Weekly call about Karrot development 2024

Date: 2024-01-09 BigBlueButton
Facilitator: Butze
Minutes:
Participants: Bruno, Nick, Vasilis, Nathalie, Butze

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 11am CET
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: nick, butze, bruno, maybe vas
      • next tuesday: nick, butze, nathalie, maybe bruno, … let’s see.
    • pick facilitator for next week:

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • write in about nlnet feed-in money in butzes eu application doc [Nick]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • nick will write a post on the thread after the call with some pointers to how to begin [nick]

4. Discussion points

  • dev update?

    • custom place statuses
      • should ve usable by next week and merged
    • export/import
      • for Lux migration.
      • export an archive and import to the new instance
    • new christmas bonus feature
    • getting new devs… dave…
      • dave can help designing flyers and reaching out in his network
      • good to be prepared for a possible influx of people interested
      • also hackaton in Siegen in April (hybrid)
  • self-hosting

    • luxembourg migration
      • export/import so users have palces and statuses
      • backups on the coopcloud
      • coming across what features might be necessairy
      • better support of self-hosting
      • add more tasks on self-hosting
        • costum instances input from Nick and Daniel
        • the plugin system is actually usable now
    • sweden instance
      • working with a guy to do the landing page of foodsharing sweden and this will be a Karrot instace
      • making a draft of it atm
      • one thing that will come out of it…how to make it easy to design landing page or have a general menu, surface and karrot under the surface
      • would be nice to have a meeting with this person and Nick, to get together so he knows what is possible and what is not
    • great work Nick! amazing!
  • nlnet, legal entity, new tasks… MoU (memorandum of Understanding)

    • we need to progress the next bit…
      • re-engaging with them again
      • add new tasks
        • formulate these in mou task
        • all things around self-hosting…
    • Vasilis: there was a call/discussion with …?
      - we could double the budget from 17.000 to 34.000 Euro as we understood
      - some more features are possible, e.g. the Karrot-manual is possible (there needs to be development in it)
    • Bruno: what is the time frame?
      • there is no hurry to get the MoU done but still by Feb will make sense to have it signed
      • there is flexibility in it / some day in 2025
      • the legal entity is due, when the payment is due
    • Nick: we need to get deeper into the topic of fiscal host and legal entity
    • butze:
      • have business law background, but not area I want to work in
      • can sense nick feels weight of responsiblity
      • can help if there are specific tasks
      • can write text for a legal entity
    • bruno:
      • mou, etc: nice to aim to have it done this month, or latest february, could do our internal work to have it worked in the coming weeks, e.g. tomrorow in co-working
      • would be nice to come up with clear suggestions of tasks we’d like to add, then bring proposal to our weekly meeting for consent
      • legal entity: not highly motivated, very confused about it, do want to support and work on it, and in my interest to further formalise income, helps getting flat contract, currently cannot show income, questions about fiscal hosting and whether we can sign agreements
      • could make a list of our needs as individuals, a group, and as a project, to help decide between fiscal hosting or legal entities, and which country
      • need to find a clear process, how and when are we going to work on this, naturally a task for co-working, maybe some extra time
    • nathalie:
      • a lot of topics! would prioritise the MoU to get us into the working mode
      • leaning towards what is already there, maybe adding one or two other bits, maybe think about 6 months, and check in after that, to be able to modify stuff given there is some flexibility
      • don’t have full overview of tasks
      • best to make fiscal host / legal entity thing separate topic, more leaning towards fiscal hosting option, wondering if everybody is clear about implications for ourselves personally
      • being aware of implications, e.g. not giving out money randomly, but via a bill/invoice (accounting)
      • also still an option we all get on nlnet agreement, and donations get transferred to different team members, then have to do more maths about how they match up
      • mou: seems like funding/agreement is setting what we’ll work on the next time, wondering how it interacts with the board, maybe nice to get the tasks onto the board, to get some transparency
    • vas:
      • mou: we’re in the stage we might need 1 co-working to finish up and prioritise, we can drag it, but think we can do it way faster
      • fiscal hosting etc: lean towards setting up our own organisation, feel it would be easier and more possible in the UK context, and what I suggested, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, could invite someone who has the expertise in the UK and pay the person, ideally a mate rate, and they give us some support, so don’t have to go through all the burden of learning everything ourselves
    • Nick:
      • I also think we can get the MoU tasks done soon
      • all tasks for the MoU came directly from the board
      • it is already tasks that Nick is working on
      • legal entity / fiscal host: it could go eather way
      • fiscal host takes a charge (5-10 %)
      • likes the own entity idea, if enough peole are there who support it
      • Legal entity advice for community tech project - Co-ops - Cooperative Technologists Community Discourse Forum here Nick put his sense on it
      • time scale: Mou work on it driectly. working on legal entity and fiscal host in the background
      • we could ask for support and would be still ok with our DiY approach
    • butze
      • founded two Vereins (charitable organisations) in Germany, and wrote a nice solid constitution
      • only thing would have to write is the goal, half a page
      • could support setting it up quite quickly
      • charitable organisation in germany, can’t do anything that is not charitable
    • bruno:
      • unsure when it comes to thinking of a place for a legal entity, germany, UK, greece, sweden…
      • nice plan, focus on MoU for now, tomorrow in co-working, bring it back to weekly meeting next week
      • work in background for legal entity, nice to have some clarity when we are discussing that topic, if we have some clear objectives or things to research
    • nathalie:
      • long termness and responsiblity, don’t currently want to shoulder, can’t say if I’ll be here in a year for sure, so don’t know about commitment
      • a bit afraid of doing own legal entity, feels like adding some burden, feels like maybe some people have access to, difficult for new people to get into it
      • do see a scenario where an own-legal-entity is nice, and if people want to step out they transfer knowledge, etc. feels like something that keeps people responsiblity that they might not want to carry all the time
      • fiscal hosting feels that the heaviness of responsiblity is on the fiscal host, and feels easier for other people to take over
      • how many shoulders does the responsiblity rest, I might have a different take than others currently, if there interest in the founding of it I’m not opposed
    • vas:
      • second all the thoughts from nathalie
      • clarifying q towards butze: verein constitution… is that something we could use that we could set up in the UK, or is it german-centric? a: german-centric, yet parallels
      • fiscal hosting vs entity, fiscal host would get commission, if they cover accountancy great, but as bruno says, could use that fee money for our own accountant
    • nick:
      • it is a good point to wonder about responsibility and long-runness
      • I am all in on Karrot
      • I do not want a hobby project / side project
      • I alread carry a lot of responsibility - and the legal entity would take some away
      • Looking for mor formalization to make responsibilities more visible
      • Question is about the ‘soul’ of the project
      • the vision of the project is important as a step forward to the legal entity
  • random element person

    • Nick was helping persons to set up SOMETHING on Karrot
    • they also joined the Karrot group (in case somebody is wondering)
    • they seem to focus on the tool not on the community
  • EU-funding (Butze)

    • had a call with the consultant of the LiFE programme of the EU funding
    • spoke for 30/45 mins, very helpful, gave me a lot of insights
    • had doubts if LiFE is the right project, for 2 reasons:
        1. EU is looking for clear CO2 compensation through the project, would be competing with a lot of projects that have clearer impact there
        1. LiFE project has a hard time to understand the community building aspect, not just about CO2 reduction, but socio-cultural transformation
    • gave me a lot of other links, and encouraged us to keep going
    • suggested to contact foundations, that would better understand progressive funding than the EU
    • vas:
      • q about co2 reduction, they want something measurable? e.g. that foodsaving practises reduce co2 by some amount
      • a: even if we can measure it, would not reduce enough co2
      • sidenote: connecting with import/export data, having some tools projects can use to analyse data, do measure it better, and perhaps in the future the community building approach can be measured in this way, looking in the future of data, to make sense of the groups
      • data used to be taken more seriously
    • butze:
      • a friend in berlin does a neighbourhood project, and presented it to the moneygivers after a year, he made a lot of numbers, events done, people addressed, etc… the money givers were very impressed and so was I (by the numbers)
  • 28.01. Foodsharing Academie (butze)

    • going to next meeting on 28th jan in belgium in a small town nearby aachen, where they want to start foodsaving, but having a hard time
    • about bringing together eu-wide projects who are interested in setting up a foodsaving community
    • bruno:
      • wondering how it’s going with the momentum after luxembourg, regarding a foodsaving europe, think it’s a very nice valuable idea, setting up this kind of networking and sharing of experiences, maybe needs turning it into a project, or applying for funding, etc… would be nice to have a network where people can share experiences and support each other
      • kind of stuff like janina was doing a lot before, networking, setting up foodsaving.world website, which is kind of now dead and static, … could be nice doing some branding in general for local groups, getting more recognised
      • we used to have community cafes, that were kind of related to karrot, but not only
      • karrot being about software and community organising at large, but having some of this wider outreach too, usually people from foodsaving groups
      • keep us updated!
  • standing topic: check the board! [E]

    • Nick checks the board since works for the Lux instance atm
  • Nesta report? any takeaways?

  • another funding bid (Nick shared that?)

  • standing topic: organizational structure [E]

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • play with custom place statuses
  • play with video calls
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-01-16 BigBlueButton
Facilitator: Nick
Minutes:
Participants: Bruno, Nick, Nathalie, Butze

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 11am CET
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
      • Nick is going on a trip \o/ (for a couple of weeks)
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: Nick, Bruno, maybe Butze
      • next tuesday: maybe maybe not Nick
    • pick facilitator for next week:

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • play with custom place statuses
    • had a play, found a bug, fixed a bug
  • play with video calls
    • had a group call, it worked mostly
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • Nesta report? any takeaways?
  • standing topic: check the board! [E]
    • Nick checks the board since works for the Lux instance atm

4. Discussion points

  • call with Alex Lawrie about co-op legal entity [R, ?]
    • https://www.southwest.coop/

    • it was a nice call - he seemed to get what we were about (grassroots vibe/ gift economy) - he liked our needs-money-allocation-approach

    • he founded a few housing coops - he did work on the ground (with people)

    • it might make more sense to chat more when Vas is around

    • in the coop path there are 2 ways: 1. if we say a UK coop is ok. you go on the UK coop website and register it according to the rules there. If you come with your own rules you need a lawyer who checks those rules. 2. using the rules that southwest coop has developed. more complex rules - for different kind of members suitable.

    • he is happy to give advice

    • we chatted about the european cooperative - he said, when it came out, there was a lot of interest around it. he also thinks that it is fitting. but if we go down this path, he cannot help us.

