Community Meeting Transcript

Daniel T: That's a great idea, Anna, and, uh, next time [chuckles] we can set that up. But maybe not this time. Okay, so it's five past. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining. Um, for the agenda today, uh, we'll talk a bit about the working groups system. I'll also give a very, very high-level update on how the event date survey is going, um, and the, the process there. And, um, then we can talk about... Well, I mean, some people might have things that they'd like to get input from, uh, from the community for, and maybe try and gather some interest and put together working groups, and we can go into that, and we'll see how that goes. Uh, and as usual, if you have any questions, any things you want to add, please feel free to raise your hand and, uh, I'll do my best to, um, [lip smack] um, uh, yeah, like, um, manage the, the, the call. Uh, and if anybody wants to manage next week's call, that would be cool as well. Um, anyway, so, um, first, uh, let's talk about the survey a little bit. Uh, so as of now, there have been 638 responses, um, of which, uh, the identif-- like the people who are logged in, who are identified is about, uh, about 300 of that. So just under half is identified and unique. Um, and what I, I won't say, like much about the details because people have shared they don't want to, you know, we don't want to bias the vote too much. But what I will share is that there is a pattern. Um, there are like... There is a pattern that includes some support for the movement of the dates away from the, the, the previous dates in early July. Um, and, uh, there is also, um, uh, it's also fairly clear that the pattern is present whether looking at identified users or at anonymous user. The, the shape of the distribution of, uh, of dates, um, preferences or selections is more or less the same. And also, uh, since I've been looking at that since the first 24 hours and pretty much every day, I can say that it hasn't changed since the first 100 votes came in the first night. So whilst of course we want more votes and maybe like, you know, the next 600 votes are gonna change things completely, maybe if we had 2,000 votes, it would be a different shape. So far at 100, at 200, at 300, at 500, at 600, it's been more or less the same distribution. So it's possible that even if we stop the vote now, like we wouldn't lose any information compared to continuing it for another week. But we will continuing, continue it for another week. We'll gather more information. But so far, it seems to be a certain shape distribution, and that shape distribution has continued, uh, from, from day one, basically, uh, all the way to today. Um, and, um, with that shared, uh, let's talk a little bit about working groups. So, uh, there was a proposal which was hotly debated and worked on by various people over the last few weeks. Um, and the board finally voted on this on Monday and found a, a hopefully simple and elegant way to do, to do this, which you can find on the website under, um, uh, if you click on, uh, association on the top right and click on working groups. Oh, um, Ellen, uh, asked for a reminder of when the AG vote is. By the way, you can find that, uh, by going on the website, clicking on event and event dates, and all the information's at the top. Thank you, Celine, for updating the page. I forgot to mention that. Celine has updated the page and tidied it up and made it more useful. Um, so, uh, it's getting closer and closer to being a proper, uh, information pack. Um, we're still waiting on some information from, uh, from burns. In particular, if we could get a contact with somebody, uh, uh, who, uh, is helping organize burning nests, that would be super helpful. Um, but, um, the, um, uh, yeah, the, the page is getting more and more informative. Uh, the key piece, pieces missing are information from some burns and the results of the survey. And of course, as s-still the case, the, the birds nesting reports. So we have the information about where birds are nesting, but we don't have the information about how INAGA, which is the, um, uh, body that makes those decisions, how they make decisions about what permits to give and what permits not to give. Um, I think that's it for the vote. Have I missed something else? Is there something else I should mention? Celine, can you think of anything?

Céline S: No, I think that's fine. And yeah, as Daniel has mentioned, if you, uh, are connected to anybody from, um, any of the burns and you have some additional info, we would be, uh, very glad if you could share.

