is representing and managing the collective at an adminitrative level, but is not involved in the development process
The Moderation Commitee, who's responsible for enforcing our Code of Conduct on the various community spaces, and more generally make the appropriate decisions to ensure the community spaces are welcoming for everyone

Though the structure of the collective may change depending on our decisions during the assembly, I believe the responsibilities will still exist and need to be assumed by some individuals. If you are interested in getting involved at this level, don't hesitate to leave a message in the comments! Don't worry, you won't be alone and we will work out a path for a smooth transition between former and new members.

Please, bring up any other topic that might be relevant for discussion during the assembly, so that we can set up and share a structured agenda before notifying our members.

Thank you, let me know if anything needs to be clarified!

gcrk

Thanks @agate for your efforts and your involvement in the process of handing over the project, this was and is really helpful.

I am in favor of shutting down the collective itself, but this needs a lot of thinking. We need to discuss what we need to keep and how to achieve this. For me the important points are that our assets are hold by an neutral instance, eg not a single member of the team to ease a hand over and the democratic organization. While we can find replacements in the first aspect, the second one is harder to get and we should really think about and discuss how to solve this. An idea might be to adopt the way how Gitea handles this.

This is a long term project and we need more time for sure to do this right. So we need to buy us some more time by keeping the association and working with it.

I think an important change we should make is lowering the barriers to be allowed to vote. If people wait for one year they might already loose they interest and if there are bad actors who want to take over the collective they might be patient enough to wait a year. Full disclosure: I am member since February and therefore not allowed to vote in this years assembly, so I have a personal interest in this decision.

Another thing I'd like to have is an easier way to get people into the Steering Committee. Its managing the project itself and is casted by any contributors to the project. We could have voting about this also outside of assemblies, probably following specific rules. This would allow us to be more flexible and it is a good way to avoid situations we are having now, where people are in charge who are not casted following the statutes.

Since we have no way to proceed without the association, we need to have an election for the committees. What exact positions do we need to fill?

agate

@gcrk

Basically we need:

2 people for the Board (bare, legal minimum)
3 people minimum for the Steering Commitee (per our statuses and to avoid locks), 10 people max
2 people minimum for the moderation commitee

Since I'm resigning as a SC member, I could apply for a board position (e.g President), and I think my mother would be okay to stay Treasurer. Since I'll only be involved in helping transitioning the legal structure to something else untii we can finally dissolve the collective, and I have no financial interest in Funkwhale anymore, I think it makes sense.

That leaves 5 people to find for the SC and MC seats, though we could technically have a vote in the agenda, e.g regarding membership requirements) to change these requirements before we vote on anything else.

gcrk

I'd really appreciate if you stay available for the transition!

As far as I remember correctly @petitminion also offered to apply for a position in the board, so we actually have the option to vote 3 people, and I think this is a good way to have an active connection between the board and the project.

Do the applicants for the moderation and steering committee need to be member of the collective? Can't find the information in the statutes right now.

agate

gcrk Do the applicants for the moderation and steering committee need to be member of the collective? Can't find the information in the statutes right now.

Yes, everyone involved in a group must be a member of the collective (meaning registering here : https://funkwhale.audio/en_US/support-us/#membership and paying the fee, minimum 1€)

@petitminion maybe you'd like to be secretary? It's a relatively small position in terms of workload 🙂

petitminion

I think @agate is in a better position for this role, but can do if nobody step up

gcrk

I think @agate is in a better position for this role, but can do if nobody step up

As far as I can tell there is no reason not to have a third member and I would appreciate if you would be an additional member of the board! This way you can share the work and you are more involved than Agate while she knows all the processes, so this seems to be a nice base for a good cooperation 🙂

gcrk

agate Yes, everyone involved in a group must be a member of the collective (meaning registering here : https://funkwhale.audio/en_US/support-us/#membership and paying the fee, minimum 1€)

Article 13 states:

It is composed of contributor members, elected in accordance with the procedures described in Article 16.

For me this means Steering Committee Members just need to be Contributors, not members of the Association? But its probably just lost in translation.

petitminion

agate yeah why not, I'm ok to be whatever is needed o/ I just have a limited amount of time ofc ^^

agate

gcrk For me this means Steering Committee Members just need to be Contributors, not members of the Association? But its probably just lost in translation.

They need to be both members of the collective and contributors (but we could definitely remove the 1-year membership requirement, meaning candidate one could simply become a member in 5 minutes and apply for a seat). I think it make sense that people who have important responsibilites and power inside the collective are also members but that's just my opinion.

agate

Survey closed, september 17th is the best choice, so it will happen on that day at 19:30 CEST. I've updated the initial post to reflect that.