    • task: to find someone who knows enough stuff - and he knows a lot of stuff.

    • 2 different option: cooperative society - community benefit society - choice depents who should benefit. the community benefit society would make most sense for us. good mechanism to ensure a certain mission.

    • bruno:

      • questions about potential structures of CBS vs co-op society (CBS = Community benefit society)
      • seems like both structures could fit how karrot works
    • nathalie:

      • questions about co-op
        Nick: co-op is a general term - can also mean a business
      • who has signing rights in which co-op/choice of legal entity
      • https://www.sociocracyforall.org/coop/
      • doesnt find the website insightful
    • butze:

      • finding somebody who knows enough, is crucial thing
      • if the guy knows a lot and suggests something, is a pathway
      • thing about legal entity, you don’t need the rules in your daily work, only need it if there is trouble and different opinions, otherwise daily business goes on
      • who can sign, in a german verein, can decide how many people can sign
      • wth sie-erein have 3 board members who can sign, in daily business only 1 signs, so could reveal a problem in a court - but it does not affect our daily business
    • nick:

      • Nick does not know all the roles. but we need his survices to answer all the questions, like who is responsible and who signs, etc.
      • we need to choose at one point, if we get down this path
      • he was interested in sociocracy - needs-based solutions - also interested in CSS model
      • he quized us - what is your problem to solve - and he got, what we was aiming for (and he had his own frustrations with tools)
    • bruno:

      • what are we trying to do, and how much are we trying to match our structure with the legal structure, maybe don’t need a perfect match, but enough that doesn’t conflict
      • trying to solve a practical issue now, and finances, let’s just look for easiest one that will support governance structure we envision for the future
      • keeping in mind that in case of trouble it can guide us there, worst case scenarios
      • jusisdiction, having support of someone who knows, nice guidance from someone in the UK, what does it imply in terms of payments and taxes, have some knowledge about things in Germany too, also some knowledable about things in Sweden
      • don’t have so much in depth knowledge in sweden, but could access some resources through an organisation
      • in sweden three kind of legal entities that would fit:
        • economic association: for the benefit of the members, co-op structure, board of directors
        • non-profit: similar to community benefit society, annual meetings with both, board elected who take care of operations, and following what’s been decided at annual meeting
        • social business: not very clear about it
      • can always get more in-depth guidance/knowledge
    • nathalie:

      • how do we treat a legal entity
        • a subcircle taking care of it, rest of org doesn’t need to be a member, small set of people, e.g. how foodsharing does
        • or fill it with life, and match the memberships with the org
      • second option makes more sense, as there are rights, but you need to be a member
      • do like a sense of giving some power to the communities, but don’t believe so much about the 1 member 1 vote, would it just be like voting random names? how would it relate to our governance?
      • some work in sociocracyfor all about legalizing sociocracy, but quite US-focused
      • how can we bring our own governance in this system
      • brexit! would it have implications for EU-funding, or would it cut us off?
    • butze:

      • one thought: I know we want distributed responsiblity, but… UK would make a lot of sense as nick is very invested in it, and speaks proper english but not german or swedish, would make it harder, … set goal is to distribute more responsiblity though, and away from nick… but maybe that takes longer anyway
      • Alex seems a nice guy, that he liked CSS/sociocracy, seems like he would be willing to go along the pathway with us, so seems a good opportunity
      • echo what Bruno reminded us, that main goal was to solve finance situation, yet would see a co-op would be a sustainable thing to look into the future
      • could let things grow for 3 years, and just take a financial host, or go down the path of the legal association now
      • both options seem viable
    • nick:

      • it can never met the sturcture that you want to do
      • echoing Nathalie - it is rather a group regulating the legal stuff - but not karrot stuff
      • hegets the dillemma
      • ilemma of progressive initiatives and rather rigid legal structures
      • Nick agrees with the point that UK makes sense because he speaks English :slight_smile:
      • actually forming a legal entity is not a big think in practice… but it feels like it
      • but also its grounding
      • the Trustroots legal entity failed. the people from the legal entity kind of highjacked the project
      • Nick like the CBS - because the public holds you on account

      -Nick:

      • next steps: a kind of action group - there are a lot of topics to frame - making sure that we have looked in all the possibilies - making a structured process, maybe sociocracy approach fits
    • butze

      • maybe gather all the info and questions in a collaborative pad
      • then proceed with a sociocracy selection or consent process

      → we do not esactly know how to proceed but that is ok

  • NlNet additions
    • random notes: NlNet additions - HedgeDoc
    • Bruno:
      • we can add some stuff now we think is feasible
      • later we can also add more if it works well
      • 3 ideas:
        • improving self-hosting
        • progressive interface
        • streamline deployment
    • Nick:
      • we need to find the middle what they care about, and what we care about… it is rather technical stuff
      • it funds a small part of what we are interested in
      • my sense is to add a small amount, and then add some more later
    • bruno:
      • quite some work I could do, especially what’s in the plan already (polls, roles, sanctions)
      • especially roles, a lot of work there and potential to do something nice, can be quite a big feature
      • also work on the sanctions can do a lot, going back to designs and choosing stuff
      • progressive interface, for sure would be interested in a design process for that
      • … but looking realistically looking at time/capacity, not sure will be able to do that in terms of life planning
    • nathalie:
      • adding two bits sounds nice, don’t object, especially the self-hosting as some work has been done already
      • interesting the progressive interface gained so much popularity, can also see how the manual could be worked in there
      • besides the self-hosting, could see many ways I could start working and help something
    • butze:
      • don’t have anything to add, sounds good
    • work towards MoU draft, and do consent on that
  • paper about CSS
    • outlined how CSA principles can inform CSS
    • butze can share the key-take aways that he has draw/written - but not sure if he can post them here, as they might be published (just ask him and he sends them to you)
    • philip, vas, leonie (+?) had discussions on this CSS, and have 3 main discussion points, and synthesized them into 9 takeaways, but they are TOP SECRET, as paper is still in progress
  • Hackathon in Siegen
    • butze and leonie had a call with Foodsharing devs yesterday - planning gets more structured now - a Pad will be set up and Butze will share it next week
  • dev updates
  • standing topic: check the board! [E]
  • standing topic: organizational structure [E]

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • start a pad on legal entity [Bruno]
  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • Nesta report? any takeaways?
  • work towards MoU draft, and do consent on that

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-01-23 BigBlueButton
Facilitator: Bruno
Minutes:
Participants: Nick, Nathalie, Bruno, Butze, Vas

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 1h
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
      • Nathalie moving to Braunschweig
      • Nick’s traveling
      • Vas & Butze submitted the paper
        • another paper accepted at conference
      • Bruno’s also moving
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: yes
      • next tuesday: yes
    • pick facilitator for next week: Vas

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • work towards MoU draft, and do consent on that

4. Discussion points

  • Legal Entity [R,E]

    • Legal entity - HedgeDoc
    • bruno did a bit of backround work,
      • UK, Germany, Sweden
      • most valuable would be the questions
    • topic on who has to sign for things
      • in context of german entities, but presumably applies in other jurisdiction too
      • can usually choose what needs agreements, and how many need to sign
      • Village One | Statutes is a different legal structure, a Genossenschaft
        • common in housing projects, but also used in other things
        • maybe not suited to karrot as it’s focused on still being a business that distributed profits to members
      • in a verein, can’t accumulate money
      • some constitutions prevent board members getting income
        • would need to not have that :slight_smile:
    • Butze:
      • prefers the UK community benefit society
      • bad it’s not in the EU, good we have a connection with Alex
      • a verein can be a member of the community benefit society. Extra steps but could get around that a UK is not EU
    • Nick:
      • feel drowning in it
      • a lot of boring text on the bylaws
      • also likes the CBS.
      • not sure what the process to reaching a decision would be
      • when shit goes down, which court will handle it
    • Nathalie:
      • got curious generally about genossenschaft
      • would it work on a smaller scale?
      • skeptic about the e.V.
      • opening up to founding ourselves, but still wonders about the fiscal hosting
      • not motivated to do the accounting
    • Vas:
      • has an impression that the Verein is something easy to set up
      • good to have the support of Alex to found the CBS in the UK. Not reinventing the wheel
      • likes the idea of fiscal hosting but they never got back to us. A bit off-putting
    • Bruno:
      • relatively easy to fund an association/verein
      • also consider fiscal hosting to be a good possibility
      • for Karrot in general we dont need to be that concerned about…shit goes down in the future
      • the easiers thing would be any kind of entity that provides some kind of empl contract. Or be able to sent an invoice to Karrot
  • tech updates

    • frame options
      • request from Dave
      • putting public events on their website
    • public series
      • request from Dave
    • export encryption
      • for Luxembourg to migrate
    • co-op cloud backups
    • new release Coming Soon™️
  • Foodsharing Sweden [R]

    • had a new couple of meetings in new year, forming core group
    • looking at applying for financing
    • had a meeting talking about IT-aspect of it, with nick, talking about designs, wordpress, karrot plugins
      • own karrot instance, and build the public website within the instance, customizing the identity
      • discussed whether to make the plugin, or have a wordpress site with links
      • decided useful to find someone to do that word, so wrote up an ad for a tech volunteer
    • moving forward :slight_smile:
    • meeting with another organisation tomorrow that intermediates between shops and orgs that save food, comes from more charity mindset
      • going to propose a co-operation with them
      • foodsharing sweden to help support new emerging groups
      • this other org to faciliate co-operation with shops
    • ideally finding a tech person who can work with the emerging karrot plugin system, and self-hosting customization
    • goal is someone comes to the karrot instance and find all the info about the project, and under the surface are all the karrot features
    • contact with other groups in sweden:
      • lund group was positive
      • foodsharing stockholm is dying a bit, but some contact there
      • otherwise, not much action happening
      • Östersund a dying group too, nobody is interested in doing admin work, looking for new co-operations, etc…
      • gothenburg is only established place, others got a bit stuck
      • idea is something like foodsharing sweden would benefit these kind of groups for support
    • looking at a legal entity?
      • don’t make one until strictly needed
      • aiming for confederation-style governance that local groups are members of
    • reminds butze of progressive interface feature, could be useful
    • wondering about the dying groups
      • do they do cooking events, and nice social things
      • or pickup machines needing admins to “oil the machines”
      • likely not much of the community building things happening
      • could be interesting contacting katie
      • maybe another factor from the size of the city and disconnection between places, some people said they would focus a lot more locally if they did something again
      • hard to build community across the city
    • butze:
      • difference between grassroots community and grassroots movement
        • community about local connection
        • movement about advocacy for social change
      • in germany foodsharing had a lot about the wider advocacy
      • some communities need the wider org to help get started
      • but also communities can initially become united under wider cause,
  • MoU [E,R,D]