Daniel T: Um, yeah, and as Ellen answered [chuckles] her question, um, the, the final vote will be on 17th of September. It will open a few days before that. When the information is finalized, we'll open a remote, uh, async vote, and then there will be a general assembly on the, the 17th. Thank you, Justin. That would be super helpful. Um, there'll be a, a, a vote on the 17th. That is the vote of the general assembly. And what we'll be doing is a ranked voting system, because at the point where we do the vote, we still don't know which dates INAGA will, uh, will authorize. And if the top vote, uh, the top date turns out to be one that INAGA says, "No, you can't have it," if we have a ranked vote, we then know automatically what is the next best date, what's the next best date like, uh, selected by the community. So it will allow us to move quickly once we have the, the answer from INAGA, which we don't know exactly how long that's gonna take because it's a Spanish government and it's August, they're on holidays, la, la, la. You know, uh, if you've dealt with Spanish bureaucracy, you know that it's gonna be interesting. Are we done with the event dates? Have I missed something else? Okay, cool. Um, cool. Um, right. So working groups. Um, one of the things that you might have, um... Okay, so answering the question, is the idea s- still to have only five dates option for the vote? The exact number is hotly debated in the board minute, uh, meeting minutes if you check them. Um, we will, based on the call last week, have a selection of dates rather than all the dates. Um, so the board will pre-select some dates. Is it gonna be five? Is it gonna be seven? Not clear. Is it gonna include the, um, uh, the current date? Probably it should. We, we thought it's, it's not a good look to not include the current date, even though it, uh, you can still make a null decision by just rejecting all the dates. Um, like yeah, we could-- we, we probably will include the current date. Um, so yeah. Any more questions? Should I give it another 30 seconds? 'Cause every time I jump forward, there's another question. Okay, so I'll move on to the working groups. [chuckles] So if you've been around this event for a bit, you might have noticed that there's lots of people who want to do stuff, and it's been very complicated to actually get stuff done, to figure out how to organize to actually get stuff done. For a bunch of self-organizing burners, uh, we sometimes need a bit of help to, to actually organize, especially when it's doing stuff that affects the entire event. Um, like in the pr- in a previous, in a, in a different event, um, there was an organization that had a yearly meeting, and that's where some of the kind of organization happened. But still, even doing something like putting together a sound policy or, um, you know, changing the, the nature of how the event is organized was remarkably difficult. And right now we have an association. It's an association of members. Um, the, the, the members are, are the association, and the members are there representing the community. Um, but still, like, having some sort of way for people to, like, formally declare, "Hey, we're organizing, we're trying to solve this problem," and announce that to the community is really helpful because it, it then helps them, like, plant a flag and say, "Hey, we're doing this thing. Like, we want to engage about this. Um, here's our meeting minutes. Here's our goals. Here's our working materials. Here's what, here's what we're doing." And that, um, can help, um, um, can help, um, uh, uh, people engage with, uh, with the community. Um, and, um, the, um... Sorry, I've kind of lost my train of thought very briefly. The, um, uh, the, the way we did this is we passed a resolution that establishes something called working groups, and we thought quite a bit about this. We de- uh, debated quite a bit, and what we tried to do is to not make kind of a, a system that recentralizes the authority and says like, "Oh, the board decides what working groups are allowed to exist," and s- and, and, you know, uh, the authority somehow flows from the boards to the working groups and so on. Instead, the community, like any community members who want to work on something can, can get together and register a working group. So it's a kind of registration process. For doing that, you approach a secretary, which is Ben, uh, and you say to them, or you say to him, um, like, "I'd like to register this working group. Here's the, the people who are coordinating this working group. Here's what we're trying to do. Here's roughly when we expect it to be, to be done." And, you know, you share some stuff about the working group. A name for the working group can be helpful. And then as an association or as a, as a, yeah, like a part of the association, we'll then try to figure out how to support you by, for example, creating a Discord channel for you, adding a section on the website so you can publish your minutes there, um, and, you know, providing you whatever support we can to help you, uh, get things done. Um, it creates a, it creates a kind of vessel or kind of container for the work that you want to do, whether that's working on the sound policy, working on, um, I don't know. It, it, it could be working on a, a statute change if you f- feel you want to get a, a new s- like statutes to be changed. For example, one of the things we might want to change the statutes for, um, is that based on what we checked, we would like to have an election to have more, uh, board members and more diverse board. But we can't actually right now because the statutes say that we can only have an election once every two years, uh, unless somebody steps down. So we could have somebody step down, or what we could do is we could change the statutes and, like, adjust the way the board elections happen and maybe have... That would also make sense from a continuity perspective, have staggered board elections, so every year with two-year terms. That would kind of... Like, there's a lot of, um, problems like this that the organization has, um, that, that are kind of organization-wide. And the point of the working groups is to provide a, an easy container for somebody who wants to solve one of those problems to be able to say, "Hey, I want to solve this problem. Does anybody want to help me? Here's my flag. I'm gonna try and figure out how to solve this." [computer notification sound] Ellen, you have a question or a statement?

Ellen K (Dr Plantes): I have a problem I want to solve.

Daniel T: Ah, fantastic.

Ellen K (Dr Plantes): But I wonder, I don't need to jump in straight away if you still have stuff to finish.

