Freegle Reps Report 2010-02-19

Here is an overdue summary of what the Reps have been upto between January 17th and February 14th. Sorry this is a bit late - we've set up a rota to try to make these more regular in future. The previous one was message 6895 on Central.

We discussed how the Reps should work effectively as a team: 1) Some of this is straightforward (e.g. 6 of the 9 means a quorum for decisions). 2) But there are challenges here, since we have different levels of available time. There's also a tendency for Reps to get very heavily involved in working groups (as with the group assessment team) - ideally we'd spend more time coordinating and on strategic thinking. We need more people, especially new faces, to get involved in working groups. Please think about whether you can help, particularly with Start and People - no offer of help is too small. 3) Getting a clearer list of what we as Reps should be working on, and nominating one or two of us as the lead on particular items. 4) Producing a brief Working Practices document, which is on hold till after the 20th. 4) Whether the Reps' discussions should be public. While we are committed to being open about any decisions or recommendations, and providing updates like this on what we're doing, we think we have too many sensitive issues for it to be sensible to have all our discussions in public. What do people think about this? 5) How to record which pies the Reps have fingers in. There's a tab on the Who's Who spreadsheet (http://freegle.it/WhosWho) to track this.

We discussed a number of issues relating to the very active group assessment team: 1) The date when the moratorium on groups where Freecycle is present ends (20th February). 2) An updated set of guidelines to handle this; Start has drafted some and they were posted on Central in message 8081. 3) The request for more information to Central. Summary statistics have now been sent, and it is now for that team to continue doing this regularly. 4) Having an Appeals panel, separate from the Reps. There are some tricky questions about disclosure and confidentality here. 5) Naming of groups and trademark issues; this is an ongoing discussion. 6) Whether to approve the current Interim team to remain in position. This is ongoing.

We also covered a number of organisational questions: 1) We had a long discussion on how to get the balance right between ensuring that what happens within Freegle is in accordance with the wishes of its members, and having a large number of complex polls and discussions. See Jane's message 7084 on Central if you missed the ADMIN about this. 2) What type of organisation we should be. After some initial discussion, this has moved to Structure. 3) Finances: setting up a bank account, and how to handle things like UK Aware costs, or hosting. We're researching this - see #7716 on Central for more information on this. 4) How to liase with recyclinggroupfinder. Russ and Alison are kindly doing this for us. Please contact maps @ iLoveFreegle.org if you details need updating. 5) The FreeSpOut newsletter approached us to clarify its status. It remains independent, but is officially recognised. This means it can now be mailed to the -owner addresses. 6) Contacts from other countries. We'll be posting about this shortly. 7) We have new wording for a disclaimer from the Legal group. We will be publishing this shortly.

We discussed a number of technical items: 1) A spreadsheet to track our critical IT infrastructure. This is necessarily confidential as it contains access details. The aim is to ensure that we have at least two people with access details to anything we use, to ensure we don't get stuck if someone is unavailable. 2) A project in Norfolk where local mods are seeing whether they can generate interest in developing a replacement platform for Yahoo for use in that area. This is something local autonomous groups can consider, but there are clearly a lot of wider issues here, and Edward has joined the Norfolk modsquad as a Rep participant in relevant discussions. It's early days on this one. 3) Google Apps and ilovefreegle.org email addresses. This has now been sorted out on Tech, thanks to Paul Thompson and Paul Baker. 4) A potential mobile project with O2.

Finally, there were a number of publicity items: 1) Preparation for the 1 million member milestone. Have you sent out your localised copy of Cat's press release using Paul's splendid tool yet? 2) Free ads from Yahoo. Theo Gibb is now looking after this. 3) Contacts with WRAP. After talking to them, this is a possible source of future funding if we went that route, but we're not pursuing this at the moment. 4) How we can inspire/help more mods to promote their group via press releases etc.

Phew!

Edward Rep Hat

Back to: Freegle Representative Group or go to next report Freegle Reps Report 2010-03-14 or back to last report Freegle Reps Report 2010-01-16