Collective Agency

“Everybody is worthy of being here, within the community guidelines”

Alex Linsker — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:01:18 +0000

Collective Agency council members met yesterday for the first regular weekly meeting in a long time: me, Fitz, and Emanuel. Resh assisted. It was fun and interesting.

The main thing for me that came up is: ”Everybody is worthy of being here, within the community guidelines/terms of service.”

Members who act within the community guidelines/terms of service, belong here. http://collectiveagency.co/community-guidelines/

Meeting notes from civics and council:

* * * Who is here and how:

Some suggestions have been made, and are being explored, about do we want to require additional terms of service, do we want people to have to be within our community mission statement most of the time, do we want everybody here to be people most members want to go out to social events with, do we want me to judge people? and the answer I’ve gotten is no, don’t ask that, the community guidelines are good. #3 could be much clearer, but the others are good and enough, is what I’m being told.

Do most members expect this is a place to work on and talk about things we’re passionate about and really into, where people say hi? Yes. Do we ask for that to happen always, or to require everyone to usually do that? No.

On the WorldBlu democratic survey a couple months ago, we rated best for “Fairness + Dignity” and worst for “Reflection + Evaluation”. Fairness and dignity is a strength to apply here to reflect and evaluate what we can do even better.

The main thing that came up is: ”Everybody is worthy of being here, within the community guidelines/terms of service.” http://collectiveagency.co/community-guidelines/

I think one of our greatest strengths is also members being friendly. If you’re working or don’t want to talk and someone says hi or asks you out to lunch, just “confront with respect” (how you’d like to be told when you’re doing something someone else isn’t up for). There are some little cards on top of the mail slot that say “Ask me what I’m working on” on one side, and “I’m working!” on the other. Or more verbally, could figure out when you don’t want to be interrupted, and tell people “When I’m eating lunch / when I’m sitting over there / when I have my headphones on, I don’t want to be talked to, or even invited to lunch” (or whatever is true for you). I think every person here tries to be considerate and is, but no one can read minds, so respectfully saying what’s on your mind can be helpful. (I’m doing that now.)

* * * Notes from past two civics:

The role of council was discussed at the past two civics meetings. Features of the council desired by members are (I think this is everything we talked about):

3, or 5 members
for the Community Organizer to lead the Council similar to an Executive Director, or for the Community Organizer to be led by the Council similar to a General Manager
pay, or not pay
for each or most council members to have specific roles/areas of responsibility (President, Secretary, Treasurer), where the Council members choose their roles after being elected
for members to be on the Council
for Council members to be “faces to go to” here, to do visible hands-on work that gets results, everybody on it always working to represent the interests of all members, and to communicate with members
to supportively challenge the Community Organizer
to do due diligence
to be elected yearly
to have a constancy of attendance, extra responsibility compared to other members
to be one of the houses in our two-house democratic system, requiring more than 2/3rds majority vote by each to make a new rule.

* * * Council meeting yesterday:

Yesterday I chaired, Fitz typed notes, Emanuel facilitated, Resh assisted. We all provided perspective. Emanuel suggested (and Fitz and I agree) the goal of Council until June 15th is to work to:

1. clarify and update the wording of the founding documents (constitution, terms of service, including the community guidelines)

2. evaluate the meeting and member rates (talk about why do we have scholarships, is that policy achieving a goal)

3. hold elections

We spoke about some members being concerned whether they belong here, and I remembered ”everyone is worthy of being here within the community guidelines/terms of service”, and to speak with clarity and strongly about this core strength. I am thrilled we had a fun/interesting/supportive meeting. We will work on clarifying constitution/terms of service wording this week and talk next week.

People being paid here from Collective Agency funds are me, Resh, Emanuel, and Fitz. (I offered council members pay at 4 hours a week: 1 hour for meetings, 3 hours for visible hands-on work such as writing seen by members, done here. In elections, likely candidates can choose whether they’ll be paid or not, and that will be fascinating.)

Alex

–

Alex Linsker

Collective Agency’s Community Organizer

(503) 517-6900 http://collectiveagency.co

Tax and Conversation’s Statewide Community Organizer

(503) 369-9174 taxandconversation.com

(503) 369-9174 mobile (503) 517-6901 fax

322 NW Sixth Ave, Suite 200, Portland, Oregon 97209

Build IKEA standing desks this Tuesday 3:30pm civics, and past notes

Alex Linsker — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:04:23 +0000

Thanks to tens of members for your suggestions these past few weeks, for some hands-on work, and especially for leading and growing activities. Lauren and other members went jogging on the esplanade last Friday, then bicycling-jogging yesterday, and I’m excited to see how that grows.

I didn’t think of anything to ask about this week for advice and Don asked about the IKEA standing desks rumor, so the civics agenda for this Tuesday 3:30pm: Don and Resh and I will build two big tall tables to be standing desks from IKEA. You can help build if you’d like, and/or could help make the “storage room” a more beautiful room for phone calls (tape carpet tiles, etc, during this coming civics). But there’s no need; things are good and growing.