Daniel T: I, I think there's not a huge amount for me to finish there. If you look at the working groups page that Anna just posted, there is a link to the resolution. It includes some guidance. Um, the guidance, uh, to anybody who's been following the NCA for, like, since its inception, it's not gonna be a huge surprise. It's things like, you know, be transparent, engage with the community, um, like try and publish, like, material. Try to, try and, uh, be clear with people about what you're doing. One of the things that is, I think, important to understand about, um, these kinds of decisions and the legitimacy of these kind of decisions made for the whole organization is that- If you're very transparent and you've published a lot of stuff about what you're doing and, um, uh, somebody has missed it 'cause they didn't wanna check Discord and they didn't wanna check the website and they've just like been off the channels, and then the decision is made and they find out about it after the decision's made, after the change is made, and they look and they see, "Oh, I could have been involved all this time, but I didn't for whatever reason," then they're likely to accept the, that the process happened. Uh, even if they disagree with the decision, they might be like, "You know what? I could have been involved. I chose not to be involved. Fine. It's, it's been made. If I want to change it, I'll create a, uh, like a, I'll, I'll follow a process to change, to, to make a new decision." Um, but if they h- if they don't know about it, if it happened in, uh, somewhere where they didn't know about it, there was no way for them to be involved, then even if they agree with the decision, they might like feel upset that, "I don't agree with this decision because I wasn't consulted and I didn't have a chance to, to say that I cared about this." So all the a- all the advice and the guidance is just designed to help increase the success of these working groups so that, for example, a working group working on, say, sound policy actually gets to, you know, design, define, implement a sound policy, uh, across the event. Um, I think that's what I'm gonna say about this, and I w- I would love for people like Ellen to, uh, step in and say like what they think could be done and what they'd like to... Like it doesn't have to be a working group that you can start. If you mention it in this call, like maybe somebody will read the minutes or will l- be looking for ideas of things that can be done. They might read the minutes and be like, "Oh yeah, somebody mentioned they wanna work on sound policy." I'm really going on about this. Um, like, "Oh, I could do that. I'll sign up to do the, the sound pol- like I wanna start a sound policy group," or, uh, you know, something else. So it doesn't have to be something you wanna work on. It can be just something you think should be done and you wish somebody did do a working group about it. Right. Ellen, over to you.

Ellen K (Dr Plantes): Sure. Uh, there's a bunch of people I don't know in the chat, which is great. So I worked on Barrio Support this year, and one thing that made life really complicated for us was that we had to like reinvent the wheel a bit. Um, we didn't have access to any of the materials that existed in the other event and we... Yeah, we were a new team. We needed to just sort shit out and that took quite a lot of energy. And I think a big part of what made this year run smoothly was that a lot of departments did have access to, uh, things that were stored in containers like from Cantina or from, uh, Tool House or all the other things in the organization, the old organization that like were used to make things work. Uh, and so what I would really like to work on is, uh, thinking about that together as like a community. I- is there a path for us moving forward to, um, can we purchase materials that's in the containers that was used for the completely different event? Can we rent it in the future? Do we need to think about having completely new stuff? Because at the moment, like none of the things that, that helped us run Cantina or helped us run these departments smoothly are actually ours. And so what I'd really like to see is a kind of working group to think about those topics, and I don't think that's something that really like-- It's not something a coordinator can sort out on their own. It's not something like Cantina should have to make a decision on, on their own in their corner, uh, or Workhouse should have to take a decision on their corner. I think it should be something that we're like multiple people thinking about and making suggestions about. So I was really hoping that there was someone maybe on the call, I'll also put it on Discord, who would be keen, uh, to like look into it, suggest a working group to the board, see if we can like drum up some interest in, in, in thinking through like how do we wanna approach that transition and how do we wanna look at an event where like either we do transition some assets or, uh, we don't, and what does that look like? And I think that's it. So if you are interested, you can just reach out to me. I'm ellen@nobodys.team, uh, or on Discord, I am Dr. Plantis. So that's... And I'd also really like a sound policy team. So go someone who wants to work on a working group for sound policy for sure. I'll leave it there.

Daniel T: Viktor, are you wanting to s- uh, to raise a new working group or is that a response to Ellen?

Viktor V: It's a new, new one.

Daniel T: Okay. So let's do this system that if you want to, uh, mention one, you raise your hand, 'cause I know there's somebody who's told me they want to mention another working group but they haven't raised their hand that yet. So Viktor, you go first and maybe they can raise their hand and go after.

Viktor V: Sure. Um-

Daniel T: Uh, unless somebody has an answer to Ellen, but I guess you can jump in and... Anyway, let's, let's just j- go for it, Viktor. Sorry.