  • standing topic: check the board! [E]

  • standing topic: organizational structure [E]

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-01-30 on Karrot
Facilitator: Bruno
Minutes: Nathalie
Participants: Bruno, Nathalie

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 1h
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: yes! (maybe shorter)
      • next tuesday: yes!
    • pick facilitator for next week: ask Vas :slight_smile: (Nathalie back-up)

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]

4. Discussion points

  • MoU [E,R,D]

    • NlNet additions - HedgeDoc
    • Introducing the topic
      • pad some coworkings ago, went through notes, a bit chaotic
      • on the top it has a section for additions
      • what karrot wants, what nlnet is interested in - nlnet more interested in technical parts, rather then social
      • progressive interface and impove self-hosting as two concrete ideas
      • we don’t need to include everything now, start with something, could include items later
      • more ideas would be: federeated public activities, activitiy link preview, joining public activities without account, improve agreements, activity limits (‘high demand’), user manual, more customization, group template, task board
      • needs to work on the formatting, add amounts
      • Nick responsible work self-hosting task
    • Reactions
      • Bruno
        • seems fineto work with that
        • set up plan how/when to work on the tasks
      • Nathalie
        • been here already
        • what is needed now? next steps…
        • do a clean writing of the MoU
        • communicate with nlnet
        • set up a plan: responsibilities and order or timescale
        • add to board once we have the clear action items
    • Next steps
      • do a clean writing of the MoU in the coworking tomorrow [Nathalie, Bruno, +1?]
      • suggest working plan and timescale (also work on this in coworking) [Nathalie, Bruno, +1?]
        • prepare the frame, maybe draw the timescale on excalidraw
      • bring both to next meeting
  • meta-analysis: Karrot for what kind of groups? - Bruno [E]

    • Bruno giving an intro:
      • connected to task: karrot for parents coop
      • Bruno suggested Nextcloud rather than dropbox, testing phase
      • their needs is documentation
      • abstract needs: what needs to self-organizing groups have?
      • we use discourse
      • cloud-based service for storage (Google Drive or Nextcloud)
      • use of a shared log-in vs many different users
      • no need for a personal drive, seems like a different approach here (no individual folders)
      • in dropbox it was adding up to personal account limit
      • documentation feature in karrot?
      • most of it is text based, for the core of organising
      • Bruno was looking into collective app for nextcloud https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/collectives
      • also depends of the nature of the group
      • what are the more abstract general needs that could be implemented into karrot?
      • it’s not the idea to add nextcloud to karrot, or make karrot a drive
      • take the most crucial bits
      • don’t get lost in features
      • how to continue working on that?
    • Reactions
      • Nathalie
        • big topic
        • what is the position of Karrot? Which ideas to implement?
        • what software would I recommend? Which case would I recommend Karrot?
        • how much do we want to integrate between different solutions? How much do we want to just include on Karrot?
        • what are the core features of Karrot? Activities?
        • also relates to the question of her contribution, what makes sense
        • still wondering the use of Karrot
        • what needs to identify, also working on that in the context of SOFA
        • could be a nice exercise, map general group needs and karrot solutions
      • Bruno
        • integration as a nice solution
        • let’s stop and look at the ecosystem tools and see what karrot has to offer/ is offering/ could be offering
        • what is the added value
        • clear idea of concept behind it: what kind of ways of organising are we looking to support?
        • tension between time for reflection and going forward
    • Next steps:
      • bring it back to a meeting: what kind of ways of organising are we looking to support? where isn’t karrot a good fit(reverse exercise)

For next time:

  • more on legal entity?
  • standing topic: check the board! [E]
  • standing topic: organizational structure [E]

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • do a clean writing of the MoU in the coworking tomorrow [Nathalie, Bruno, +1?]
  • suggest working plan and timescale (also work on this in coworking) [Nathalie, Bruno, +1?]
    • prepare the frame, maybe draw the timescale on excalidraw

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-02-06 on Karrot
Facilitator: Nathalie
Minutes: Bruno/ Nathalie
Participants: Nathalie, Bruno, Nick

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 1h
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: Bruno will be there, Nick will try, Nathalie not there
      • next tuesday: yes
    • pick facilitator for next week: Vas (Bruno backup)

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • do a clean writing of the MoU in the coworking tomorrow [Nathalie, Bruno, +1?]
  • suggest working plan and timescale (also work on this in coworking) [Nathalie, Bruno, +1?]
    • prepare the frame, maybe draw the timescale on excalidraw

4. Discussion points

  • Decision on MoU tasks, subtasks and amounts [D] NlNet additions - HedgeDoc

    • we all opened the document
    • give it more time in co-working tomorrow
      → come back to this next week
  • Timescale and tasks for 2024 [E] Excalidraw | Hand-drawn look & feel • Collaborative • Secure

    • short intro to the timescale
    • nice idea
    • who is doing what - take responsibility/ be supportive
      • use the forum board
        → continue in future, agree on MoU first
    • reflections
      • likes structure but also wants space for being inspired and spontaneous
      • review it periodically
      • motivated to have this, get realistic
      • likes visual aspect of this
      • jit.si has excalidraw in it now
      • have a public document, it’ll be like a roadmap
      • general timeline of the project would be interesting to have, also for newcomers
  • more on legal entity?: where are you at with this? any updates? [R/E]

    • no updates, haven’t done any work
    • tries to remember last time we worked on this
    • general feeling: community benefit society in the UK
    • do a decision and not make it too big, doesn’t need to be perfect
    • move ahead and try it out, can make changes
    • maybe not getting involved too much on this decision
    • strong (personal) preference to go with fiscal hosting, but either way would be fine for the project
    • should we do things by ourselves and is it aligned with our vision?
      • interesting to think about
      • like groups to do more themselves, e.g. self-hosting
      • rely on other services/ networks
      • in software: using API’s or a another service
      • collaborating or DIY, could also be both at the same time, more about the kind of relationships we create
      • still be part of an ecosystem
      • even when DIY we depend on other projects, people
    • interested in the CBS in order to add accountability (thinking about Trustroots and when it goes wrong)
    • got blocked at the rules documents, a lot of blablabla. How to make sense of it?
    • have another call with Alex to clarify things and ask questions
    • still open to other options, like fiscal hosting
    • https://accountable.gitbook.io/about/
    • Open Source Collective - Open Collective
    • possibility of employment

Next up:

  • standing topic: check the board! [E]
  • standing topic: organizational structure [E]
  • what ways of organising are we looking to support? where isn’t karrot a good fit(reverse exercise) [E]
  • tech updates

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • look at the MoU doc [everyone]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-02-13 on Karrot
Facilitator: Bruno
Minutes:
Participants: Philip, Nick, Vas, Bruno

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 1h15
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
      • Vas in Amsterdan for a week
      • workshop at a conference in June
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: yes
      • next tuesday: yes
    • pick facilitator for next week: Nick

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • look at the MoU doc [everyone]

4. Discussion points

  • tech updates
    • ragged edge
      • running slow at some computers so now it’s gone
    • upload limit
      • a bug with sentry, they fixed and Nick will deploy to production
      • 10MB or 25 MB probably
    • luxembourg progress
      • going very well
      • working on data import, all users, group, places… it worked!
      • some moving around and messing with the database
      • backup working
      • many other stuff might come along the way… group redirect
  • Decision on MoU tasks, subtasks and amounts [D] NlNet additions - HedgeDoc
    • Nick
      • happy to see the work done on this
      • existing ones seems fine as they are
      • new ones make sense, minor things to change
      • streamline release and deployment. with multiple instances we need to think about the release
      • include instance-level options, a request by Daniel: Add a bunch of instance settings
        • for example enabling offers. Could be on the instance level or group level
        • create a flexible system to configure how you want
        • add a 1500EUR for it?
      • we don’t need to put everything in and add it later if everything goes well
        • like community task management board
      • introductory paragraph needs to be updated according to what we include
    • Vas
      • not much to add
      • not able to commit before June, because of thesis
      • after that hopefully a lot of time and headspace
      • makes sense to add one more and see how it goes, then add more along the way
        • prgoressive interface and board takes more time and research
      • polls: we can go for the MVP
    • Butze
      • not much to add
      • wondering about the amounts
        • all looks quite low
        • expected to be more expensive
      • good set of tasks
    • Bruno
      • agrees with the above-mentioned
    • proposal
      • 3 existing ones plus self-hosting, but also communicate to NlNet that we thought about other tasks to be included
        • great proposal, taking into considerations our ambitions and our capabilities
        • clarifications about the release
        • if we had a plugin structure other contributors could their plugin release
        • clarification about amount of money: true, we’re cheap, but efficient!
        • Nick’s consent with added instance-level option
        • Butze consent
        • Vas consent
        • Bruno consent
    • question about task management board. Is it something that Nick started working on in Share Futures and could be reused on Karrot?
      • no way to use the same code
      • concept and design can be shared
      • Nick still keen on how not to duplicate his efforts
    • we consented, still run through Nathalie
  • legal entity
    • fiscal host from dave… All For Climate - Open Collective
    • are we elligible?
    • 251 collectives, Robin Foods among them
    • maybe a way out of the rabbit whole
    • looks trustworthy
    • who approves invoices?
    • question about employment: guess they don’t work with a professional employer org.
  • EU-Food-Saving-And-Sharing-Project https://cultivate-project.eu/

Next up:

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • work on MoU and add modifications we consented on today [all on co-working]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-02-20 on Karrot
Facilitator: Nick
Minutes:
Participants: Nick, Nathalie, Bruno

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: up to 11 Central Europe time
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
      • Bruno - going to brazil next month :joy_cat: :brazil: (not sure if will attend calls), away until 2nd april
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: Nick (from london!), bruno
      • next tuesday: Nick
    • pick facilitator for next week: Bruno

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • work on MoU and add modifications we consented on today [all on co-working]

