@wouter our current risk: meet.coop as a black hole where we dump hours and hours without generating income / compensation. We need a compensation scheme that turns that around
Yes, contribution accounting (including principles for payback and recognition of contributions) is a close second to income, as a priority. So . . number #1 for this week’s circle meeting?
Immediate considerations for contribution accounting . .
we settle a sales compensation for the sales teams as a percentage from the revenues of the members they have brought in / accompanied, of say 30% during the first year and 15% during subsequent years
consider that our organisations, and ourselves invest considerable time in building up reputation and maintaining relationships
after X months we evaluate and refine the compensation scheme
in case several people consider themselves involved in the “sales” action, we should have clear procedures to possibly split the compensation in a reasonable way.
The remaining revenue should fund first of all the servers and other fixed costs and then a series of hours in DevOps and the other operational circles.
. . . this incentivises first of all the sales work
We need to discuss - and personally I hope, agree - this principle.
Personally . . I will take no financial payback for the user-relations work that I will do in England and perhaps elsewhere. So I expect a contribution accounting regime that is oriented to more than money flows (based on hours I guess), even if the algebra of ‘credit’ of other kinds is not at the top of our priority list right now. This is another version of what wouter said above about work on reputation and relationships?
Item #2 for this week’s circle (?) - the ‘one pager’? If it’s primarily based on the circles’ contributions, it’s work for this circle. If it’s primarily based on ‘sales talk’ - service levels, prices, etc - it’s work for the Product/service/users circle?
It could be joint work - and personally, I think it is. Somehow, the principle of ‘contributions’ needs to be at the heart of the model of governance that is being ‘sold’ to our members? We’re inviting ‘solidarity’ contributions (and labour contributions) to a form of economic- and cultural-change practice, as well as selling room-availability?
As I think we agreed this Circle is responsible for organising the All Hands Circle, right? Tomorrow I won’t be able to make it, but I have put up the meeting in the forum Calendar and opened a wiki page with the draft agenda: https://wiki.meet.coop/wiki/23th_July_2020
Who could facilitate the meeting?
@mike Maybe it would be good if you could merge your comments re. one-pager into the About Wiki page, and make sure it is readable. If there are critical issues to be discussed about, list them elsewhere.
Also a list of open Items that need volunteers to work on would be useful. If we agree on the Desk app inside NextCloud, we could activate that one and get started in agile fashion
best & see you on Friday morning in the two meetings I think.
I think that in fact a third version is now needed, in the context of the past week’s recognition of issues. My HackMD version is trying to be systemic - building a description of the coop from the work of each of the circles (= a building a commons of some kind). Wouter’s original version is trying to be brief, and customer- and product/sales-oriented (which is critical). But I think we now must draft a version utterly focused around the MVP, and the economic rationale of meet.coop for the next six months . . and sell that to the initial users who open accounts? On the basis that this is not the long-term shape of meet.coop, but absolutely the present offering - and will they please join us on that understanding?
When we have three versions - then we should try to composite them in some way, taking features of each? But imo, the critical version is the one that’s not yet written. I propose that it urgently needs writing. To discuss tomorrow.
I am temporarily leaving our Organisational TODOs here until I set up our tools. For the time being I would like everyone who needs an account to add a row to the table with their preferred handle and email address for invites to our tools: https://hackmd.io/BAJAPGYeScWkHBF35GTrMQ?edit
@wouter draft compensation proposal on forum - for circulation and presentation at All Hands meeting (as proposal here)
@benhylau set up tools and draft document on usage of tools (when he returns in W1 of August)
@Graham to talk to colleagues at Platform 6 about invoice etc - and P6 becoming a Member
After we hear back from @Graham, someone to draft Open Collective accounting plan (as proposal here)
Circle: discuss more in detail the Profit & Loss scenario that Wouter drafted up here in the /modeling/ folder: https://cloud.meet.coop/f/1145
@mikemh@osb to start outreach to potential customers (this is in the meeting notes, but seems to not belong to this group)