Viktor V: Um, well, first I'm happy with, to, to help with the, the sound policy group. [laughs] Since it's been brought up so many times. But um, I mostly work on the, the Middle of Elsewhere so that's what I'm asking about. I noticed that there's no specific channel on it on Discord and I wanna get some discussions rolling about, uh, how we can simplify the technical setup and I guess there's other o- open questions regarding what the, you know, the stage can look like and the construction itself since it was, it was all very improvised last year. So question is: Would that be a candidate for a working group or is that already a department since it's like a existing recurring topic thing or not a single problem? What's... How do you feel about that?

Daniel T: Does anybody have a feeling about this?

Viktor V: Or is that just semantics and, and we just need a Discord channel and then take it from there?

Daniel T: Sorry, can, can you repeat the last bit of the question? Maybe I was a little bit distracted.

Viktor V: Oh, should I, uh, apply for a working group through that process or-

Daniel T: For the sound policy

Viktor V: For-- no, for, for the middle of elsewhere. Or is that a department and it's just missing a channel in, in Discord?

Daniel T: Right. So departments are yet to be defined exactly how they function. There is, in fact, there probably will be a working group that will try and figure that out, uh, because-

Viktor V: Yeah

Daniel T: ... we've sort of, um, sort of put our finger in the air and somehow a structure landed in our consciousnesses, and we use that structure to, um, uh, run an event. Um, but that's not a very good long-term way to do it because we need some kind of way that this thing updates and changes and organizes itself and so on. So we, in the working group proposal, we explicitly said we're not defining how departments work. Um, I think the, the conceptual difference is that departments are there to, like, make the event happen. So, like, let's say the infrastructure department and with a middle of elsewhere team is there to, you know, build the event and build the middle of elsewhere. Um, whilst the working groups are there to make things happen in between the events. Like, for example, it's not specifically like the sound policy 2027 group, it's the sound policy group for the event. Or it's not the how do we, uh, organize, um, I don't know, um... How do, how do we organize departments, department that's a working group that's operating between the, the events or a-across the events. Does that make sense?

Viktor V: I think so, yeah.

Daniel T: Cool. Let's move over to Anna.

Anna T: Yeah. My, my understanding on that one because, yeah, this, this is a challenge for me as well. It's working out like, okay, so what is like a department like consent or, um, container that we, we have always, and what is like a working group? And I think I see it as like a coming together of people that help the community make a decision about something, and then it kind of runs and, and they disband. Um, there might, might be other, other instances, but like, for example, the event dates, you know, it sort of comes together. We, uh, form a process by which the community's like consulted and forms, forms this decision, and then it happens, and then that's implemented. But there's no need for that, um, that working group to continue then. So it's, it's more around like the, the organization than the creation of the event. Does, does that resonate with, with other people?

Daniel T: Justin seems to agree with you. No. Justin seems to agree with you. Uh, question regarding the date and for subjects like the tempo. Uh, I'll, I'll take that unless somebody else raises their hand or if you wanna say something more, Anna. Oh, please say something more then.

Anna T: Yeah, I kind of... Sorry, just reading. [muttering] Oh, I, I'm not responding on that question. Um, it's, uh... So there's also something that, uh, Celine and I-- please talk, Celine. Um, [chuckles] we'd like to present, which is that we, um, started with various other people making meetings around, uh, governance. So this can also be a place where people who want to form working groups can come and kind of get support, find, find other, other people to do it. It's, uh, it's just a, um... If-- I really feel you'd present this better, Celine. [chuckles]

Céline S: No, no, all good. I just thought I would, uh, start sharing the screen, so feel free to, to finish your sentence if you... Or should I, should I go ahead? Up to you.

Anna T: Yeah, go ahead.

Céline S: Um, yeah, great. I mean, there was actually, um, the working group built that is called governance, right? And we would like to briefly present it to you so that you have a bit of an overview what could be. I think it's now nice, um, as we have an example of a working group. Um, so first of all, what is very important to us is to be as transparent as we can. So if you, um, have some feedback there, also feel free to share it with us. But I'll briefly guide you through how we do things, but also what is the core of the work that we see within this working group. Um, so first of all, we, um, meet every second week, um, at 4:00 p.m. CET on Mondays. Um, and you're very free to also join, uh, this meeting. Maybe you give me a short heads up, so I can introduce you a little bit to the format in case if the information you got here was not enough. So feel free to reach out to me before, but once again, you can also just join. Um, we also have the agenda that I will, uh, briefly share after, so you can see how we work. Um, but the really core of what we're doing is empowering the community members to, um, participate in the association in actually many ways. Um, so the group has already thought about, uh, certain principles, also principles around, um, the working group. Um, yeah, transparency is one of them. I'll get back to that in, in a second. Um, communicate and educate, um, the members. Uh, I think a very good example is the event date page. Um, yeah, we've shared it before in the, in the chat as well, right? Um, it's about gathering information, making sure that once the GA meets, we can actually take informed decisions. Um, so this is the second point here. Um, yeah. And then we also want to make sure that we facilitate discussions, um, that we define how we, um, make- Participatory decision-making.