4. Discussion points

  • nlnet mou
    • sent to gerben
    • instead of a doc there is a secret link where we put the tasks
    • people and addresses should be included. If don’t want to, contact him
    • we could add fiscal host/legal entity later
    • ties into next point of money and task distribution
    • Nathalie and Bruno going to fill it out, let’s poke vas too
    • putting your name/address doesn’t imply anything :slight_smile:
  • find an occasion so we can all plan timeline together
    • need to sit together plan ahead :slight_smile:
      • nlnet tasks, and money distribution, including fiscal host / entity stuff
    • maybe in the next meeting we can do that?
    • could revisit excalidraw timeline and update it with updated MoU
    • was looking at Cecosesola co-op network:
    • talk about legal entity
      • more important to have democratic practices and accountability in the culture
      • legal entity can be there to support, but can also centralize power
      • seems important to have members to hold board accountable
      • could we write in the constitution of the legal entity
  • foodsharing sweden contributor [R]
    • someone replied to the ad :slight_smile:
    • we have a scheduled call next thursday with them
    • hope they’re still interested
    • bruno had a call with them (Jann), explaining the projects
    • he likes the cause, been involved in soup kitchens
    • background is philosophy, has done some python programming, data science, NLP
    • probably not in a position to jump right into the code, quite some learning
    • willing to learn some backend/frontend coding
    • offered nicks support :slight_smile:
    • made it clear there should be some kind of commitment
    • questions:
      • were talking about a wordpress site and karrot before?
        • different alternative pathways
          • standard wordpress site foodsharing sweden project
          • preferred version is to build what looks like a website inside karrot instance
            • this is in the intersection of “karrot work” (e.g. plugin system) and “foodsharing sweden work” (using whatever systems available and project identity inside karrot)
      • wondering what is needed to change landing page
        • needs are not just a landing page, although could be a solution, using a long scrolling page
        • but there is more content than really fits in one page, so needing a menu, and how it fits in with existing menus
        • need a section on presenting the foodsharing project, how co-operations would work, what it takes to start a local group, section to find your group
        • split between static site and dynamic site
        • onboarding could be inside the application
        • here the plugin system can come in
        • modify the landing page would need fork and special build of karrot
        • working out what would be a good system, ideally both for Sweden and Luxembourg
        • foodsharing town is using grav cms, flat-file system
      • do we notice when someone sets up an own instance?
        • not really, but thinking about it
        • maybe add an option to deployment that sends an anonymous message
        • share stats from instances e.g. in grafana
  • humanity project
    • https://humanityproject.uk/
    • some people from XR and other activists doing people’s assemblies, doing bottom-up democracy, cpmmunity organising
    • a nice plan for organising, with a calendar and all
    • there’s some discussions for digital tools going on
    • a call later this week. Karrot looked nice for them!
    • vision of the project is very much philosophically aligned with Karrot
    • after decision in assemblies, focus on action and organizing
      • problems with Whatsapp groups and the lack of features for organising and the huge flow of messages
    • also connected with https://www.trustthepeople.earth/
    • cooperation.hull | Instagram | Linktree
  • shared futures update

Next up:

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • poke vas to fill out MoU form thing [Nick/anyone]
  • poke vas/butze about joining next week to talk money/entity [Bruno]
  • update excalidraw timeline with updated MoU [Nathalie]

Date: 2024-02-27 on Karrot
Facilitator: Bruno
Minutes:
Participants: Vasilis, Nathalie, Bruno, Nick

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: until 11 CET (1:12h from now)
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: yes
      • next tuesday: yes
    • pick facilitator for next week: Vas

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • poke vas to fill out MoU form thing [Nick/anyone]
  • poke vas/butze about joining next week to talk money/entity [Bruno]
  • update excalidraw timeline with updated MoU [Nathalie]
  • wrote to Open-source Collective [Nathalie]

4. Discussion points

  • discussing about the need for all of us to get together and plan the nlnet tasks, together with the questions about money distribution + fiscal host/legal entity [E]

    • reading through email from open source collective: https://community.karrot.world/t/fwd-open-source-collective-re-fiscal-hosting-and-legal-needs/1564
    • round
      • nick:
        • reply was a bit bland, leads to more questions
        • overwhelmed with the legal entity, so fiscal host maskes sense
        • can be a solution for now
        • what matters in terms of assets is user database and domain names
        • worth contacting Dave’s fiscal host
      • vas:
        • mostly second what nick said
        • liked how a fiscal host can be an interim solution
        • don’t somehow see the fiscal host seem involved in the ownership management of user databases, but can be worth exploring
        • missed the story about dave
        • “open source” collective sounds relevant
        • yes, email is a bit bland, would be happy to hear more comments about what they mean by legal things
      • bruno:
        • a bit surprised by the reply, that they also do legal guardian stuff
          • not sure if it would be useful for Karrot, but it could be
        • nice to look at the alternative, e.g. the one dave mentioned
        • more positive towards a fiscal host as a “solution for now”
          • esp. given recent experience with paperwork and bureacracy… :exploding_head:
          • want to avoid that stuff :bird:
        • forgot to mention: can be useful that they have the professional employer option
      • nathalie:
        • appreciate thinking about the reply
        • reply didn’t solve all the questions, still open questions
        • wonder how much we’d embrace the fiscal host more widely, or is it just about finances
        • main thing, would be worth to contact the fiscal host we would actually consider
        • open collective fiscal host has high fee, and US-based
        • would be OK to just solve the financial question, and leave legal questions for later
        • data privacy stuff bothering me, maybe is a block to bringing Karrot to wider world, unsure how the fiscal host would help there
        • appreciate collective solutions, and less so peoples names there
        • have generally been more in favour of fiscal host solutions, as less willing to do the paperwork
        • erasmusplus thing came up, with somebody suggesting Karrot…
      • vas:
        • question opens if we have a fiscal host will we become eligable for EU-funded things [outcome!]
        • makes sense what nathalie suggested, currently we don’t have data agreement on Karrot, wondering how fiscal host could solve that
      • nathalie:
        • from foodsharing.de, there is an association which is formally running the platform, and have agreement with the servers, very relevant if somebody has a complaint, etc. board of association - always the discussion how much individuals in the board are liable. a collective solution is better here, to share out the responsiblity/risk/burden, otherwise it would legally go down to one person on the papers, not sure how a fiscal host would help, not even sure what to ask
      • nick:
        • Kanthaus is responsible for the server
        • need a privacy policy on the site
        • funny it never actually came up
        • recent issue with trustroots makes him think about that
        • default thing is just copy a default privacy policy. One solution but not good
        • another solution is create our own, but time consuming
        • Kanthaus is quite stable home for that, ultimately legally responsible for the server
        • likes the idea of having more distributed and decentralized power and legal entities
        • best solution of all is to have groups self-host
      • nathalie:
        • kanthaus has two associations
          • non-charitable one that owns the housing/construction/renting
          • charitable one (Wandel Würzen e.V.) used for funding applications and initiatives - everything not housing related, legal text is quite wide, and kanthaus used to have a strong tech focus, so karrot sort of fits, although it’s still more wurzen focused
          • can chat with board of wandel wurzen
  • Timescale and tasks for 2024 [E] Excalidraw | Hand-drawn look & feel • Collaborative • Secure

    • tomorrow at co-working
  • fs Warsaw email export [D]

    • got an e-mail from Karolina
    • any way to get e-mail adresses for them to do voting
    • that’s a about using our database policy, good to get an e-mail from an official account linked to fs warsaw
    • oh btw can they self-host? :wink:
    • proposal: if fs warsaw e-mails from a fs adress, we could send a document, and include a caution around privacy with it
      • bruno: sounds reasonable, consent
      • vas: same
      • nathalie:
        • comment: gdpr context has come up recently, wondering if it’s OK to use email addresses, would they comply with privacy expectations, maybe worth adding a comment to them, quite unsure here
    • proposal passes! nick can share with Karolina :slight_smile:
    • wondering why they don’t use Karrot for that purpose
    • there was a code change to make email address visibility optionally, some groups want it required, and other things like phone number
    • nice to trust Karolina there is a clear request
  • join co-op cloud federation? [E]

    • https://docs.coopcloud.tech/federation/
    • members include Bonfire, etc.
    • questions:
      • everyone in chorus: what are the expectations/obligations on us if we joined?
      • who had the idea? They asked Nick
    • a lot of other tech collectives
  • siegen hackathon [E]

    • nick looking at trains…
    • looks more plausible, 4 maybes!
    • 19-21.04.
    • bruno:
      • towards end of april? getting some motivation! if I can find good prices, if I can get some days… depends on kids and schedules, will investigate
    • nathalie:
      • still 4-5 hours on train, will be in braunschweig, so less time than from wurzen
      • 3 topics
        • april is quite full, moving, maybe don’t have mindset, but could!
        • wonder, as it has a strong foodsharing hackweek, and karrot is invited, wondering who is going to be there, wondering how much karrot would do it’s own thing there
        • what would I work on?
      • generally nice idea, if we managed to plan something ourself, would be super motivated, and would be nice to see people
    • vas:
      • just checked driving, really long way, flying to dusseldorf is super cheap, going and coming is £170
      • was going to spain for 3 weeks, but cancelled it and othes are still going, so don’t feel so great going to something else in that time
      • technically could work, more about responsiblity
      • side note: nick, nathalie, bruno would be super happy if you all went, would be very happy to use karrot funds for it
    • nick:
      • would need to happen quite soon to commit, budget and time planning
      • deciding next week is reasonable
  • onboarding new developers

    • bruno:
      • got 3 replies for ad for tech volunteer to help out
        1. jp: a german guy in sweden, we had a walkthrough together with nick
        2. jennifer: indian living/working in stockholm, showed interested, haven’t done tech walkthrough onboarding yet
        3. alina: from china, exchanging student living in stockholm, was very interested in frontend development, onboarded her with project needs, joined Karrot group
      • aiming for tech onboarding for second two and nick together
      • mix of karrot work and foodsharing sweden work, will depend on their interest, focused on foodsharing sweden, and may contribute to karrot directly too, plugins, content management, etc, alina might be more focused on frontend tasks for foodsharing sweden
    • interesting to think about the governance aspects of this, assuming it’s our goal to bring more people into this team/membership thing, so it’s a distributed team, see potential to bring people into the team, but would be quite overwhelming to join this call, but maybe start to have another circle? to have more focused areas, self-hosting part seems like a subgroup forming? would be happy to outsource some of that from this call to that group, and we could take this into account when looking at legal structures, etc.
  • structure to relate with other projects, e.g. fs lux, shared futures, fs sweden…