Gentle reminders:

The middle hallway room: There are additional new lockers in the middle hallway room which has thin walls, so it’s for working quietly only, because talking loud in that room makes it hard to rent for meetings. Locker access by members gets priority in that room and the storage room: members can come in and use the lockers even if there’s a phone call in those rooms.
I will be reminding members if it seems like community guidelines/basic consideration of members isn’t happening; that is one of the roles of staff. These are the core of our terms of service and community, I remind myself of them often:http://collectiveagency.co/community-guidelines/
If you’d like to share something you’re passionate about and really into, whether work or a hobby, please consider doing a Lightning Talk on Wednesdays 2-2:30pm for 2-8 minutes, especially if you’d like to learn something by sharing. And likely you already know that many members have told me they love this is a place for focused productive work by friendly members, and they love to hear about work and hobbies we are each really into, often when obviously not working.

If you think of questions/concerns/suggestions/proposals you’d like to ask about at civics, send me an email or talk to me and I’ll put it on the agenda. I’ve been slow to get civics notes from the past two meetings out, and will do that this coming week. 7 members for the past 2 weeks have gathered to talk about the role of Council.

The priorities I was tasked with are operations, governance, and outreach/sales. It’s all going well. Outreach/sales has been happening by members, thank you. Please refer members at our regular rate: $250/month. http://collectiveagency.co/membership/

Alex

–

Alex Linsker

Collective Agency’s Community Organizer

(503) 517-6900 http://collectiveagency.co

Tax and Conversation’s Statewide Community Organizer

(503) 369-9174 taxandconversation.com

(503) 369-9174 mobile (503) 517-6901 fax

322 NW Sixth Ave, Suite 200, Portland, Oregon 97209

5 new members, civics, council’s role.

Alex Linsker — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:49:58 +0000

Resh, our assistant community organizer, signed up 5 new members out of 6 people who’ve tried us out in the past week.

Welcome to new members Chris, Chris, Madhu, Joshua, and Portia.

Good news: 1/3rd of all members are on scholarships, so there’s a waitlist. Please refer people at the regular rate ($250/month). http://collectiveagency.co/membership/

* * *

Civics from last Tuesday has already led to:

a return of the old assertive signage here (how to use the printer, etc),
happy hour each week after civics (at 4:30pm, we had 10 members talk, eat, drink in the kitchen. Tuesdays has the most people here),
starting to write up an office manual,
discussion of monthly events,
and much more. Thanks to many members for suggestions and supportive words and actions, and to Resh for assisting and staffing. Resh and I are reachable at council@collectiveagency.co

* * *

This coming Tuesday 3:30-4:30pm, Civics will focus on talking about the role of the Council. A summary:

“At Collective Agency, there is a two-house democratic system which embodies checks and balances. Members clarify their diverse needs and desires during weekly Civics meetings. Civics is the core. Members say what they want. If 2/3rds of members, and 2/3rds of the elected Council, vote yes, then the Council makes sure it happens.”

Obviously within our Community Guidelines http://collectiveagency.co/community-guidelines/ members do so many things old and new, on their own and in self-organized groups, and I love that.

Moving forward, I think it’s good to:

have yearly elections for Council members (which we’ve had),
pay Council members for 4 hours a week of work (1 hour of meeting, 3 hours of outreach to members here, and hands-on work, whether going to events to promote us, or writing signage here, or doing other work), for a very visible and known bunch of people who represent all of our interests all the time, as best they can.
each Council member would designate their role/responsibilities, and keep the community organizer (me) challenged and supported.

We’ll start to talk about the role of Council, what each of us would like. In the few weeks after, ideas from this Council meeting will develop into proposals which we can vote on. Our member constitution also can get clarified: http://collectiveagency.co/governance/constitution/ Many of the process write-ups might be copied from here (which was modeled on our constitution, with clarified wording): https://taxandconversation.com/constitution/

Alex
–
Alex Linsker
Collective Agency’s Community Organizer
     (503) 517-6900 http://collectiveagency.co
Tax and Conversation’s Statewide Community Organizer
     (503) 369-9174 taxandconversation.com
(503) 369-9174 mobile   (503) 517-6901 fax
322 NW Sixth Ave, Suite 200, Portland, Oregon 97209

Lunch!

Resh Inanna — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:26:21 +0000

At 11:45am or noon every weekday, a bunch of us go to the food carts, pick up some delicious food, then go eat together in the bank tower across the street.

Collective Agency Friday 4pm Happy Hour, and Tuesday talking about what we want here

Alex Linsker — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:01:02 +0000

As per member requests, Collective Agency Happy Hour starts again this Friday 4pm, every week, up front by the windows. Bring friends/family/visitors on your 3 monthly visitor passes, or unlimited number of people on your half hour quick visits, or come as you are and make it what you’d like it to be.

* * *

This coming Tuesday’s civics will keep talking about what we want here, which directly translates to communicating that to future members, and to sales. The agenda is the usual structure (see the last notes for the structure), 3:30-4:30pm Tuesday April 2nd.

