Notes from last time: https://www.loomio.org/d/CoHK1gxM/-meeting-monday-19th-febuary-20-45-utc-agenda-minutes
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| Time | 8.45pm Friday 23rd UTC |
| Facilitator | Kieran (Dan will be doing the call out for the meeting) |
| Agenda | this document |
| Location | Mumble (blockades.org, with celehner.com as backup) |
To get started with Mumble see setup guide (takes 5-10 mins), the server name is blockades.org
We'll be on keybase before the call if you have any challenges.
Please input things you would like to speak about in the meeting
Put another way this might mean clarity in what our process is moving forward and towards what ends or What the path forward is
Note from facilitator: I've tried below to draw out shared items from everyone's reflections to create agenda items. Please add / change items which you feel don't adequately reflect the temperature of the room.
Everyone checked in... general vibe was that people have been sleep deprived or injured, but everyone is muddling through. Excited to have Alanna join us...
- Hello Alanna 👋
- everyone said "hello!" :)
- Alanna says "hi" back :)
- Convergent vs Emergent Placed at top because it may inform the rest of the discussion
- Alanna giving inital impressions with a fresh view (having not been run through the mmt intro section)
- Gives some historical context from co-budget
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limitations of spreadsheet... so started manually...
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designing the software was a hard process...
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realisation was that they wanted emergent rather than the box of spreadsheet...
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if
MMTis like existing tools, is it possible to just use what is already there and to find what is the new thing, so that we don't recreate the wheel... -
@mix then highlights what convergent/emergent is (which Alanna can be found at bottom of this agenda document)
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lots of little decisions vs. bigger decisions
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@kieran then gives some reflections on this question being very pertinent and then runs through some of concepts and process so far, and perhaps why we have stalled a bit atm...
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@mix feels like it is a good lens to hold
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given that we don't yet fully know where we are at
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in our experiments this is a lens that we can hold up and ask con vs emer
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dan : my position similar to mix's. like this idea as part of the experiment frame. with wanting to try running a multisig for ourselves, that's one experiment, but having a few experiments it could be valuable to hold this lens
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kieran: resonates with above, wants to look at <- gah lost it
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mix: met with Kate beecroft from greaterthan, ran through bitcoin intro session with her
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mix: kate spoke about > north star for >
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mix: do we know what MMT north star is?
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dan: should we run through what we think our/mmt north star is
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kieran: north star is our guiding orientation, lets run through
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mix: feels biased and that has thought through this and is pretty well covered in MMT Engine document
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mix: reading from that document now: We want more of these things in the world:
- learning
- about power
- about social relations/ dynamics
- self determination
- community / interdependence
- empowerment
- accessibiliy / equitabilty
- community spirit
- learning
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Dan: free association. Can we form a group to work together if money isn't an object.
- moving beyond scarcity
- working to a common goal
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Mix: like Star Trek
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Peg: we wanna make some tool to help groups collaborativley manage money
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Dan: I want to hear about peoples individual north stars, and also then figure out if there's a collective one we can share
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Kieran: people working together, empowerment, community
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Alanna: doesn't normally think about North Star in this way
- Normally works on stuff and then looks back and reflects and notices common themes
- has been interested in working in collectives/groups with money
- with software and seeing what happens
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mix: above (MMT Engine) was a synthesis, my personal things were:
- technology north star is SSB
- money is a concrete tool for action
- challenge the status quo - build towards The Federation, burn capitalism
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Peg:
- used to be quite dogmatic about not dealing with money (living in squats protest sites etc)
- This has changed recently wanting to look into it more
- hoping to help in the steps towards exploring this more
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dan: TECHINIAL POINT
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open to extending this discussion to 90-120 mins
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all agreed
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Mix:
- How uses values is a tool / lens
- Interested in talking about strategies and then talking about tactics
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How are we going to sail this ship
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Which directions are we going to check
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Then speak about specifics/tactics
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Strategy: e.g. we want to test everything on ourselves
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Tactic: e.g. we are going to test multi-sig on ourselves
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Kieran:
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...
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ties into agenda of ethnographic research
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what info do we need to move forward
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to give clearer idea of what to do next together
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ethnographic = working with different groups, looking for common issues
- what does that mean for how we move forward
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Dan:
- research with groups, then what we can learn
- I think MMT Engine experiments + Ethnographic research are pretty much the same
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Dan:
- do we all agree on strategy?
- catalyse existing groups
- learn from groups, then build out from there
- build tools for ourselves
- vision a tool, then build it and hope to find people to use
lens:
- do we need to build a new thing here?
Dan: let's do a burst of conversation then write down
mix: reflection - we have concrete: lets change how we do pay in mmt - concrete: lets get cryptonites having a good time and feeling empowered - concrete: others?
Dan:
- map existing groups we're in / interested in being in
- criteria of who we're interested in working with / not
- how to not over-reach + not burn out as a small group
- how long do we spend in this
Kieran:
- how far do we reach into our networks before ...
- how many groups can each person handle
- thinking about having concrete discussions with housemates about internal finance -> example of a case study which can effect our approach
Alanna: still absorbing and seeing where mmt folks are at, so listening - finds super open space exhausting and interested when things become specific
Peg: - agree with infinite possibility - exciting but tiring - feels this is a pattern we are repeating - last meeting felt proposal was good - creating some tool to distirbute funds - also idea of speaking to other groups - nice to have small simple task and work from there. - question is what task
Kieran:
- we've had a bunch of different ideas, we're in shifting territory, would be good to have a tangible thing to focus on
Alanna:
- experiments help with this
Dan:
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how about we pick 1-2 paths and we run through the phases
- run through the process with e.g. cryptonites
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cryptokities - queer abolitionist
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cryptonites - afrotechfest
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greaterthan
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savings pools?