Anna T: Mm-hmm.

Céline S: Um, this all still needs to be figured out, right? But the team is, uh, starting, uh, to work on that. Then create working groups. I think there is a very important, uh, star here or a side note. Um, so forming working groups is not dependent on the governance, uh, working group, of course, as Danielle just mentioned, but of course some, um, might, um, uh, erase out of, of this working group. Um, yeah, and I think that's kind of like the short summary. Um, yeah, we're-- we have the governance, um, Discord channel. Feel free to also add your inputs and thoughts there. So we'll make sure to, um, also transparently share our progress there. Um, and if you want, you can also go, if you're interested, uh, into the details, um, into our log, where you can see always the topics that we have on our agenda, uh, where we stand, and also who is working on it. So basically, also now putting this, uh, document together that I have just shown was, uh, Kate, Anna, um, Bambi, Peter, and then Danielle and Matt also gave some feedback on it. Um, so it's really a joint effort. Um, yeah, and I think that's the high-level summary of it. Not sure if I forgot something. And once again, I mean, as we're an early stage, um, working group, we're very open to feedback, and if you feel like something is missing or something can be, can be improved or you wanna contribute, just reach out, drop me a message, say it out loud here. Um, yeah, very curious to hear about your opinion.

Daniel T: Okay. Thank you.

Céline S: Thank you.

Daniel T: Thank you so much. Uh, sorry, go on, Anna.

Anna T: I, I think in a way the, the thing I would add is that I'm not entirely sure this is a working group. It's, it's definitely a group of people meeting and, and inputting on governance, but whether it, it's, it itself is a working group or like a s- a seed that, and a support for, for working groups, um, I'm not quite sure. I think I need to understand better like the, um, if a w- working group is coming together to work on one particular thing and then disappearing, this is more of like the kind of the... I have like garden images in my head. It's more like the [chuckles] the seed bed, um, that, uh, that can help with them. I don't know if that-- does that, uh, make sense to you, Celine?

Céline S: Yep. Um, I was just thinking, right? I mean, a certain part actually also belongs to the governance working group from my point of view, such as the decision-making process. I think this wouldn't be taken out of the governance working group as it is really the core of it. Whereas I agree that, for instance, the date selection was now a bit of like a sub-stream of the, of the working group. Uh, so in my understanding, it could still fit in, but, um-

Anna T: Mm-hmm

Céline S: ... uh, I, I get your point. Um, uh, and it could be a bit of the seed bed. Um, makes sense. Yeah.

Daniel T: It's kind of like this community call is not a working group, it's a community call, and then-

Céline S: [chuckles]

Daniel T: ... working group-- many working groups will hopefully emerge from this call. Well, we'll see. Um, do you wanna say more, Anna, or?

Anna T: No, no, no. We can, can talk on Monday and, uh, get further in our exploration [chuckles] of what it is.

Daniel T: So to summarize for people who have joined since, uh, like, and people are still joining, um, we are talking about working groups, which are a mechanism for people to get things done, uh, in between the events. For example, setting up a sound policy, amending the statutes, um, deciding on a cantina organization system. Um, whatever it is that you... Like, you know, it doesn't have to be a, a, a statutes thing. It doesn't have to be an association thing. It can be connected to an event. Or as Matthew says, like, you know, uh, a, a group that would try and figure out how to improve the, the, um, uh, Middle of Elsewhere, that could be a working group. It could be in the department, but usually what we, or at least what I've, what I've observed... I have limited experience of the event organization part of things, but what I've observed, uh, also in the camp that I'm in, is that usually by the time the event is coming up, all the focus is on making the event a success. And a lot of the, the thinking that could have happened to try and improve the sort of architecture that supports the event goes to like, you know, second place because we got an event to put together. This year, that was extraordinarily the case, obviously, 'cause we had an event to put together incredibly quickly with very limited resource. Um, but, um, but every year that seems to have been a kind of thing where, uh, like I know some people who like feel quite demoralized that they come out to the event full of ideas, that they want things, they want things to change, they want their, their learnings to be applied to make next year better, and then there's just nothing to connect to to make those changes happen so that next year is actually better. And so the working groups are kind of that, um, uh, that, uh... Yeah, there was a, uh, Middle of Elsewhere lead, um, party girl. Yeah. Um, the, so the working groups are that connective tissue that hopefully helps us package up this work that happens in between that helps improve the event. So if you've just joined and you just heard me say this, and you have an idea that, oh, like, you know, I think this thing should be done, like, you know, somebody should work on this. Even if you're not the person to work on this, please share it because people might read the minutes and use them to get ideas about things that could be improved. They might have forgotten about this. They might not know that the, the cantina needs to be reorganized or whatever it is that you've observed that could be done better next year. And not all the working group ideas will get energized, but if you have some idea of something you... Or, or maybe everything is perfect about Elsewhere, there's nothing to improve. I mean, if no one has any ideas, I guess that's the only conclusion. Um, we're just gonna change the dates and what is it? Like, uh, work on a bit of governance, and then that's it. No? Oh, there's, there's maybe an idea. Cheers, Celine.

