Hi all,
Since updates were requested, here are the notes from the open weekly meeting. Additionally our working group on this has been doing research and sharing links etc. You can help out by sending links of places (workplaces, cafes, businesses, etc) where you think diversity is great (or good, if you can’t find places that are great yet). Also keywords are super-helpful, to clue us into magazines and websites and styles and options.
To clarify (this came up in email conversations with some of you, thanks for participating!), by ‘persons of color’ I did not only mean people who self-identify as black.
Also to clarify, it was very important to many members when we revised our membership page, and still is: “It’s important to members that we are all treated the same when we’re here, with the same access to everything. Everybody is worthy of being here.” https://collectiveagency.co/membership
As a community and as individuals we are not cool with segmenting populations by self-identities or labels, whether job title or skin color or age or otherwise. I’ve gotten some requests from people who self-identify as persons of color for black-only or Hispanic-only coworking places, and requests to not have persons of color at places where white people are. That is not our goal at Collective Agency although I understand the desire and the reasons why, and I encourage people to start their own coworking places in the ways you most want, to inspire all of us, and to give people more options.
**"Action items: **
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Allison will send us a Doodle poll for a time for future meetings on this. (DONE) We’ll sit by the wall whiteboards in the Loft next time so we can be more visual.
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Allison will reach out to the podcast radio interviewer in Europe who wants to interview us on this, and ask for a better time than 5am (midnight is better for most of us, and if not then, later is better).
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Alex will send out notes from the meeting as best as he could write them down. (DONE)
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Alex will look at statistics for current members, and estimate binary/non-binary gender (by location and overall), and email the totals to this group.
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Daniel will send articles. (DONE)
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Allison, Danya, Alex will do various research (it sounds like the way we’re emailing so far is mutually interesting, let’s keep doing that).
**Agenda for next meeting (time TBD by the Doodle poll Allison sent out in this email thread): **While there was a lot of desire to get to action items sooner, I wanted us to go at a slower pace and cover clarifying questions and then concerns and then actions, so we did that for 30 minutes (and then talked for a few minutes more in a less structured way, there are a lot of suggestions!). Thanks to each of you for expressing that you very much want something to happen with racial diversity! Next time we’ll cover any clarifying questions that came up (there might not be any), then concerns (I could see between 5 minutes and the whole half hour for concerns), then suggestions for actions.
Then we can list up suggestions that at least one person very much wants. Suggestions where at least 3 members very much want them are definitely doable.
Notes (if you want to suggest a different style of note-taking or specific edits with improved wording, please do!):
**PARTICIPANTS AT THE MEETING: **Allison, Danya, Alex, Daniel. We went around and said our name and something we’re each passionate about in 30 seconds or less.
CLARIFYING QUESTIONS:
***Why cover clarifying questions first? ***
This is the first draft of the governance manual for here: [the link is redacted in posting to the Coworking Google Group since I don’t want other places copying our manual without compensating us. The core of everything here is https://collectiveagency.co/community-guidelines/ and more recently https://collectiveagency.co/2016/11/19/governance-guidelines/ for governance.] The process for clarifying questions, then concerns, then suggestions, was suggested by Jeffrey, a member here years ago, at a time when things were a lot more divisive, and has always worked well. I’m told it’s part of NVC (non-violent communication). It sometimes slows down the meeting at first, and when it does, it saves a lot of time and emotions later, and is good for a fun/joyful meeting, part of the process we have where leaders here don’t fight but cooperate, and people aren’t siloed but interact across labels. (We could change the governance process but it would require a formal member process.)
What type of diversity are we talking about?
We have at least 3 members (of us on this group) who very much want to focus on racial diversity, and no one in this group very much doesn’t want to focus on racial diversity, so we did that.
Expressing feelings/talking about experiences/venting, or actions/opportunities/solving any issues, what is the goal?
Not venting/feelings, but opportunities for problem-solving (was what at least 3 of us very much wanted, and none of us in this group very much doesn’t want that for these meetings). There was not a request for meetings on expressing feelings/venting, but there was a request for learning ways for individual members to do things.
Is Portland Oregon a geographic issue for diversity?
History and demographics were talked about some, but it’s not a determining factor, there are lots of options for what we can do (that’s paraphrase from 4 people).
Are labels offensive?
Terminology is region- and culture-specific, some words are offensive in some places or in referring to other places, and appropriate for other places.
