OCP Workshop 07/10/2013

• This should be our final “Friends of OCP” meeting;  we plan to have our first OCP membership meeting next Wednesday, July 17th
• Michelle says that Greigh just started a new job and will probably not be able to get off for our first membership meeting
• Ron:  It is a new world, and we don’t have to meet at the same time from now on
• Cat:  wonders what it means to be a member
• Ron:  members have a spirit of volunteerism, on a team(maintenance and grounds, kitchen, programming, recovery/spiritual, 2 more), and a try to make meetings
• Items to discuss before membership starts:  process of decision making, quorum, who will lead initial meeting, who will take minutes, how do things get to an agenda, how do you lose membership status,   what about when people go to jail
• Mat:  would like to talk about who leads meetings and who takes minutes
• Michelle:  maybe we would leave it the same for now
• Mat:  thought members would take it onto their own to lead or take minutes – maybe we don’t need to have this prechosen
• Michelle:  having Ron and jonathan being the initial people for leading and minutes seems to cut down on the initial chaos possibility
• Ron:  maybe just for stability, we start this way?
• Mat:  wouldn’t mind leading the first meeting myself
• Michelle:  would agree that if a member wants to do it, we should consider that
• Ron:  sometimes starting a new organization, you just go with the people you have, but then our initial goal might be to elect leaders in the beginning;  we could switch the voting process over and talk about quorum;  like the idea of president, vice president, secretary, treasurer
• Mat:  wondering about will membership elect initial leaders?  Who else might do that?
• Ron:  we said that board members would not be initial members
• Mat:  the membership would probably elect the initial leaders;  wouldn’t want people who aren’t involved to take leadership
• Michelle:  still like the idea of having Ron and Jonathan doing their current roles on July 17th, and even if we switch half way through the meeting, that would be fine;  like the idea of having some of these topics be part of the initial agenda;  setting a date for having other things in place could be something we talk about;  there are going to be times when we need a backup person to lead meetings;  we also don’t know who is going to show up for the initial meeting;  
• Ron:  it could be really cool for people to serve one year terms for president, vice president, secretary, treasurer;  this group might even put the agenda together – prioritize items on the agenda;  if people on the membership list never do anything and the quorum requires a certain number, we need people to come to meetings;  all the topics we have seem important;  we should start with the leadership we have now, elect pres, vice pres, sec, treas;  quorum would be 51% and we would use our current decision making process
• Mat:  don’t want first membership meeting to only be an hour because we have a lot to talk about;  big meeting and first membership meeting;  how long do others think this meeting should be;  think we should just have a long meeting and get a lot done;  
• Ron:  first meeting is the 17th, so we will be bound by lunch – wrote down two agenda items:  when we will have meetings (time, day of the week), how frequent, and how long will they be, second item would be to elect leaders;  Mennonites do this thing where someone observes a leadership position for two years before becoming that leadership position – have someone watch, watch the person do it, then turn it over;  
• Michelle:  like the idea of having a set time for meetings – beginning and ending times;  there is so much to discuss, but generally, an hour might be good;  like the idea of agenda being online and on paper here;  want to be able to make sure the agenda and membership things are accessible to everyone who might be interested – member or non member;  
• James:  getting people declared as members updated on everything that has happened in the workshops;  also, since teams are a requirement, how will people get on a team and start
• Ron:  appreciate the idea that we have time and we don’t need to rush, hurry;  maybe next meeting, we shouldn’t worry as much about membership leadership but team leadership and trying to get teams up and running;  also deciding when we should meet next and how frequently – we may want to meet more regularly – we may also want to present the idea of pres, vice pres, sec, treas so that people could think about whether they or someone they knew might want to serve;  updated, setting teams, deciding on future meetings, talk about future leadership, quorum,
• Mat:  haven’t heard anyone talk about how members loose status;  not so interested in people being in jail;  people losing membership status seems pretty important to get to in the first or second meeting;
• Michelle:  would like to say that we do what we were talking about earlier and continue our workshop discussions
• Ron:  next week protocol can be for people to have a last chance to declare membership desire, update membership on what workshop has done and how membership was born, when to meet (time, date, frequency, amount of time), look at six teams – introduction, take some time to set agenda for next meeting;  other items:  recommending the idea of pres, vice pres, sec, treas with one year terms; using voting procedure that we currently have, a quorum of 51%
• Mat:  we shouldn’t rush the teams discussion – that seems like almost a full meeting;  if we get everyone to this initial membership meeting, we need to tell people about the teams because a lot of people may have not even heard of them yet;
• Michelle:  agree with Mat that there probably are a lot of people that don’t even know about all the teams