    • inc shared futures update from meeting
      • really enthusiastic arund karrot and potential to do funding
      • do pilot of how it could work together
      • knows all the different funding pots
      • release in shared futures in March
      • how do this orgs come together? also applies to fs lux and sweden etc
      • drawing ven diagrams
      • orgs having their own centre, but there is an overlap
      • teams working in this overlap
      • put shared futures work in this model
    • potential future vision
      • karrot is a toolkit that people can make use of for their network and customise it to their needs, if they want to adapt it, it might be enough to play with the options or do plugins or find devs who do the changes
      • potentially give money to karrot so we can do changes for them
      • projects have their own devs who can do changes aswell
      • karrot is a general enough tool so projects can take it
      • specific plugins vs plugins that are core to karrot
    • suggestion a solution to shared futures
    • what Nick wants
      • work on karrot and distribute money through karrot
      • karrot is a long-lasting project - that’s a really good base
    • projects should keep their own visions, it’s not about merging all
    • point from above: self-hosting circle would make sense
    • karrot considered as backbone structure, are we talking about a shared libray?
      • in this concept karrot would be base platform and sf(shared futures) builds it on top of karrot
      • karrot as a toolkit: build own platform on top of it
      • plugins can exist for everyone
      • ‘karrot as wordpress for community organizing’
        • only closer relationships with the projects and not that big of an ecosystem
      • shared futures is a seperate code-base
      • fs lux uses karrot code
      • but use same governance model for both
      • build a vision for karrot from there
    • [lost connection for a moment]
    • go to groups and be a platfrom provider
    • more questions?
    • hear feedback
    • nathalie:
      • reminds me of 1/5/10 visions, which we didn’t follow up on yet
      • goes back to vision headspace, of what karrot is
      • one way could be this is specific agreements, saying what we’ll provide/receive, defining relationship without merging governance, how does value/money flow, feels quite formal way
      • other way I was thinking about is “who decides about what”, if we do a self-hosting circle, the way I think about it, we give some of the decision powers to the circle, e.g. which plugins do we promote as “karrot plugins” (is this even a way we’d go about it?), bring the people in who care about self-hosting to co-decide, which means getting people into our governance, still in the karrot sphere, getting people not into the core, but the self-hosting group
        • if we don’t do this, everything is in the karrot team, and it builds up, so a good starting point to have fewer things we decide on, and give them away
        • so in sociocracy, still having the link between circles, could be one or two link people
        • would the group take on the decision making method?
        • always lots of questions when things grow
      • take it as an opportunity to grow the governance body
    • vas:
      • definately hear what nathalie was saying, headspace was not going towards governance, but it makes a lot of sense to explore
      • from what nick was saying, thinking big! makes total sense
      • karrot has been going for 8 years, with not much funding, esp. compared to some startups that got lots of money and died, so using this as a base to think bigger makes sense
      • wanting to get all of work/money through karrot makes sense
      • from the scheme described, got the vibe of centralized decentralization :slight_smile: maybe this is where the governance issues should be discussed
      • definately reminded me of juntagrico CSA project, features of this project are less rich, but operates as a federation of 20+ CSAs, that run their own instances, and share a repository of plugins, blahblahblah
    • nick
      • governancen and federation layer on top of each other
      • fslux has legal entity and org, clearly seperated, but there is an overlap
      • daniel might become member of Karrot team, already is part of karrot community
      • defining relationship could be useful, like MoU, non-legally binding agreement of serious intend
        • have that with fslux could be good
        • build on existin trust
        • ‘do you want to have a fslux model?’
        • or other models
      • promising suite of collaboration options
      • how do orgs really collaborate, esp in a non-capitaslistc model?
        • we don’t want to buy fslux
        • how do we work together effectivly
      • cooperate better with other projects with similar vision - still big open question
      • one thing coming out it: form new circles e.g. tech circle
      • humanity project building a platform, focused platform for initial bit
      • fs sweden devs went through many conversation on karrot already
        • primarily there for fs sweden
        • but we don’t have all the features already
        • inter-organisation thing
        • there a two dimensions
        • people sit in different areas and overlap
        • daniel made contributions to the code in the past
        • unlikely that all 5 devs will join and start coding for Karrot
      • glocal idea, connect with local project makes more sense that connect with ‘global’ Karrot community, motivation to develop features comes from being attached to the context/ local group
    • outcomes or next steps
      • hear report how onboarding of new devs looks like
      • clarify role of ‘new devs’
      • do more processing what this might mean for us (e.g. growing the team)
      • wait for more tangible proposal with shared futures (or continue conversation)
      • continue thinkiing about MoU with Luxembourg/ Sweden
    • nathalie:
      • wondering about the role of the karrot team in these visions, and the strategy
      • worried that if we don’t get to a point where we are sustainable and healthy in the karrot team we could end up having core people who are taking on too much. well, maybe we don’t want to grow as a team, and give things away
      • seems like two paths:
        • staying small team, but trying to work on lower how much we do, giving it more for the groups. wonder what is left in the core team in this model.
        • distribution by getting more people involved, with more circles, getting more people into the project
      • “what is the karrot team for” as main question
    • nick
      • this two paths are the same thing to me, it’s a both-and-model
  • standing topic: check the board! [E]

  • standing topic: organizational structure [E]

  • what ways of organising are we looking to support? where isn’t karrot a good fit(reverse exercise) [E]

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • will we become eligable for EU-funded things with the OSC [who?]
  • look more at all for climate and contact them, maybe at discord? [Nathalie]
  • chat with wandel wurzen about legal state with karrot [Nathalie]
  • share email export decision with Karolina [Nick]
  • think about hackaton in siegen until next week to reach a decision [all]
  • write to Butze and Leoni to ask about the hackaton [Vas]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-03-05 on Karrot
Facilitator: Vasilis
Minutes: Vasilis et al!
Participants: Butze, Nathalie, Nick, Vasilis, Bruno, Alan

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 1, 15 minutes
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: Nick, Bruno, Butze, maybe Vas and Nathalie
      • next tuesday:
    • pick facilitator for next week:open… we decide on the fly but nick signed up

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

4. Discussion points

  • foodsharing luxembourg migrated :partying_face: [R]
    • Karrot
    • co-working Nick and Daniel, data exported, imported
    • now they have control over their instance and database
    • a comment from Bruno that we went from a non-hierachical on the admin level to sth that can be seen as more traditional admin
    • karrot.world instance
      • thinking about roles, maybe a predefined “web server admin” role
      • could clarify how our governance structure is around data
    • new features become availabe as updates but its on the hands of those running an instance to incorporate them/deploy them or not
  • siegen hackathon :computer: [RED]
    • 1st hackathon in a chain of hachathons we want to run
    • 15 people who can join, sleeping in a fablab, more comf we make some flats available
    • Leooni and I doing want to push the agenda much
    • there is not clear schedule yet
    • we ll now the agenda in some 4-6 weeks from now
    • see what serendipity brings between fs and karrot ppl
    • Nick: Karrot ppl are coming a lot further, needs to work out if its go or no go. I d like to get that spoted out soon if and how Karrot can come into play, does karrot fit there, are we an ‘afterthought’. if all Karrot ppl and Lux we ll be 5 more or less. I like all the spaces between the sessions. It’s quite a long way to travel, potential to hang out longer? Having 5-6 days would be nice
    • Nathalie: I dont have anything to add, I ll be nearby on the map. How OK would it be if we had a little Karrot corner?
    • Bruno: interested to focus on Karrot, most def connect with ppl from foodsharing, I m willing to go if logistics work, other Karrot ppl join, do a bit of gathering/working occasion. have been checkign train tickets, get the traveling costs covered
    • Butzer: will look for ways to maybe cover some expenses through Uni
    • Nick: possiblity to extend hackathon?
    • the idea is not to make it very dev centric, but blend the community side with the dev side
    • What’s the role of Karrot? It’s up us to define it. Can’t predict it. Hopefully we do more hackathons in the future, extend it
    • Nick: limit of 15? what is the nature of this number? Responsibility from the ppl running the space we ll use. Maybe we can push the boundaries a bit
    • idea to make a thread and ping ppl about the hackathon and who is up for joining and think through what we want to work on?
  • Progressive interface - possibilities for a students work
    • sometimes Karrot feels too sophisticated, hard to understand it rightway, young communities, start small/simple and in a kind of a modular way the interface could be also progressive
    • resonates as a concept with ppl we chatted with
    • there is quite a lot in that idea
    • two directions:
      • as a whole group, when a new group is starting
      • a user wants to help a bit so its not drown up to the neck with everything that goes on
      • we might be able top-up some funding
      • how attached are you Alan in this idea? topic? concept?
      • Alan: get with Butzer to discuss,
    • a round
      • bruno: (veeeery sleeeeeppppyy) see the potential for working on progressive interface if there is motivation and time, usually divide tasks into design process with community and team (sketches, prototype, etc…), development, and then documentation. could do the first part, the design process. a very promising feature
      • nathalie: unsure of how many tasks we can open on the same time…might take capacities from other tasks
      • butzer: you been engaging with free and opsource, if u like the community here you could focus on the progressive interface, still up for debate
      • nick: i can agree with everything, give Alan overview of the four things we have on our NLNET things and to put them in context as well so might be sth else that is very interesting to you. But self-motivaton is key.