Dan:
- simplest experiment to run is with ourselves
Kieran:
- we can draw from other groups to insist in improving our own building experience
Mix:
- lets do 3 things for 2 weeks, then stop and reflect
Experiments people are pumped about:
- dan: manage our MMT funds together
- mix: reconnaissence (?) on savings pools
- kieran: cryptonites, ssb
- peg: explore how some software works. explore multi-sig wallet
[TIMECHECK]
- Dan lead Primary 2 week experiment on managing MMT funds together
- mix / kieran to think about how to report back on experiments
- use #mmt channel on Patchwork for discourse
- @all can you put your 'good time next weeks what you'll focus on' -> report this on monday
- e.g. mix: to describe his savings pool experiment
- group: organise a wiki / inwards-outwards comms
- Listen and research
- participant researcher. have been listening an
- Dan: how's working with a group at this stage
- Developing a system to collectively manage our own money
- mix: 'this feels like a particular "tactic", not a strategy'
- Mix's MMT Engine [name=mix]
- Ethnographic Research
- mix: 'tactic'
- Questions:
- Is this what we want to focus on?
- Where do we want to go from here?
- What research do we want to do?
- Practically, how will this work?
- Ongoing / current research
- Multisig crypto wallet in Cryptonites / GreaterThan / this group
- Savings Pools research
- Empathy interviews with people who were given their keys by Dan
What are the other areas? Any other shared items?
Please keep these consise
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Alanna
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Dan
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Kieran
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Mix
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Peg
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Dan
- Dan: MMT Refocus and Reflection on Rails App
- Dan: Reflections on Kierans Proposal (its not really a proposal, its just amalgamating ideas so far [name=kieran])
- Dan: Reflections on Mixs Proposal
- Ask Alanna to map: What similar projects are you in touch with or watching?
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Kieran
- Please ignore the 'proposal' from the beginning of the week. To be clear, I'm NOT in favour of rebuilding whats already been built but with our own spin, we're not an island. If we build anything it should integrate with, support and compliment other groups, not copy or stomp on them.
- MMT through the lens of permaculture principles - not an agenda point, but it'd be good for folks to read!
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Mix
- The MMT Engine - Mix's Proposal
- I feel a bit nervous - This meeting is probably 60mins but could need 90-120mins. I think we need to be careful to decide a conversation plan and take a manageable bite. Trying to too much will be like casting a massive spell with not enough mana - you end up with a massive half-cast spell with all the variables open.
- In Theory U, this is the bottom of the U (place of maximum discomfort)
- In divergent-convergent <> process it's called the the groan zone
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Peg
- Peg's reflections on current proposals which by no means need to constite an agenda point but people are welcome to read.
- Note to facilitator: I notice the agenda is turning into links to lengthly texts rather than distinct points, and this was a bit of a problem last time. Do we wanna try to pick out some themes to talk about one after the other, eg: Getting user stories from other groups, developing a system for our own group's money, etc?
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Alanna
I'm not sure where I'm meant to be putting this, so hopefully here is ok! I'm going to try to attend the meeting so hopefully we can clarify comms channels then.
I'd like to float the concepts of convergent vs emergent collaborative financial decision making. I have found they have very different properties and implications, in terms of the financial decisions and group dynamics, power flows, etc.
Convergent is the case where you have a pot of money in the middle, and you're making decisions together as a group (through consensus, representation, fpp voting, or whatever process). An example of this would be a group on Open Collective that decides about spending the money via Loomio decisions, or a charity who elects a board of trustees that has meetings and decides the budget by majority vote.
Emergent is where everyone is empowered to make their own individual choices, and through the combination of all of those the budget decisions are made. Examples would be Cobudget, where each user gets a portion of money to fund what they want, or value accounting systems (sensorica,colony, backfeed, etc) that automatically share out resources based on how much work individuals have decided to do.
Does MMT follow either of these? Or is it something else entirely?
A couple bits stood out to me from your various reflections:
as a group organising how to distribute wages or other money for this project, i dont see why we need to build a transaction database. We could just have funds in a multisig wallet and use one of the many communication tools we have to make decisions about payments. -peg
I propose we focus specifically on tackling a multisignature wallet for shared crypto asset management -kieran
Is MMT about the multi-sig wallet functionality? Does such a thing already exist, or would you need to build it? If that's what you're building and it contributes something novel to the ecosystem, then by all means focus on that!
To me it makes sense to build it as a module that you could connect to whatever financial decision-making process a group may want to use (Cobudget, in-person meetings to find consensus, pass the role of decision-maker around and track spending transparently through Open Collective, etc etc etc). By connect I don't mean actually create interoperable software, I mean a thing people can use alongside other things.
If you need functionality like cobudget, loomio, open collective, or another existing tool, don't reinvent it. Just use those, or copy the designs into SSB, because untold hours of research, thinking, and work have gone into them. They are open source for a reason! And then hook that up to the part you need that's novel. (Through process not software, most likely.) This way, your scope is clear and not too big, and people can use the thing you make in lots of different contexts.