Organisational rhythm

We organise our decision-making and work through a few different cycles. Projects involving outside collaborators might cut across the boundaries of these cycles but our intention is always to synchronise our work and the way that we organise ourselves to do the work.

Aside from our day-to-day work, meetings are where we discuss policies and major issues that impact everyone. Attending meetings is a key part of being a member of the co-op. We do aim for two meeting-free days per week, Mondays and Wednesdays, to help us set aside focused work time.

For who decides what in these forums, see Democracy, autonomy and trust. For how we run the meetings themselves, see How we run meetings.

Daily: check-ins

Decision role: day-to-day coordination and unblocking — not co-op policy.

🗓️ Every morning, at 10 AM, we "check in" on a Discord voice chat. (We typically don't do video chats, but sometimes we might make an exception.) This is usually a quick call, to ensure everyone's on the same page. It always follows the same structure:

• Round 1: check in on how we’re feeling
• Round 2: what you did yesterday, what you're doing today and whether there are any blockers.
• If there are blockers, we resolve them after the meeting.

After checking in, we'll continue check in on the Signal every once in a while. In particular, we'll mention if we're AFK for a substantial period — typically, that's for lunch.

To note, we try to discuss task specific things in Linear and higher level project specific things on Twist to keep documentation tied down. Signal is for more ephemeral chat, and it auto-wipes after 12 hours.

Four-week cycles

Our cycles run for four weeks. Weeks 1–3 are for delivering committed work. Week 4 is a cooldown week, when we step back from sprint delivery for reflection, responsibility-area accountability, and co-op democracy.

Decision role (cycle overall): prioritising and adapting committed work; cooldown forums surface practice and policy questions, but lasting co-op policy still goes through members’ meetings and proposals.

Weeks 1–3: delivery

🗓️ At the start of the cycle, typically on a Tuesday morning just after 10 AM, we kick off with a Cycle Planning session. This involves collectively advocating for, prioritising and refining work towards different projects and co-operative admin so that there are clear goals that we can commit to achieving. Then we'll get into the sprint and do what we can as a team to meet our goals!

🗓️ Around two weeks in, we'll run a Mid-Cycle Review to inspect our progress and adapt as necessary. Giovanni Ferron has called this practice "horse trading". This means exchanging items that are in the sprint, where individual capacity is more or less, so the whole team can complete the sprint scope. You might say "I'm in the reeds here, so won't get round to this" or "some things were easier, so I can pick that up for you".

Week 4: cooldown

Cooldown is where responsibility area meetings, the full members’ meeting, and the cycle retrospective live. It is the main window in the cycle for accountability and democratic discussion, rather than packing those into the delivery weeks.

Responsibility area meetings

Decision role: steward operational decisions within their mandate; reporting and feedback that can shape direction or policy before anything becomes a formal proposal. Escalate co-op-wide policy out of these meetings via members’ discussion and How decisions are made.

During cooldown we hold meetings across the responsibility areas (this is each area’s reflection cadence for the cycle):

• Project management
• Finances
• Opportunity development
• Public communications
• Governance

Full members’ meeting

Decision role: deep democratic space for strategy, structure, staffing, and ideas that can become proposals — see Democracy, autonomy and trust.

One guiding principle of these meetings is "if it can't be said here, where else would it be said?" and underlines that full membership involves a deep level of mutual trust, respect, understanding and candour.

We normally cover:

1. A grounding exercise, as a treat
2. An extended check-in, which might include an update on personal life situation and deeper reflections on the co-op
3. Discussion points on pressing co-op matters like strategy, structure, staffing, etc.

This is the only meeting where we default to video call, and prefer AI transcription over a designated meeting minuter so that everyone can be fully present.

We don't by default share raw notes on these meetings.

Show + Tell + Retrospective

Decision role: celebrate and inspect the cycle’s work; evolve practices. Lasting co-op policy still goes through members’ meetings and proposals.

🗓️ During cooldown we run a Sprint Show + Tell + Retrospective. We begin with a Show and Tell and then reflect on any appreciations, puzzles, problems and ideas that came up during the cycle. These retrospectives help us reflect on what's happened, evolve our practices, and try to collectively solve any problems before planning the next cycle of work.