2005-11 PPO Business meeting minutes

Ideas for the agenda (emailed out beforehand)

Setting up rotating "shifts" at St. Francis (re: who opens the door, sets up the table, facilitates the evenings, etc)
Deciding what to do at St. Francis the evening before Thanksgiving (Wed. 11/23). The church employees are going to be cooking turkey dinner late into the night that evening in the kitchen. Too loud probably to show a movie. Do we want to just close down that night or do something else? If we do something else, would people even show the night before a holiday?
Plan out our "Harvest Potluck" 11/30 event... live music, dancing, potluck, decorations, publicity, etc.
Wednesday evenings after 11/30... need to get the schedule down.
Rex Burkholder's assistant wrote back and said that 12/7 doesn't work after all, that he could do 1/4 instead.
The Yahoo group. It's relatively quiet these past few days, but there's been a lot of frustration from folks who think there's too much "irrelevant" yammering. Do we want to split into different groups; is that too confusing; moderate the group instead, etc.?
What are the prep and outreach working groups up to?
When we have speakers, it might be a good idea to have a "room captain" during Q&A
one of us who can help the speaker by keeping track of raised hands and calling on people in an orderly and fair way.
The idea of forming a small committee of sorts to draft a statement to Mayor Potter's office urging him to take peak oil considerations into his vision planning. A few folks I've talked to are very interested in doing this.
What to do with this database I have of people who have filled in the sign-in sheet all of these months. Start contacting folks? Telling them what?
talking points for Portland Peak Oil
portlandpeakoil.org/cs update
have something (group/structure/plan/...) around finance but from the point of view of how to do things on the cheap as most people don't have any money to invest anyway.
Maybe plan for a Wednesday on a how to of bartering and/or local currency?
maybe a Wednesday night around " lightning talks" which are a series of 5-10 minutes on a series of subject.
Regular minute taking..(posted online?)
Who's handling Wed's schedule
Wed schedule through 12-15 (if possible, for publicity scheduling reasons)
Media guidelines around filming attendees without their permission.
Volunteer round-up...Misi calling, projects, script
Party...last wed in Nov.

Present at the meeting

Jeremy O'Leary, Jim Wrathall, Pam Leitch, Emily Pollard, Theressa Latoski, Norris Thomlinson, Robin Canaday, Jennifer Rueda, Gene Berk, Mike Dill, John O'Brien

Agreed topics for the agenda

Schedule: -opening/setup -who decides the scheduling of St. Francis -Wednesdays thru 12/5
Talking points for Portland Peak Oil
Yahoo list/web site
Media guidelines
Room captain idea
Sign-in sheet/volunteers
Outreach and prep group updates
The neighborhoods/"circles" model

1. Schedule:

We passed around a sheet where two people signed up for each Wed. night. Both people will be responsible for getting to St. Francis at 6:30pm and opening door, setting up long table, greeting people, etc.

Who decides the Wed. night scheduling from now on:

1st Weds. handled by prep team

2nd Weds. handled by the business meeting

3rd/4th and occasionally 5th Weds. will be handled by outreach team starting with 12/21

Upcoming schedule:

11/9: General mtg. (see more below)

11/16: Mark Lakeman and Charlie Hales - "community building"

11/23: Showing of "Affluenzia" using Pam's projector, Jim's speakers...

11/30: Peak Oil Party with local food potluck and dancing (see more below)

12/7: Prep meeting, focusing on what are you doing now

12/14: General mtg.

Nov. 9th General meeting details:

Pam will handle intro. Jim W. will facilitate introduction go-round. Small group discussions will be center on neighborhood, which is a big change from the topic-oriented groups in past general meetings. Who from the core handles each circle will be determined. There will be an assessment to see if this NE / NW / SE / SW discussion split-up was effective.

Peak Oil Party on 11/30 responsibilities:

Jim W. will look into music/dancing bands. Jennifer will design a poster and/or get help designing it. Emily will post to CNRG list to see if any orgs. want to do tabling. Mike will get KBOO publicity on board. We determined that we might have to pay a band something to lead dancing and we could request a donation at the door to go toward this.

2. Talking Points for PPO:

For 10 minutes we discussed a few possible talking points such as "localize" and "we're not experts/no one can predict", and we decided to use Wed. 12/28 as an event where we call upon the community to help PPO focus and create a "vision" and articulation of what we value.

3. Yahoo list/web site:

We decided not to form a second Yahoo group. Instead, there is the possibility of setting up a bulletin board with topic threads on the web site. Jeremy will put together a tech group to talk about the website and the possibly implementation of CivicSpace.

No group business should be conducted on the Yahoo list. Please use the business, prep, or outreach lists to conduct PPO business. John, Robin, Jennifer, and Gene have been added to the business email list. FYI: there are now 231 people on the announcements list, 129 on the Yahoo list, and the web site has received over 4300 visits and an average of 29 visits a day currently.

4. Media guidelines:

Filming is OK, but is has to be OK'd beforehand by the business group. The room captain for the evening will have to deal with how to arrange things such that those who do not feel comfortable being taped during the Q&A will not be taped.

5. Room captain idea:

We agreed it was a good idea to have a room captain to help the speaker(s) answer raised hands in an orderly way. It needs to be someone bold and organized. Each time we have a speaker, we'll determine before the speaker starts who will be room captain. Side note: we need to ask the church employees about turning down the answering machine so incoming calls aren't so loud.

6. Sign-in sheet/volunteers:

Emily will get Misi a list of those who have checked "I have ideas" on the sign-in sheets. She could call these people with the purpose of finding out what their ideas are.

7. Outreach and prep group updates:

Jeremy acted as prep group liaison and shared with us what that group has been up to, including first Wednesday night ideas. Emily, Jim W. and others shared from the outreach group, including next weekend's letter writing party, progress on a tabling backdrop, and the upcoming talk to the Rotary Club.

8. The neighborhoods/"circles" model:

Didn't really get into this; it started to get late. Emily will soon email Pam a list of those from the sign-in sheets who have noted their neighborhood.