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MBT Committee Meeting, Monday 8 June 2026 at Balam-Balam 7.00pm Present: Jade, Sarah, Wade, Simon, Rob, Maggie.
Solarpunk meetups - (Started as how to get people interested in project – how do we continue?) - Move next meeting to not clash with talk on data centre emissions? – room is already booked; - other meetings are already scheduled on Meetup. - 270 members on our Meetup - Other event might be recorded - Concluded we stick with booking as is - Could send someone to other event.
Membership payment: only a few have sent the money - Need to put together a list of members - Jade: A membership platform would be ideal – is there a platform out there? - Sarah: by email is adequate - Depends how many on our spreadsheet – is it maintainable
Linux Vic – under the ElectronWorkshop.com.au umbrella. Wade went over things with Alexa: Applications hosted on Serversaurus – person running it is very open to doing pro-bono for things within this scope Bunch of resources Could have specific instances of applications specific to us, but also cross-pollination opportunities. A lot of these groups will have common members. Wade will continue to discuss with Alexa and put together a presentation in future. Ultimately could get us off big tech servers, in the meantime good for putting us in touch with tech community. Also working on group applications for grants.
Lores – survey of node stewards – 0 response! Jade set up a call in - Gypsy meet annoying. Did get 2 out of 15 people to progress. Solarpunk meeting brought up more newies, not great for helping existing ones progress. Figure out next steps after they’re onboarded. Working with folks in Adelaide Needed a way for other apps to use peer2peer – so now got a blog on Lores to do this: Lores Chat app now available! People in Coop Cloud space interested in being involved.
Grant application is in. Coop cloud dues. Do we want to apply to join Catalyst Federation? Not time critical. Think about it for next meeting and where our first node is going to go.
Working groups Expect people from membership to get involved, not just the committee doing. Seasonal opt ins for a limited time. Sarah has created a working group brief “that allows easy, low-commitment entry points, sets out current expectations as a starting point, and also explicitly allows people to propose changes, expansion and nominating themselves as “leaders” if they are willing.”
https://ops.wiki.merri-bek.tech/template_working_group_brief#overview
Committee likes Sarah’s brief – sound guidelines. Jade’s experience of working groups – getting meetings happening, lack of facilitator skills, initially, now people jumping between groups, familiar with how it works, convenor helps ensure meetings happen. Time limits help. Multiple opportunities to practise facilitation. Code of conduct, buddies, etc.
Maybe use event software? If no one volunteers as convenor, it doesn’t go ahead.
Rob – could get organisers/planners to sign up at next meetup, with Rob helping it keep on course. Maybe in person rather than digital gets people signing up for it more readily
Jade: not convinced we should make SP meetup one of the working gps. We want to keep control over this. The ‘heartbeat’. Whereas Mastodon was a new theme.
What areas of work are big enough to need facilitator skills etc. Sarah doesn’t think size of group matters.
What are the bare essentials
Feeling that the Meetup is the place to get people onto working groups – 3 months could be a good length of time. Suggestions: digital justice group – taking up offer of Adelaide group to run a digital justice lounge; lores group owning the road map – multi-site Wikipedia. Need a clear opt-in on the night – as well as a follow up online opt-in. Maybe give people the heads up beforehand. Leave people to decide groups. Need to work out details on how often w.g. set up. Paper signup for each group. Don’t go into discussion as to when groups meet, and decide on venue in advance – Uni Melb.