Céline S: It just, just a very short comment. Now that you said it, um, the channel 20, um, 27 was better, right? It's actually quite inspiring. I just started reading, but maybe we can also pick it up next time. But, um, there is some cool things in there, and maybe some working groups could, um, be formed out of these ideas.

Daniel T: Yeah, that channel is probably a good source of ideas for things that, uh, that can be improved. Um, Yakir, no, that was just a, a, a made-up, um, idea. Um, I have no idea if Cantina needs to be reorganized. Um, if it does, that working group should definitely spend a lot of time talking to Cantina, and ideally include some, some people who, who are in Cantina rather than just do it and tell them that they've reorganized the Cantina processes. Um, [chuckles] I would recommend... For all working groups, I would recommend talking to the people that are impacted by whatever you're doing. [chuckles] Go on, Anna.

Anna T: Well, I, I don't think it's actually possible that you would do, do something in the working group like reorganize everything because the, the point really is, is that we are... [chuckles] Sorry, it's just you keep saying it, Daniel. But then, like, what we come to then is a vote, a poll is, is come, is finding the, the way that everyone wants to move forward. It's not that you form and then you make a decision and, uh, put it on people because, uh, then probably you're gonna find that they don't actually do it, right? So, um, yeah, I just wanted to, to say on that, like the, the outcome, I guess, of a working group is more likely to be a proposal to the community that is then, um, voted on in some way, presumably.

Daniel T: Well, I, I, I think that's worth clarifying that it doesn't have to be a proposal to the community that is voted on. Voting is one of the mechanisms that we have. For certain decisions where, like, the buy-in of the entire community is needed, that might be the right mechanism. Something like event dates, for example. Yes, that impacts everybody. It's like there's no right choice that whichever date we pick, somebody's gonna be finding that that's not the right date for them. Um, there's, there's absolutely no right choice there, so it needs to be a full community engagement, very transparent, very open process where everybody has a chance to participate and has a chance to influence it. Um, taking the Cantina reorganization as an example, um, if a group decides to, like, spend the next three months, like a group who knows how Cantina is operating and decides to spend the next three months figuring out a better system for Cantina, they might spend the next three months having weekly or biweekly meetings or drawing diagrams, et cetera. And then all they need for that change to happen is for the Cantina team to adopt it. Um, the rest of the event doesn't need to even know about it really, but it can help to plant that flag and say, "Hey, we're working on this," and to like, you know, make the process transparent and so on, so that people feel like they could have pa- like, uh, especially Cantina people who happen to not know about this working group feel like they could have participated. But how you make change happen really depends on the specific type of change. Um, I think it's something that I really like about this community actually, that there's a lot of independence. And, uh, so for example, I think at one point there was a rule that you have to have a, a, a single, uh, like in a, in a related event, there was a rule you have to have a single event f- uh, a single me- a single meta lead for an area. And Cantina specifically said like, "No, fuck that. We're gonna have four q- four meta leads." And they just decided to organize themselves however they wanted. Um, and I think that's, that's great that 'cause we are burners, this is part of our spirit. We're self-organizing, and it's good that we choose how we want to organize. And there's some things where we need to centralize things and coordinate. Probably the sound policy is one of those. Event dates probably, you know, if we rock up on the site at different dates, it's not gonna work quite so well. Um, also for permit purposes. Um, but um, but a lot of things can be done without a vote, without a, like a, a, a survey and that sort of stuff. You just need to engage with the people who are impacted. The Middle of Elsewhere thing, for example, that somebody mentioned, I don't think you need the whole community to vote on Middle of Elsewhere improvements. You need the Middle of Elsewhere team and whoever cares about the Middle of Elsewhere to have a chance to, like, see what's happening and participate in it. And then so long as the people who are building Middle of Elsewhere are behind the, the change, then it will happen, and it'll become the new Middle of Elsewhere. Hopefully that makes sense.

