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.
Daily: check-ins
🗓️ 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.
Weekly: Responsibility Area meetings
We have a meeting focusing on a different responsibility area each week, so each responsibility area reports in a meeting on roughly a monthly basis:
- Project management
- Finances
- Opportunity development
- Public communications
- Governance
Ventunightly1: Cycles
🗓️ Every three weeks on a Tuesday morning, just after 10 AM, we'll kick-off the new three-week cycle 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!
🗓️ 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".
🗓️ On the last day of the cycle, typically on 3:30 PM on a Monday, we'll do 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.
Monthly: Full Member meetings
We hold a monthly meeting of full members. 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:
- A grounding exercise, as a treat
- An extended check-in, which might include an update on personal life situation and deeper reflections on the co-op
- 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.
References
- In Italian, "ventuno" means "twenty-one"; our cycles run on a period of 3 weeks, so we had to invent a nice sounding name for that period. 2 weeks = fortnight = fourteen nights, and so 3 weeks = ventunight.