Next time:

  • vitepress for karrot documentation site [E]

    • currently we have https://docs.karrot.world as “developer documentation”
    • proposal to create more general purpose docs site (devs, self-hosters, users, etc…)
    • could also have blog content? (we have https://blog.karrot.world too)
    • could be at another url too… e.g. https://about.karrot.world?
    • vitepress https://vitepress.dev/ is built using vue, as we use on karrot
    • to write content, you write markdown files and put them in a git repo
      • I think people willing to learn a bit of tech can manage it… (can do it from web browser)
  • any updates from OCollective? Fiscal Hosts? [R]

  • standing topic: check the board! [E]

  • standing topic: organizational structure [E]

  • what ways of organising are we looking to support? where isn’t karrot a good fit(reverse exercise) [E]

5. Actions/Outcomes

continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]

  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • will we become eligable for EU-funded things with the OSC [who?]
  • look more at all for climate and contact them, maybe at discord? [Nathalie]
  • chat with wandel wurzen about legal state with karrot [Nathalie]
  • start a new thread on karrot with interested hackathon people, and schedule another meeting within it, nick, bruno, nathalie, butze, daniel [nick]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-03-12 on Karrot
Facilitator: Nick
Minutes:
Participants: Nick, Bruno, Butze

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: on the hour + 1 = 11 central europe
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
      • Bruno goes to Brazil for 3 weeks, and morning calls are not at good time
    • next meeting:
      • coworking: some peeps
      • next tuesday: some peeps
    • pick facilitator for next week:

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • will we become eligable for EU-funded things with the OSC [who?]
  • look more at all for climate and contact them, maybe at discord? [Nathalie]
    • a pad got updated Legal entity - HedgeDoc
    • nathalie joined discord channel
    • have legal entity in belgium which should be possible to use for funding
    • similar to open collective europe, which has better docs regarding grants
    • not contacted them yet
  • start a new thread on karrot with interested hackathon people, and schedule another meeting within it, nick, bruno, nathalie, butze, daniel [nick]
    • failed

4. Discussion points

  • vitepress for karrot documentation site [ED]

    • currently we have https://docs.karrot.world as “developer documentation”
    • proposal to create more general purpose docs site (devs, self-hosters, users, project, etc…)
    • could also have blog content? (we have https://blog.karrot.world too)
    • could be at another url too… e.g. https://about.karrot.world?
    • vitepress https://vitepress.dev/ is built using vue, as we use on karrot
    • to write content, you write markdown files and put them in a git repo
      • I think people willing to learn a bit of tech can manage it… (can do it from web browser)
    • round
      • Bruno:
        • how to update docs, via github, pull request
          • yes: can do it like that, or checkout on local computer
        • advantages/possiblities
          • potential for integration of docs with karrot as they both use vue?
          • use as components?
          • potentially: maybe showing docs within karrot, not immediately clear
            • main potential is not due to vue, but vitepress is nice
          • current thing? Introduction - mdBook Documentation
      • Butze:
        • nothing much to add, but well done, functionality sounds good :+1: :+1:
      • Nathalie:
        • question: new repository or embedded within a karrot one?
          • either could make sense, leaning towards having a standalone one
        • question: what role for myself (Nick)?
          • setting it up
          • theming/ customizing
          • help anyone that want to contribute
          • writing documentation for self-hosting and dev documentation
          • vacancy for user documentation
      • Nick:
        • unsure if people engaged with wider docs site considerations or want to contribute
        • but makes sense just if using as an updated tech docs site, like the current one, as need somewhere to write the self-hosting docs that is nice!
    • bruno:
      • was wondering about what to do with user documentation, would try to imagine how it would look on vitepress, and how to connect it better to karrot itself
      • time will come when we’re needing to do some communication
      • then good to have a clear decision on where to put the documentation
      • would be nice to have it at the same place, if it’s not too confusion having it need the tech documentation
    • nathalie:
      • this is good :slight_smile: helped to understand the need for self-hosting documentation
      • still interested in user documentation, but would need some more thought, and maybe moving things from the forum
      • interested to look into vitepress, but pretty sure I can use it
      • a bit unsure when to tackle this, maybe motivation will come if it’s easy/nice to use
      • more topics, where do we link it? (as current docs site is quite hidden), if it was more for users it should be more findable
      • about blog… wouldn’t merge it all into one thing, didn’t really know about the blog or where it’s linked, ok to keep it… maybe would need to talk about the blog on its own, don’t really have energy in this circle for blog posting, lets leave blog out for now
    • proposal: Remake https://docs.karrot.world site using vitepress with some of the existing tech content, initially self-hosting and dev. Leaving space for building user documentation.
      • full consent :partying_face:
  • siegen hackathon?

    • bruno keeping an eye on prices, although still can’t book for his route, when the tickets become available would need to be quick
    • looking for temperature check
    • should we make decision regarding funding the trip
    • round
      • Nathalie:
        • I can come! :dancing_women:
        • would also visit parents
        • can stay a bit longer
        • esp. combining with dortmund
        • have it on radar, kind of planning it in
        • willing to say yes!
      • Nick:
        • counting on others energy
        • willing to make it happen, spend time with others
        • would like to stay a bit longer
        • hopefully no boat trouble
        • funding trip makes sense
        • should we fund FS Luxembourg?
      • Butze:
        • very happy to host us here, getting excited about event
        • good thing helping with serenity, don’t have a lot of projects locally at the moment
        • only event in planning at the moment, so have capacity
        • I think we can co-create some activities, indoor/outdoor, etc…
    • karrot will fund all karrot team members (travel costs). People in karrot groups or related projects can request funding which we will decide by consent in a meeting. We can also request funding from the university.
      • bruno: consent
      • nathalie: consent
      • butze: can still try for funding from university, if it doesn’t work, pay from karrot.
        • question: when would that happen? need to ask overwhelmed secretary, will ask today
        • nathalie: we could book tickets, and present tickets for reimbursement
      • consent!
  • progressive interface with Alan [R]

    • met alan last friday in office, had nice chat
    • really interested in the topic
    • needs to learn more about the context, willing to learn
    • planning to start somewhere in mid-April, as has other exams, then would like to engage
    • was quite fascinated about this culture and working environment
    • bruno: let us know when it’s time for a meeting, etc, or whatever is appropriate, or more dedicated session on it, can play and sketch, fun sessions
    • nick: did focus stay within progressive interface or wider?
      • explained not so goal orientated, but walk towards horizon and see which fruits to pick along the way :grapes::kiwi_fruit::pineapple::peach:
      • students find it hard, but it seems to get it
  • co-op cloud federation [R/D?]

    • obligations
    • Bylaws - Co-op Cloud: Docs is kind of a summary already, with links to the resolutions.
    • round:
      • bruno:
        • sound good to support them, how much would it be formality rather than actual connection? but maybe a bit deeper connection as nick is already connected
        • not very clear to me what participation means in practise, which voting, or decisions
        • good in general
      • butze:
        • up for you all to decide, I’m fine
      • nathalie:
        • sounds good
        • would be nice to engage different people from the karrot team, is there general meeting? or maybe it’s all online as it’s just tech people
        • would be nice if there was a video conference to build different connections
        • it’s nice, would go for 60EUR/year
      • nick:
        • interesting for us to see how this federated model works
        • already a conenction
        • would like to join
    • proposal: We apply to join federation for 60€/year and ask for a video call with them to welcome karrot.
      • bruno: consent
      • nathalie: consent
      • butze: consent, and will join
      • nick: consent
  • tech update [R]

    • lux
    • codeberg, docker, releases
    • plugins
  • catalyst chat [R]

  • standing topic: check the board! [E]

  • standing topic: organizational structure [E]

  • what ways of organising are we looking to support? where isn’t karrot a good fit(reverse exercise) [E]

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • chat with wandel wurzen about legal state with karrot [Nathalie]
  • ask overwhelmed secretary about funding for Karrot people [Butze]
  • tell co-op cloud we want to join [Nick]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-03-19 on Karrot
Facilitator: Vasilis
Minutes: all
Participants: Vasilis, Nathalie, Nick

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 11 CET
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
    • next meeting: Nick, Vasilis, Nathalie (they think so)
    • pick facilitator for next week:

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

4. Discussion points

  • tech update? [Nick]

    • new docs site :partying_face:

      • https://docs.karrot.world/
      • move the docs to vitpress, partial documentation, copied most of the docs, site online
      • https://meet.friprogramvarusyndikatet.se/karrot
      • Nick gave as a walkthrough
      • for users, developers, self-hosting
      • how we upload the videos?
        • I m on the video page, edit
      • move to codeberg?
        • might be good make an official decision. Github is increasingly unpleasant
      • docs not linked anywhere, maybe atm
        • if its a nice resouce it coudl be really prominent
    • there is a pull request for Karrot screen sharing. soon to be deployed

      • will get to that at some point
    • bug in activities listing reported

      • since the very begining of Karrot
      • 16things on the same time
      • listing doesnt work
      • short-term fix to be deployed
    • filtering embedded listings

    • frontend plugins

      • almost ready to merge
    • should we decide to officially move to codeberg?

      • Nathalie would be comf if Nick made this decision
      • could we link codeberg to Git?
      • Nick will continue moving stuff to codeberg
    • Reasons moving off from github?

      • github (not open-source) → gitlab (open-core)
      • github → codeberg
      • new generation of lightweight platfroms emerged…a series of forks
      • codeberg is an organisation running an instance of forgedjo
      • open and community values
      • more and more commercial feautures on github
      • codeberg stays quite lean
      • What is Codeberg? | Codeberg Documentation
    • Nick was interviewed by Matt Dowse — University of Bristol [R]

      • https://www.bristol.ac.uk/fssl/research/sociodigital-futures/research/domains/organising/community-tech-research-study/
      • community tech network
      • ESRC for social-digital futures
      • sociology backround combined with HCI
      • one year in, post-doc Reseach
      • what is community tech?
      • what futures are ppl imagining with community tech?
      • enthusiastic to try and do work together
      • uni has a bunch of money and resources to share out
      • living in practice in our Karrot ties to things he has been reading about
      • 5 last mins about Karrot
      • trust system for the roles, excited about that
      • skeptical of big orgs talking about Community tech
      • having actual group/UK, ideally nearby who d like to use Karrot, side by side work with researchers
  • standing topic: check the board! [E]

  • standing topic: organizational structure [E]

  • what ways of organising are we looking to support? where isn’t karrot a good fit(reverse exercise) [E]

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • chat with wandel wurzen about legal state with karrot [Nathalie]
  • ask overwhelmed secretary about funding for Karrot people [Butze]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-03-26 on Karrot
Facilitator: Nick
Minutes: all
Participants: Nick, Rafael, Nathalie, Vasilis

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 11 CET
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
    • next meeting:
      • tomorrow co-working: Nick, Nathalie
      • next week meeting: Nick
    • pick facilitator for next week: Vasilis

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • chat with wandel wurzen about legal state with karrot [Nathalie]
    • wrote a message to them about it in KH slack
    • so, maybe they’ll chat and return
    • sit and wait
  • ask overwhelmed secretary about funding for Karrot people [Butze]

