Date: April 15, 2021
Time: 6:00 pm EST
Present: Logan Meyer, Des Bennett, Kaley Bachelder, Robbie Flanagan
Recorded by: Logan Meyer
Summary of Meeting
In this meeting, we talked about building our foundational knowledge before creating our Anti-Ractist Action Plan, figured out how to regulate action items that aren't created during circle meetings, and started creating timelines for each circle’s end-of-hiatus goals. We dispatched Des and Kaley to attend events to build the foundational knowledge, created an out-of-meeting action item consent system and agreed to draft our respective circle’s EOH timeline.
Proposal – Attending “Foundations for Building an Anti-Racist Plan”
We began the meeting by discussing Des’ proposal that we attend the two-part event “Foundations for Building an Anti-Racist Plan.” The events take place from 6-8 pm EST on April 22nd and May 13th and will provide foundational knowledge for us to use when crafting our Anti-Racist Action Plan. These events take place concurrently with our Thursday General Circle meetings, so we could not all attend both. We think that two staff members should go to both events to provide different viewpoints. We agreed that Des and Kaley would attend these events, and we would repurpose the two concurrent General Circle Meetings into work sessions for the website. Logan will facilitate the work sessions pending consent to this proposal from absent members.
Discussion – Requesting Action Items Outside of Circle Meetings
We then discussed our process for assigning Action Items outside of circle meetings. We like adopting Action Items during meetings because it allows for consent and negotiation of deadlines. However, waiting to get consent in a meeting inevitably slows down some projects. We discussed multiple compromises, including placing a limit on the total number of Items that could be requested between any two meetings and the time each could take while also limiting how soon before a meeting they could be requested. We also discussed making between-meeting Action Items into an opt-in process and then tracking accepted Action Items in Airtable via a submission form. We agreed that automating this process would not work. Instead, it would be better to make the person creating the action item responsible for getting consent for it and then tracking it in Airtable. In this scenario, we would define parameters for small lifts that can be asked of all staff members to establish a blanket consent rule.
In light of that plan, we discussed what our expectations should be regarding how frequently we check our Slack notifications and respond to messages. We proposed the expectation that it be checked at least once a day, and maybe once over the weekend. This could be problematic for Monday meetings though since a lack of weekend availability could affect others who do their work on the weekends. We also discussed an expectation of acknowledging messages within 24 hours, but don’t want anyone to feel like they’re on-call 24/7. We agreed that setting accurate, up-to-date Slack statuses about our availability/responsiveness for the day would be a fair middle ground. We think we can all set our status once a day for the day, and make sure to set an extended status if we will be available for more than that specific day. Status icons can be any emoji, but we will all make it clear in the text what the emoji means.
Discussion – Pending Website Write-ups
We then briefly discussed language for the website. All previously assigned write-ups are completed and ready for review by the website team. Logan shared that they plan to review all write-ups together for consistency and then include them in the website rough draft to be presented on Monday. We did agree that the About Reground write-up should include information about both our history and our future, because it’s important that we give an idea of where we’re headed. That said, this should be static language, so we don’t want to provide dates or make it into an action plan. We will revisit this conversation after presenting the website rough draft on Monday.
Discussion – End of Hiatus Timeline
We concluded the meeting by revisiting the End of Hiatus Brainstorm Doc in order to refine our timeline for the end of our hiatus and create a plan for everything that needs to get done in the interim so that nothing gets lost in the ether.
Literary needs to prepare the Dramaturgy Handbook, create a timeline for doing so and share with General Circle, and figure out their onboarding process. Operations needs to organize our digital spaces and create the organizational onboarding curriculum. Production needs to finalize the trimester breakdown and will also brainstorm and begin creating production processes and templates. They’ll also start creating a production resources guide. Marketing and Outreach were unrepresented at the meeting.
Education was a much bigger conversation. We don’t feel it’s urgent that Education begin Consenses work since it’s likely that the only programming we’ll produce this year is FTGU. We agreed that we should have at least a work-in-progress version of our Anti-Racist Action Plan, but that it should remain pliable and be further informed and molded by our new hires. We also agreed that we want to have the full Anti-Racism Onboarding curriculum created prior to onboarding our first new hires in September. We’d also like for Education to figure out how we will onboard our contracted artists in Anti-Racism, though this will likely grow organically out of our staff Anti-Racism onboarding.
Finally, we discussed what Trimester of programming we want to start with. We think it’s unwise to jump straight into FTGU this year and are leaning towards beginning to plan in-person programming for T1 of next year and spend the remainder of this year doing low-lift community-building programming. We agreed that we should start this programming soon so that people can start to get to know us while we’re hiring. We returned to the idea of artists circle meet-ups and other community events and will have a conversation next meeting about what this programming will look like and how to market it.
Backlogged Agenda Items
We added the following agenda item to the Backlog:
- Decide how to go about creating a budget for FY 2022.
Action Items for Next Meeting
For the next General Circle meeting, we will finish final revisions to our staff IP agreement and prepare a rough draft of the redesigned website.
Next Meeting
The General Circle will next meet on Monday, April 19th at 6:00pm EST.