What demographics do we have data on at Collective Agency members currently?
···
*What labels would you like data on? Alex can research or guess. We don’t ask members to self-identify on any identity labels.
*Gender - binary and non-binary."
On Tuesday, December 6, 2016 at 9:56:39 AM UTC-8, Alex Linsker wrote:
Bernie, I’ll ask the members involved if they’d like to be on the podcast and we’ll set a date. OuiShare looks neat, and I’ve been curious about the culture at Enspiral and Loomio for awhile now.
Chris, Allison, and Alex Hillman: We’d value any tips and I can share what we do and learn via this group. I’ve also thought about starting a group for growing healthy place-based communities with monthly or weekly meetings via phone. The core principles (and the questions that led to this topic coming up) would be: https://collectiveagency.co/2016/11/19/governance-guidelines/ I could see that being a membership organization of membership organizations - might you be interested? To participate or listen in on the open member meetings, people need to be members or visiting here with a member. Our current membership options are at http://collectiveagency.co/membership/
Allison -
- how many members total are at Free Range, and how many members self-identify as persons of color (and how many subgroups have more specific labels, such as Cuban, or African American, or Somalian, or otherwise)?
- Do you see any differences in interaction style or desired amenities or work style or types of companies they’re at, or after-work activities/lifestyles?
- Do people tend to group by demographics? At Collective Agency it seems that people do not group by demographics, although some people whom I’d guess self-identify as differently from how they perceive other people tend to self-isolate more.
- What other places do you look to for inspiration?
- With the meetings you host that attract members, my sense is that having a “Persons of Color” meetup (or for women, in the years before we got to be pretty equal on the women-men ratio, a “Women Who Code” meetup) would not increase membership, but having a meetup where some people happen to be persons of color would increase membership. Do you have thoughts on that?
I’m treating this topic the way I treat all topics here - we’ll meet on the sofas in the Loft for the weekly open member meeting (it’s 20 minutes at each location, but we go over to 30 minutes sometimes if people want), we’ll start by going around and each person says their name and something they’re passionate about in 30 seconds or less, we’ll cover upcoming events like the holiday party and check in on any other items people want to cover, and then focus on: clarifying questions, then concerns, then suggestions for things we can do, all within the Community Guidelines http://collectiveagency.co/community-guidelines/ Two or three of us have done research (this is part of my research), and one of my clarifying questions will be: on a day that we have 40 members here, how many do we want to self-identify as what labels? This is the topic at the NW location where 3 members other than myself have said they very much want more diversity (but not at the Division location, where no one has requested it), it came out of a vision/values survey which included the governance questions above. 3 members who very much want something is enough for us to make it happen.
Alex Linsker, Collective Agency
On Tuesday, December 6, 2016 at 3:37:29 AM UTC-8, Bernie J Mitchell wrote:
I have been thinking about this post too.
Trevor and I do a podcast for OuiShare called Brave New Work -
We’d be up to drive a conversation about this - book a Friday session here and let’s see what we can do.
Also:
(We have episodes from Coworking Europe dudes Taylor, Gareth, Lenneke and daily round up’s from Copass Camp)
In the new year, we’ll be exploring coworking and Platform Cooperatives as we lead up to Open 2017 in London
Have a remarkable day
Bernie J Mitchell
0777 204 2012
Do you use Trello?
www.berniejmitchell.com
Sent from my mobile device
*Unless we agree otherwise, this email conversation is confidential.
-----Original Message-----
Re: [Coworking] Re: where do people of color cowork?
From: Alex Hillman [email protected]
To: “[email protected]” [email protected]
Cc:
Monday, December 05, 2016 at 11:19PM
1 - I def wanna tune in/participate in a convo like this.
-Alex
The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.
Better Coworkers: http://indyhall.org
Weekly Coworking Tips: http://coworkingweekly.com
My Audiobook: https://theindyhallway.com/ten
On Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 5:02 PM, Allison Deerr [email protected] wrote:
Hi Alex!
Great question. I’d love to be a part of this conversation as well. I help manage Free Range in Chicago and while our founder is an African American woman, we are still a predominantly white coworking space. It is interesting to note that we also serve as an event venue on the weekends and most of our event clients are women of color.
We sometimes host coworking Meetups and have been able to attract more diversity that way, but the conversion to coworking membership is low.
Interested to learn more from others!
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