4. Discussion points

  • commons management sofware/funding

    • how it started: ppl attached in the commons com, had some contant with foodcoops, foodsharing, not so much with bikesharing, fablab ppl in hamburg, 3d pritners and soldering equipment. we found that soft available might not be adequate, improve things:
    • links to examples: So funktioniert's | depot.social (not open source not federated, cannot make an instnace)
      https://commonsbooking.org/ another one os, to make a bike sharing operation work, hard to mantain, work to replace frot-end (merged recentlty) from UX not ideal, lots of work to be done, dont have tasks that karrot holds, mostly focuisngo n the time slot booking
    • Time slot booking
      • we thought to work with Karrot or commonsbooking.org
      • reserve a thing for a certain time
      • would want to request sth for a certain period of time
      • limit usage or the time ppl can book
      • communicate bookings, a calendar overview or sth like that
    • Maintenance Task functionality
      • tasks in karrot, but havent used them yet, we d have to play around with that on karrot, one thing would be reccuring tasks, a saw that needs to be cleaned regulary, a 3rd printer to be calibrated regularly
    • Search for shared things
      • look for sth outside of a group context. Where can i find an item? outside of a group. that’s sth we are interstesd in exploring
    • Group openness
      • on karrot you can interact with groups only if u join, good model as a default, can we find a middle ground, to be able to approach withough joining
    • Federation
      • saw on smedia that u r working on federation, we d like to have federation basically, contribute to that, working on a project to build sth new, doing that with django
      • Nick:
        • sounds so fitting, topics are quite familiar, a feel of good fit, oh my god this is amazing for the project feeling, pace of change of our slow steady approach…finding a way to work with that, fits with my sense of how to free the Karrot, self-hosting, less stuff channeling to me, in some way becoming a facilitator of otehr ppll working on karrot is nice. It sounds that you got knowledeg and skills and if there is funding on rails that might mnean things will move forward,
        • how we colaborate, bring things to the core or work on a plugin system
      • vasilis:
        • we’ve been discussing all these things
        • have been looking for years looking to de-foodify karrot from foodsaving
        • personally involved in a makerspace, so interesting on personal level
        • would like to hear a bit more context of the case, sharing all kinds of resources, and a makerspace, and equipmenet
        • got a bit confused with the bikes? so an everything sharing platform? is there a physical space that is involved in the project that want to use it
        • how attached is it to reality?
        • exciting!
        • like the idea you want to look into federation, assuming having an instance of karrot, hard to get people on karrot, but easier to say we have our own software with an instance with the name of the project, so karrot fading in the background, with nick as faciliator of process
      • nathalie:
        • agree with many things, exciting, on our list of ideas, idea commmons, using karrot for sharing resources, a project i was involved was around shared bikes, for foodsharing pickups for example, karrot is very group focused, I use commonsbooking, so question is how much we want to push the idea of commomning vs more individuals sharing resources.
        • main questions on the level of colllaboration, curious how u found karrot, share a bit of the overwheming status,
        • about tasks, we dont have tasks on karrot, not sure what u were talking about when refering to tasks
      • Rafael:
        • mistook issues for tasks,
        • who are we actually: a loose association, someone else (robert) is the facilitator well conected with acitviists organisations, ton of concrete use cases in mind, 3-4 dif locations where they wanted to try this out, I m mostly a dev myself, getting more into see how soft works and get in touch with real ppl. We have a group on matrix where other ppl are involved, depends if we ll get other ppl onboard.
        • regarding the working together: application is ddline is the end of this week basically, we have a draft for an application, if u d like to try that, we d write that we ll work on karrot speciffically, or built software for commons sharing, if application gets accepted, 30/40% chance (relatively low). the dev starts around fall this year, around oct and goes for half a year, called a prototype fund, have a tight working style, very active working style, not nessesarily have to impact the karrot project a lot, good starting point to build a plugin, good way to get in touch with each other
        • network of indy sites that interoperate (instances I guess)
        • sudden thing and a lot of stuff coming in advance
  • another round:

    • if succesful its good news that it starts later on, its not a growth oriented mingset,
    • sounds like a nice case for the plugins, I love the idea of deep plugins, next cloud: isolated apps, interaction between the plugins is someties very seperated, using django singals,
    • one thing i like about Karrot, critical pedagogy, discuss things a lot, the political implications, dialogue process, I want to do doing not talking ← weaving of these is a nice process
    • the idea of debranding Karrot, what the hell is this karrot thing? makes more sense that the url of a project has its name, its not signing up for karrot, fs sweden now will move to their own instances
    • federation staff: always comes down to how the groups will make sense, use, enabling cross-collaboration between groups
    • the inside outside of the group: breaking the silo, permeable boundaries, doors not walls, public activities a tangible example of using the public activities
    • trying to think of next thinngs
    • wondering what happens if funding doesnt go through
    • public activties exampe: Karrot
    • funding comes and goes, build resilience on that, css where ppl contribute in money, be accountable to users and less to funders
    • Vasilis:
      • you covered everything nick, you went on a rant!
      • very practical, transparency, how much is funding, how is karrot involved in that? directly involved?
      • mentioned about submitting application by the end of the week, and on fence about building from scratch or within karrot
      • like the idea to mention karrot, and building on top of something already there
      • that’s it
    • nathalie:
      • more practical now… how to continue?
      • same question as vas, regarding funding, did you thought about contributing to karrot with the money?
      • how to go about it, given the time and that we barely know each other
      • going with plugin option sounds fine, as it’s more contained work, is the plugin system feasible
      • how easy would it be to move code from plugin to the core?
      • could be like a separated project, and report back from time to time
      • could be a usecase for a helping circle, like one person with their team, so don’t need to join all calls, can have a bit of separated work structure
      • could try it out for 6months/1year
      • in the future, interested putting karrot in a sustainable position, financial and team
      • potential to start with this, and potential for people to move into core team, so would prefer some communication or linking, but could also agree to just delivering a plugin, but prefer linking
      • can bring to proposdal today

thanks nick will take over again soon, ah sorry yeah I was in auto-minutes-mode

-Rafael: would be up for having some close communication as well, do thins together, someone who knows the project t b availalbe for calls, transfer knowledge in both directions, question regarding karrot be involved in the funding, not sure about the legal framewrk, u declare a team that forms a company, only exists for the timeline of the funding, they disperse it anywayy they want to it, hours-based funding, this is how this is received, happy to have one of karrot in the team and give some of the money this way to the project. not sure if u can have german citizenship, would have to talk to robert with this as well. Regarding what happens if we dont get the fudning, robert has been working on this vision for longer, I m sure that we ll continue to look for funding to workk on this, myself and rob have a lot of other volunteer projects we contribute on. vibe is matching,

-Nick: would be happy to input things for the funding bid. like the idea of building sth on top of existing stuctures, some funders might like that more ecological approach as well

MOVE TO https://meet.friprogramvarusyndikatet.se/karrot!!

Proposal:
Form a Helping Circle

  • Aim: Build a system for managing commons.
  • Domain:
    • karrot plugin
    • money from prototype funding
  • Term: 6 months (and potentially continue)
  • Linking to Karrot team: Nick
  • Members: Nick, Rafael, Robert, Nathalie

Revised proposal:

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • co-ordinate siegen hackathon [Nathalie]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-04-02 on Karrot
Facilitator: Vas
Minutes: all
Participants: Nathalie, Nick, Vasilis

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 11 CEST
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
      • Nathalie less available next week
    • next meeting: 03/04/2024: Vas, Nick, Nathalie
    • pick facilitator for next week: Nick

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

4. Discussion points

  • updates Vasilis PhD chapter on Karrot (management, dev, governance)
    • 3 big topics/themes
        1. unnamed as yet
        • a lonely programmer (nick) having a silent partner (tilmann)
        • safeguarding mechanisms, multiple doors to get into Karrot, having to knock the door, removed some of the more public information, reflecting experiences of people joining calls without connection, so more onboarding
        • accordian structure of team, making it a bit more official, roles of faciliator, giving space, collecting consent
        • selective growth, removing from up-for-grabs, not on maintstream social media, mastodon account, gender imbalances
        1. karrot team and karrot users collaboration, hits, misses, and challenges
        • karrot team & feedback group, and how this played out
        • navigating superadmin-like requests, e.g. fs lux
        • potential of having higher level administrators, with self-hosting
        • design negotiations, majority of features come with conversations from groups, but karrot team also has own agenda, e.g. logging in with social media accounts, middle ground of public activities
        • breaking the silo, community cafe and karrot days
        1. cultivating a counter-culture
        • checkins/checkouts as community rituals
        • beyond capitalist norms and startup culture, karrot vs startup values
        • language, job titles, funding fatigue, accountability
        • equity-driven distribution of karrot funds, not time shifts, money distribution calls
        • towards opensourcefullness, open source being hollow/abused, how karrot is positioning itself within opensource ecosystem, critique towards hollow open source
    • will share document :slight_smile:
  • tech updates
  • hackweekend prep call next week? e.g. tuesday evening
    • space to share things about hackweekend
    • a good idea to have a call
    • good to do it this week
  • co-ordinate siegen hackathon [Nathalie]
    • every potential cantidate replied, Dan mentioned to have a planning call
    • there is an activity on Karrot on the 19th of April for the actual event
    • Nat not sure how much time I can spare, decomitted a bit atm
  • gender imbalances on Karrot
    • more like: feminist take on karrot

      • breaking cis-male culture
        • not secret that tech is male dominated
        • usually dont notice so much but more when ppl join who are also male
        • selective ‘growth’ interesting
        • we do have measures to prevent more toxic-masculinity, mansplaining
        • had little uplesant moments
        • comments or jokes
        • someone draws a penis, these jokes was more frequent in the last months
      • centering care
        • we do that already to some extent, focus on emotional health, we can improve
      • gender diversity, welcoming queerness
        • in the team
          • as a team
        • in the software?
          • as a software
      • who is doing what?
        • gender roles
        • stereotypical female roles but having quotas
        • breaking roles
        • a project more focused on fem ideas and queerness
        • I dont look karrot being the queer project I m imagining of
        • no clear plan on how to go forward
    • I really welcome the discussion

    • there is a realm of theory of books and podcasts, when it comes to a living practice, there might be a gap on how
      to incoporate these values, dialogue rather than conclusions

    • wondering if we can do sth like a book club to build on that

    • centering care is a lot in my life atm, getting it bigger than numeric imbalances, what does it mean to bring in some feminist practices, tick we got some women in the team, we can still have dominated culture, with queer to me there is a whole range of definitions with sexuality and more broad challenging conventions

    • diversity becomes broader as well, whiteness, neurodevisty, disability, fit into care and feminist practices

    • i m happy with the input

    • idea forming: a workshop that do things with this topic, engaging sth more practical, leipzig has a huge queer community, maybe I will look around

  • co-op cloud federation

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • ask overwhelmed secretary about funding for Karrot people [Butze]
  • epxlore engagements with queer literature, people, resource [Nathalie, Vasilis, Nick]
  • membership payment coop-cloud [Nick]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-04-09 on Karrot
Facilitator: Nick
Minutes: all
Participants: Nick, Vas, Butze

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: vas leave sharp at 10:30 CEST, 11 CEST
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
    • next meeting:
    • pick facilitator for next week:

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • ask overwhelmed secretary about funding for Karrot people [Butze]
    • will ask her today
  • explore engagements with queer literature, people, resource [Nathalie, Vasilis, Nick]
    • vas: shared link on karrot “Theory Club”
      • queer HCI → Home
  • membership payment coop-cloud [Nick]
    • not yet

4. Discussion points

  • what are we doing? re-orientate Bruno
    • gender issues? balance on Karrot
      • spent quite some time chatting about it last week
      • mostly men attending calls, including call visitors who drop in
      • also a few things noted about male-ish behaviours on calls
      • chatting on personal level about gender
      • could find ways within design to not reinforce stereotypes
      • how to make karrot more queer-friendly
      • we talked about the tokenist version as well, having quotas, gender diversity but all the women are doing sevice roles and men eng work,
      • we don’t look into ethnicity topics, neurodiverisity
      • connect with an org to do a workshop to explore the topic deeper
      • Butze: is worth exploring
      • Bruno: interested in propositions, what can be done
    • NLnet updates
      • everything is sorted, a bit to check
      • got an email saying that it is all signed
    • Nick’s work (Karrot’s haircut and more)
      • obv doing a lot of work atm, would like karrot to be the only soft project I do, in my morals makes sense to work on Karrot, only one put that amount of time, work on a team, doing work on the detail, calls and work outside, I m mostly pushing through requests on my own, I d like that in Karrot, we have nice disucssion philosophy layer, higher level topics is nice exchange, material work gots a gap in there, for me I enjoy doing work, get stuff done.
  • redesign
    • should it be an experiment or go forward with it?
    • proposal: go forward
    • reactions:
      • it’s pretty!
      • like it too
      • like it, consent!
      • official consent round:
        • check in with Nathalie
    • would like some beta-testing to see if it’s working, it affects a bit functionality
  • michigan student joining
    • no-one had replied to their application, wrote on the forum during the call, reached to Butze as well,
    • Nick has no capacity to give assistance at this moment unfortunately. There’s also a bad past experiene with university students looking to engage and disappearing later and not delivering anything
    • change policy:
      • change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students
      • review it next week
  • siegen prep
    • Nick communicating to Elisa and making her feel welcome
    • what are our intentions?
    • Nick: see what others are into and start a design task for NlNet
    • Butze: would like to know when Elisa is coming and get a room for her
      • Bruno, Daniel and Nick would get Butze’s flat, Nathalie at Leoni’s and find a place for Elisa
    • Daniel stated what his intentions are
    • defining with foodsharing team what they want to work on and doing a more fixed schedule
    • there is space for open discussions, communal events, so it doesn’t feel like Karrot and FS are working totally separate
    • have a pre-hackaton call with Karrot people
    • brunso intentions
      • spend time together bonding
      • do some nlnet related tasks
      • have a nice collective sense of plan, orientation for Karrot
      • connect with foodsharing people, getting to know each other, maybe something more solid might come out of it

Next meeting:

  • co-op cloud federation
  • policy/rules/agreement library
    • chatting with ntnsndr (Nathan Schneider)

5. Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • membership payment coop-cloud [Nick]
  • put the fully signed MoU somewhere [Nick]
  • check in with Nathalie on Karrot’s new design [Nick]
  • tell student we can’t take anyone on for now [Butze]
  • change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students [?]
  • organise a pre-hackathon karrot-focused pre-prep meeting [?]

Date: 2024-04-16 on Karrot
Facilitator: Vasilitator
Minutes: all
Participants: Nathalie, Bruno, Jay, Butze, Nick, Vasilis

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 11 CEST, Nick, Jay and Butze leave at 10:30
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
    • next meeting: weekly meeting and co-working
    • pick facilitator for next week: Bruno (tentative)

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
    • did not work on that. I would like to involve the fs ppl so added that to the hackweekend schedule. free slot sat aftenoon, 45mins. finish the draft
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • membership payment coop-cloud [Nick]
  • put the fully signed MoU somewhere [Nick]
    • put it in the discourse chat randomly, it is somewhere
    • prev made a public post
  • check in with Nathalie on Karrot’s new design [Nick]
    • try some co-working on it during the siegen, work in progress
  • tell student we can’t take anyone on for now [Butze]
    • sent a message
    • 2 questions from Nathalie:
      • open application on the KTaF group we should do sth with
      • refered to a task assigend to me, shortcuts task and got a bit unsure how much they ve started to work on that
      • I dont remember chatting, not very responsive to communication [nick], created more confusion, havent seen any code, indication of ‘progress’, nothing we can do atm, if there is some com u can ask [butze] if they started working on anything
      • look at it in Siegen :slight_smile:
  • change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students [Vasilis]
    • summary is that we dont have capacity for dev contruvutiosn but HCIish things yes

4. Discussion points

  • Siegen hackathon last questions
    • what to bring
      • refers to sleeping bags, sleeping mats
      • arrive and then allocate
        • try to make things as flexible as possible,
        • everyone can stay in Butzer’s apt and the fablab works
        • flexible with multigen house
        • Nathalie can also stay at the multigen house to avoid cat allergy
    • time schedule
      • thursday nothing scheduled yet. Do we wanna do something?
      • Vas prefers morning sessions. Quite flexible except Friday 1pm
      • Jay works in the morning and a couple of hours after lunch (Thu, Fri, Mon)
      • thursday as an arriving day
      • nick will get some tech things to make vas present more convinient :D! thanks nick!
      • karrot ritual? initiate the congregation
  • co-op cloud federation
    • latest decision:
      • Large Decision 022: Budget 10: Abra integration suite automation - 2024-04-04
      • Deadline for votes is Thursday, 18th April – let me know if you need more time to vote than that.
    • we joined, we ll pay the money, participate in the votes, all disc, negotiations on a matrix chanel, if anyone wants to be another person from Karrot (except for Nick).
      • how are we deciding and voting?
      • there is a specific vote
      • incomprehensible tech things mostly
      • suggestion would be: everytime there is a vote I put on the Karrot group
      • nick as a delegate on the coop cloud fed [Nathalie].
      • not much to add [bruno], agree with Nick’s proposal
      • check in after a few months
      • have an overaching summary of what coop-cloud is and
  • policy/rules/agreement library
    • a disc on the main wall, down down scroll scroll,
    • discussion with Nathan Schneider
    • on the topic of governance,
    • policy rules with an open API, for example we got the agreements feature which we want t furhter develop, with Katie
    • now interconnecting projects, and platforms, library of some kind
    • templates, existing agremeents, projects, adapt, prefilled forms
    • examples of libraries mentioned on the thread
    • what’s interesting about it?
      • making groups aware of their governance
    • probably a lot of governance structures and decision-making processes would be at odds with how Karrot works
    • a lot of topics and wonder how to continue with this, needs to take a better look at it
    • keep the connection open and see where this can lead
    • which models do we apply to Karrot?

5. Actions and Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students [Vasilis]
    • summary is that we dont have capacity for dev contributions but HCIish things yes

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout

Date: 2024-04-23 on Karrot
Facilitator: Bruno
Minutes: all
Participants: Bruno, Nathalie, Butze, Jay joined later

1. Opening

  • 10 min Check in
  • 5 min ADMIN
    • attendance (write down participants)
    • duration: 1h from now (10:40 CEST)
    • information: any (non-karrot) announcements? unavailabilities?
      • Nathalie moving places next week!
      • Butze to Hawai next week
      • bonfire talking about CSS: Bonfire
    • next meeting: weekly meeting and co-working
      • Nathalie and Bruno will be there for co-working
      • Nathalie talking to Nick about redesign
    • pick facilitator for next week: to be decided

2. Consent to agenda

  • 2 min

3. Review last week’s Actions/Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • work on forum post comparing/contrasting foodsharing/karrot [Nathalie]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • membership payment coop-cloud [Nick]
  • tell student we can’t take anyone on for now [Butze]
    • message sent
  • change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students [Vasilis]
    • summary is that we dont have capacity for dev contributions but HCIish things yes
  • review redesign [Nick, Nathalie]
    • tomorrow on co-working

4. Discussion points

  • membership request on the group
    • we’re not sure about the person’s motivation
    • perhaps invite to a meeting
    • proposal: accept
    • we accept, no big requirements to join our group
    • trust the karrot features to do their work, if necessary
    • not clear what to do about the pull requests, wait for Nick’s feedback in this
  • follow up from hackweekend
    • put notes on forum?
    • add action items to list above? (e.g. tasks on vision docs)
      • also Nathalie together with first task
    • reimbursement transparancy and who is doing the payment
      • Daniel: 68,15€ (Nathalie will do payment)
      • Nathalie: 106,30€ (self)
      • Bruno: ~250€ + 113,80€ (self) - potential refund due to delay
      • Nick: let us know for the record :slight_smile: (self)
      • Jay (100€) (Nick can do payment)
        • was going to be 50€ but accidently bought 2 months, if people don’t consent to 100€, then 50€ is ok, I would consent to the 100€
        • 100€ is ok
      • we already agreed to pay travel costs and consent again to the above numbers
      • Nick can also do the transfer for himself and give us the numbers later
    • responsibilities for design process
      • polls: Bruno
      • CSS: Nathalie
        • do a next session continuing the process
        • can do the facilitation, check with Vas
      • Jay offers help to the tasks
        • next meeting
  • Jay’s contribution
    • what’s the first task
    • interested in improving accessibility
      • improve onboarding process
      • something structured to track the onboarding
      • increase inclusion and diversity
      • also motivated on other technical tasks, would find it satisfied on implementing features
    • finshing set up on her computer
    • Bruno will show Feedback and Ideas on forum, board ec to add own ideas or look for tasks

Next time

  • review money amounts
    • check notes what we said last time
  • membership Butze?

5. Actions and Outcomes

  • continue work on navigating upcoming activities [Bruno, Nick]
  • write feedback and reflections on suggesting Karrot to parents coop [Bruno]
  • write to gerben and ask about follow-on eu funding potentials [Nick]
  • membership payment coop-cloud [Nick]
  • change getting started guide to give the right message for undergrad students [Vasilis]
    • summary is that we dont have capacity for dev contributions but HCIish things yes
  • review redesign [Nick, Nathalie]
  • summarize design session on polls [Bruno]
  • notes and actions items from Siegen on the forum [Nathalie]
  • check vision pad with the draft for a vision [Bruno]
  • let us know about travel costs [Nick]
  • Feedback & Ideas process and board on forum, look at agreement [Jay, Bruno]

6. Closing Ceremony

  • 10 min
  • checkout