Anna T: I feel a lot of clarity on this now.

Daniel T: Great. So the improvements are event dates, a bit of governance, Cantina reorganization, and Middle of Elsewhere changes. That's what we're doing this year. Oh, and the new site. Oh, transitions. Yes. Sorry. Thank you, Yakir. It is recorded officially that Discord's user interface is horrifying. In fact, that could be a working group. Come up with the right platform that's better than Discord to replace Discord. Um, nobody on the board feels particularly motivated to do that, but if a working group is energized to go and, like, improve the situation, please do. Now, this is one where you're gonna need to get buy-in from all those people who are like, you know, using the platform. But, and you might need to get like, you know, some kind of community engagement, a kind of survey or something like that, but that can happen. And if the whole community says, "No, we don't-- we hate Discord, we wanna move everything to IRC," I don't mind. I can use IRC. Um, I think we might lose a few users in the process, but, you know. I'll dust up my-- dust off my RSSI install and, uh... [sniffs] Sorry, I'm making geek jokes. Anything else? Discords, Middle of Elsewhere, Cantina, transitions? Well, you don't have to think about all of these things right now. You can come up with a working group any time you want. You can come up with a w- working group right after this call finishes. You can come up with it in the shower. You can come up with it while driving, and then you just need to, you know, decide to work on it. And then, uh, if you want it to be registered, then, you know, let Ben know. And then there is a, there is a process where the, the board approves the working groups, but we have only a limited number of reasons to reject a working group, which are basically just if it's exactly the same as another working group or if it's just so far out of what the event is doing that like, you know, it just doesn't make sense. Um, and there was one more reason, but like it's, uh, uh, w- we can't just reject working groups because we don't like them, for example. Um, forgotten what the other reason was. Um, yeah, if, if your working group says, uh, is a working group that we're gonna do a working group to deci- to, to allocate, uh, the budget of, uh, of Elsewhere to a charity, the board might say, "Well, you don't have the authority to do that. Um, you can do a working group to talk about charity donations, but you can't do a working group to allocate the budget 'cause you don't have authority to allocate the budget." So that might be a ground for refusing a, a working group. Okay, I guess this has been amazingly clear. [notification sound] Ah, Heather.

Heather W: Let me, um... So, uh, as far as working groups go, sorry, my, my phone was cutting out a bit, uh, so I'm not sure if it was covered. But, um, art, um, I'm sure there's lots of people working already on it, um, but is that something that is a potential working group considering it's a huge part of, of the spirit of a burn and, and the-- what we give to the playa?

Daniel T: So you mean an art project specifically or-

Heather W: Uh, just, um, managing the artists that are interested in bringing art, um, kind of a, uh, touching base with the, the projects, you know. Um, I don't even know what the situation is as far as, um... I know s-some, some projects in other burns are funded. Um, I'm not even sure how Elsewhere works or Nowhere worked, you know. Um, I'm not on Discord, unfortunately. I should put myself on there. Um, but is that something that would be kind of a potential working group, or do you see-- think that that's something that's already kind of, um, uh, has the support it needs?

Daniel T: Yeah. So there is a creativity department that deals with art and has a lot of like, uh, history and infrastructure to go and connect with artists and support them and like lots of processes and so on, uh, for how to support the artists, how to help them. There is a budget allocated to the creativity department. I think it was about €62,000 this year. Uh, we had originally planned 50, but then we bumped it up to 62. Um, and, uh, so that already exists. What could be a working group or it could be within the department. I mean, it w- it would be weird if there was a working group about how to do the art, like the creativity differently without involving people who have done that, have worked in that department. Um, but there could be a working group for doing a specific kind of improvement. Like, I don't know, redefining the sound car policy could be a working group if like, you know... I, I do go on about sound policies, don't I? [chuckles] I like to sleep. Um, I don't know why I go to this event. Anyway, um, [chuckles] does anybody else have another, another idea they want to bring up or any other question? Either I've been very clear or I've been very unclear.

Ellen K (Dr Plantes): I think very clear. [laughs]

Daniel T: Okay. I, another working group idea could be like the solar power thing. I think there's already some discussions going on about this, like figuring out how to make better use of solar power or how to make better use of like these, uh, under- underground fridges and things like that. Okay. Well, it's been 46 min-- well, for- 40 minutes since we started the, the call. Um, does anybody have any other points they wanna bring to share with the community before we call it a day? Doesn't have to be a working group. [notification sound] Go on, Ellen.

