OCP Workshop 09/05/2012

•  Discussion on moving on from talking about purposes right away and instead going into some of the more tangible deliverables
• Maybe we set some amount of time that we spend on talking about purposes – so that discussions don’t go on and on forever
•  Kris:  lets spend some time but maybe set a clock to talk about purposes so we get a little of both
• Ron won’t be here next Thursday – Philip will lead the Thursday meeting
•  Purposes:
• Ron reviews some talk what people have said in the past
• What shouldn’t be changed about OCP
• Ron:  probably wont be drinking allowed in the building
• Mike:  OCP exists to serve the community and make it a better place – community means both the OCP community and the larger community
• Mark:  the OCP is serving the larger community if only by making the place more free from problems
• Matthew:  would like to keep the lawn jam, night outs, etc – current programming – this group couldn’t change these things
• Teig:  ultimate authority – cant dissolve the board or the organization
• Mike:  change community meals
• Matthew:  hours and days of being open – we could propose a plan, but this group can’t actually make this change
• Mike:  do a lot of our ideas come under the level of making proposals to the board
• Ron:  maybe we could make changing about a smoking policy but maybe never in the building
• Mike:  the difference between changing the smoking policy and changing the open hours – maybe things that have a large effect on resources come as a proposal
• Matthew:  sleeping on the property
• Jonathan:  wants to make sure this group feels empowered and has the ability to make some changes
• Ron:  no activity on the grounds that is unsupervised without someone who is “allowed” to supervise around;  resources/staff
•  Mike:  thinks we can come up with which deliverable we want to move on – hours and access is pressing on people, membership is pressing, and behavior might be something that could wait, programming and funding might be the last two things we need to get to 
• Ron:  would disagree that hours would be first because we are going to need to have staff around and we don’t have the resources;  Ron likes the idea of funding coming early – this could be part of our programming – sisters of the road, products, theater;  membership seems important too so that the membership can start volunteering and make things happen; 
• Matt:  agrees with Mike’s ranking a bit more right now;  adding another program might cause more stress
• Jonathan:  behavior, governance, funding
• Ron:  keeps coming back to membership – part of this might be creating the teams that we are all a part of;  remembering about the place in Charlottesville – the Haven – before lunch it is open to the public but after lunch it is closed to the public only for the membership;  membership could be a long discussion
• Kris:  membership, funding, programming would be his three  - membership will work around the hours, funding will fund the ideas
• Heather:  membership, funding, programming – once we get membership down other things can fall into place; 
• Mike:  likes the beauty and explanation of Kris’ thoughts on the order;  once we have funding in place, there can be whatever programming we want
• Matthew:  meals schedule could be discussed in membership – but we aren’t ready to discuss that without talking more about what this place is about – we don’t quite know what this place is about – this puts “purpose” back first
• Mark:  agrees with Matt
• Matthew:  purpose, membership, behavior
• Ron:  likes the direction and explanation of Kris’ idea;  we have purposes and they are pretty good but we could go right into membership
• Kris:  there is an outline of a purpose – we could make this somewhat simplistic for now and know that we will get back to it – Christian based organization that is helping the community – it can be simple now and we can continue to work on it
• Matthew:  if Kris’ purpose is going to be true, we are going to develop membership based on this idea and then you need to be a member to be here – seems rough
• Mike:  supports Matt’s concern and has major concerns about the term membership – we are talking about organizing and coordinating the energy (volunteer) around here;  there is an importance to establishing purpose – we are going to address it as we go along but maybe we never get to the meat if we we focus too strongly
• Ron:  wants to remind us of the idea of how OCP has felt to people on their first time here – part of a community right away without a membership – maybe this group that is developing is just expanding and this group is just coming up with more organization;  can’t imagine a membership card but can imagine a time when the ocp isn’t open to the public
• Matt:  feels like we are spending a lot of time on this and maybe we should make a proposal
• Kris:  agrees with Ron that everyone would still be welcome here 
• Philip:  likes Mike Farrands recap of the idea of membership – a way to make their support practical;  we have been wanting to make this shift for a long time
• Jonathan:  likes the words leadership group and community driven
• Christina:  likes the leadership group idea – everyone would still be welcome
• Mike:  likes an alternate term to “membership”;  cant get a good one – there is enough problem with the term membership that maybe we want to change the category name;  once this “leadership” idea is figured out, it can drive a lot of these other things
• Matthew:  slightly worried about how much time we might spend on membership compared to other topics
• Ron:  these topics may just take time – the collective took nine months with 3/hr per week meetings;  it may just take a couple of months to establish who makes decisions;  ron remembers that the deliverable about membership was “are we going to do it or not; we might decide we don’t want to do membership and we move right on;  if we had a judicial board, the board would be made of members – there may not need to be all of the staff members on this board – such an idea would come out of membership
• Jonathan:  we could be the “ocp community collective”;  we could create an agenda with time for various topics
• Matthew:  membership thing is already happening – what more are we looking for with this topic – once a person comes to three meetings;  what more are we looking to talk about?
• Ron:  sees people in the group that do plug in and help with ocp – defining this a little more would be the conversation around the “m” word;  this group might be asked to take on various responsibilities – this group might have some privleges and this group might also agree on upholding a certain way of being for the community;  maybe membership, funding, and programming would be an order to move forward with
• Jazmine:  is hearing that we don’t want to use the word membership – what does it mean to be a member?;  suggests the idea of a team to work on some of these topics that could bring things back to the larger group;  would like to see us learn some policy as we go; 
• Ron:  we are trying to figure out whether or not
• Jonathan:  proposes that we spend next meeting talking about membership, funding, programming with time spent on each topic; jai seconds
• Mike:  is interested in changing the proposal to focus on spending all of our time on membership
• Matt:  can we come in next week and decide which option to go with at the beginning of our next meeting;
• Sadie:  what if someone in this group decides that they do not want to be a part of this
• Ron:  a little sheepish on this proposal;  ideas will come up – maybe we do need to pick one so that we can see where that leads us;
• Mike:  what about Matt’s discussion of putting the vote off
• We will end the meeting and this proposal will come up at the beginning of our next meeting
• Kris:  likes the idea of having some smaller topics to talk about along with a larger topic which might be “membership”