Since no other agenda item has been brought up, I'll send an email to the collective members in the upcoming day to announce the GA and the dates.

gcrk

agate Wait, we need to fix the agenda items now?

I want to have a voting about

the one-year waiting time
lowering the barriers to change members of the steering committee
have an opinion about closing the association in the future (its not really something we can vote on, now, I just want to have a discussion and see if members tend to think its a good idea or not)

agate

Email sent to all the members, I've included a copy below:

Hi,

You are receiving this email because you are a Funkwale Collective member, even if your membership isn't paid currently.

We'll have our next yearly General Assembly soon, on September 17th, 19:30 CEST (If you're living in France, it means 19:30)

We'll discuss a lot of important things for the future of the collective in this assemble and if you're interested, you are welcome to join. The meeting itself will happen on Matrix, a text-based chat system, and you can join the discussion room at https://app.element.io/#/room/#funkwhale-assembly:matrix.org. You can expect the meeting to last at most 2 hours.

In particular, we will discuss the following items during the assemble :

Several discussions and corresponding updates to our statutes to make the involvement of new members easier, and associated votes
Discussions about the change of maintainers that happend over the past year
Discussions and possible votes about the future of the collective and/or the transition to a new legal structure or entity

If your membership isn't paid, you can renew it at https://funkwhale.audio/en_US/support-us/#membership. You're free to give the amount you want, starting at 1€. You can still join the meeting if your membership isn't paid but you won't be able to vote.

If you have any question about the assembly feel free to ask either on the Matrix channel linked above or the following thread on our forums : https://forum.funkwhale.audio/d/36-general-assembly-organization/10

I wish you a great day,

Agate, on behalf of the Funkwhale Collective

agate

General Assembly meeting notes

We had the GA yesterday and it went pretty well! You'll find a summary of the discussions, votes and decisions that were made below!

Removal of the probation period

There was a 1-year probation period for members before they could vote in GA or have a seat in one of the groups. It has been removed as it prevented the involvment of potentially motivated community members.

[upl-image-preview url=https://forum.funkwhale.audio/assets/files/2021-09-18/1631958368-693041-screenshot-20210917-200729.png]

Co-optation within Moderation and Steering commitees

Up until now, Moderation and Steering commitees members were elected once a year during a GA. However, this was quite rigid, because the project and involvement of members usually moves faster than that.

Moderation and Steering Commitee can now co-opt members into their group at any time. When this happen, a public announcement has to be published on the community channels (blog, matrix, etc.). In order to coopt a member into a group, all current members of the group must be unanimous.

During the next general assembly, each cooptation will be confirmed or revoked by a vote.

[upl-image-preview url=https://forum.funkwhale.audio/assets/files/2021-09-18/1631958419-730760-screenshot-20210917-203540.png]

GA organization can be done by any board member

As per our statutes, it was done by the Secretary, however, we don't have a Secretary this year, so we had to update our statutes from:

At least fifteen days before the date fixed by the Board, the members of the Association shall be convened by the Secretary.

At least fifteen days before the date fixed by the Board, the members of the Association shall be convened by a member of the Board.

[upl-image-preview url=https://forum.funkwhale.audio/assets/files/2021-09-18/1631958450-66110-screenshot-20210917-205139.png]

Elections: Board

Agate and Petitminion where elected respectively as President and Treasurer.

[upl-image-preview url=https://forum.funkwhale.audio/assets/files/2021-09-18/1631958488-893425-screenshot-20210917-205429.png]

[upl-image-preview url=https://forum.funkwhale.audio/assets/files/2021-09-18/1631958502-34046-screenshot-20210917-205810.png]

Elections: Steering Commitee

Sporiff, egon0, gcrk and mjourdan were elected as Steering Commitee members.

[upl-image-preview url=https://forum.funkwhale.audio/assets/files/2021-09-18/1631958511-217105-screenshot-20210917-210533.png]

Election: Moderation Commitee

Renon and devilcius were elected as Moderation Commitee members.

[upl-image-preview url=https://forum.funkwhale.audio/assets/files/2021-09-18/1631958524-37380-screenshot-20210917-212029.png]

Finances

We currently have 3300€ on our bank account, with this amount increasing roughly by 150€ a month.

Our main recurring charges are hosting (55€) and inputs are donations (Open Collective or wiretransfers) for 200€ a month.

Statutes update

We will update the actual statutes soon, to reflect the decisions that were made, and let you know when this is done 🙂

Thank you to all the participants <3