Ellen K (Dr Plantes): Yeah. So from September, if you connect to the call, I'm gonna try and get some Barrios on board to feature some of the cool things people have been building, and I've already got a few, uh, touches 'cause I think that one thing that we really need is that if we have more Barrios actually like sharing their really cool ideas, and so we can get some of that like creativity going across the year and you have some more time because I feel like we're often like we're in the event, we see these cool things and we go, "Yeah!" I wanna make that, and then we forget. So I'm gonna try and keep, like, that energy running, and, uh, so far there's a lot of plumbing ideas. [laughs] I've got an intense amount of plumbing suggestions. Uh, but if you have something, if you're in a barrio, you know a barrio, you wanna feature something, like, reach out. We can do other topics than plumbing too.

Daniel T: Cool. Um, yeah. Um, okay. So, um, a bit of a next week announcement. So last week some people were saying, "Oh, we want to share. We would-- Like, it would be nice to have a call that's about sharing, uh, perspectives about the event dates, uh, decision." Um, so we decided to pre-announce that next week's, uh, community call is gonna be basically, uh, dedicated to people being able to share about the, um, uh, the event dates. Um, the idea was there's an hour and a half time slot. Let's see how many people apply. We divide the time between the people, and everybody gets some kind of fixed time which they can use to share whatever they wanna share, and that is then recorded and minuted, and hopefully people see that and it can also become part of the information pack for voting. Um, however, nobody has actually asked to share anything yet, uh, despite this being a popular idea last week. If we don't get anybody wanting to share anything, um, I don't know exactly what we'll do. We'll probably improvise. Maybe do a dance or something. I don't know. But, um, the-- We'll figure something out. But if you do want to share your opinion about the event dates, please let us know. Who knows? You might be the only person. You might get a whole hour and a half to talk about the event dates and express your opinion, like, at length. Um, or, you know, you don't have to use up the entire time slot if you don't want to. Um, meanwhile, please do vote if you haven't yet. So in the survey, to be clear, this is the survey, not the vote, so but please express your opinion in the survey. Um, ex- uh, share the survey link with other people as well. Uh, they don't have to be people who are at-- uh, who came to Elsewhere last year. They can be people who came, who go to other burns, who h- or have been to other burns. They can be people who used to come to a burn in Spain some time ago but stopped coming because it was too hot, um, or for other reasons. And, you know, that, like, I've sent this to a few of my friends, and I've been like, "Hey, like, we're looking at moving the dates. Like, you know, maybe you could help express where you think the dates should be. Like, where would you be able to come?" So we can have that information. The, the point of this survey is basically to find out the commercial viability of the event at various dates because, you know, if 60% of our members can't come on a specific date, it doesn't matter if there's no wildfire risk because there won't be an event because we won't sell tickets and there won't be people turning up. Um, whilst conversely, if everybody wants to turn up but there's no, uh, that there's a wildfire risk or there's birds nesting and so on, that's, that's the other side of the problem. So it's a lot of different information trying to balance, and the point of the survey is to find out when an event is commercially viable, when people want to come, when they're able to come for, you know, the event, the build, the strike, et cetera, so we don't end up scheduling the event on a date when, um, nobody can come or nobody, like, or, yeah, basically everybody says they're not gonna come. All right. Cool. And the event li- the vote link is at the top of the homepage. Yakir, you wanna add something before we call it off? Yakir?

Yakir R: If, uh, if you build it, they will come.

Daniel T: I mean, I voted that I'll come on every week, and I think I'll come even if we do it on Christmas. In fact, that might be an extra appeal for me, uh, 'cause then I don't have to travel to, you know, see my parents and stuff, so it might be much nicer. But, um, [laughs] like, I suspect some other people will find Christmas a bit difficult. Um, if you have preferences, [laughs] then please express your preferences in the, in the poll. Heather is shocked by this, uh, revelation. Anyway, uh, yeah, so the link is at the top of the page and, um, let's make sure that, like, l- like, uh, the information will help us make sure that the day that comes when we build it is enough day to pay for the toilets, which are still the most expensive part of the event. Thank you very much, everyone. Have a lovely rest of the week, um, and enjoy your dreams of working groups and, uh, resolutions and policies and sound policies especially. Um, I'll see you all next week. Bye.

Céline S: See you.

Ellen K (Dr Plantes): Thank you for facilitating. Bye, everyone.

Anna T: Bye.

Ellen K (Dr Plantes): Thank you.