1. The first item of business will be reviewing updates from what happened in the past week (see below).

2. The next item will be talking about what we like and what can be even better here for your member experience, including signage, more art on the walls, activities/events, calendar and blog access, and who knows what else (maybe you do).

Update from last time:

1. Signage (member names and photos on the hallway wall, to start) is coming back, see the photo in the notes: http://collectiveagency.co/agendas_and_notes/outreach-work-session/

2. Our first new art on the walls is by Molly and Mathew, the two posters in the restrooms.

3. At the last civics, members expressed desire for more regular events, the same time and structure every week, so members can choose when they want to go and know it will happen.

We made up something called Challenge Happy Hour, where members talk about things we’re challenged by for half an hour in our work (brief go-around and say something we’re challenged by and would like to talk about, then pretty unstructured conversations one-on-one or in small groups. Figuring out a time for it is key… Wednesday 2:30pm after Lightning Talks will be an experiment time. If you prefer weekday mornings or another day, please email me or comment on this post in our blog.
We chose to revive the Friday 4pm Happy Hour, which will be up front by the windows. In the past it was relaxing happy talking and some games. I’ll get some beer, wine, and juice, and bringing food and beverages potluck style is appreciated, although not necessary.

–

Alex Linsker

Collective Agency’s Community Organizer

(503) 517-6900 http://collectiveagency.co

Tax and Conversation’s Statewide Community Organizer

(503) 369-9174 taxandconversation.com

(503) 369-9174 mobile (503) 517-6901 fax

322 NW Sixth Ave, Suite 200, Portland, Oregon 97209

Collective Agency member vote results: transition from Fitz to Alex

Alex Linsker — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:33:09 +0000

Hi Collective Agency members,

To get regular updates moving forward, sign up for the Collective Agency Google Group. Agendas will be sent out on Fridays to members signed up on the Google Group (sign up here): http://bit.ly/WEtMtm

To get a photo of you with your first name (and last initial or name if you like) on the wall in our hallway, please email me a photo of you (or you can bring one in and put it up).

The voting results for the main responsibility & leadership of Collective Agency to transfer from Fitz back to me, are 17 votes yes, 0 votes no. The transition starts today.

At least 25 of our 70 members actively participated in conversations about this choice. That is a very high level of engagement for a cooperatively governed business, and we can get even better.

Moving forward, I will lead (and I hope members sometimes lead) civics meetings weekly Tuesdays 3:30pm (as specified in our member constitution) for accountability, initiative, and collaboration. (See photos from our last meeting here: http://collectiveagency.co/agendas_and_notes/proposal-discussion-transfer-from-fitz-back-to-alex/

Members have asked me to focus on leading sales outreach for moremembers first, then to work on the constitution and elections for a community manager.

My first work will be to bring back various kinds of community accountability: to get our member photos and names back up on the hallway wall, to post monthly revenue and expenses (and upcoming civics notes) on the kitchen wall, to get all the posts and events back on our website, and to get a sheet for new and current members that describes how to sign up for our Google Group for email updates, how to write blog posts on the website, etc. I will get that done within the week. Please talk with me if you have questions, requests. Already some members have started bringing in some pictures and news stories they care about, and putting them on the kitchen walls. My main goal is for Collective Agency to be a place where we share things we care about and each make this place our own.

Comments from the voting:

3/15/2013 20:04:11 Jeffrey Trull I can’t say I understand all the implications of this, but I’m down with it if it’s the recommended plan from leadership. Respek.

3/15/2013 21:02:08 Andrejka I think it is exciting, visionary and courageous to evolve the structure of CoAg to coincide with the culture of co-working in PDX.

3/17/2013 21:42:53 Alex Linsker I’ll work to simplify, streamline, and connect our democratic practice with other co-ops and democratic groups in Portland.

3/19/2013 17:59:41 Emanuel C Many thanks to Fitz and Alex for working hard to get this plan together.

And civics notes posted by Fitz:

yesterday: http://collectiveagency.co/agendas_and_notes/proposal-discussion-transfer-from-fitz-back-to-alex/ (includes photos of the meeting)

the week before: http://collectiveagency.co/agendas_and_notes/civics-sales-and-elections/

the proposal voted yes: http://collectiveagency.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/collective-agency-031213a.docx

–

Alex Linsker

Collective Agency’s Community Organizer

(503) 517-6900 http://collectiveagency.co

Tax and Conversation’s Statewide Community Organizer

(503) 369-9174 taxandconversation.com

(503) 369-9174 mobile (503) 517-6901 fax

322 NW Sixth Ave, Suite 200, Portland, Oregon 97209

Collective Agency’s New Website CA2.0 Launchs!

Todd Pitt — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 04:31:22 +0000

We’ve been hard at work for the past two months creating the next version of Collective Agency’s web presence and we are very happy to share with you what we have made together. From the very beginning CoAg’s website has been an organic and ever growing space, but after the first year of adding tons of content, identifying more functionalities the coworking space needed, listening to feedback from both members and vistors it was time to take things to the next level – Collective Agency 2.0!

Collective Agency’s new website (CA 2.0) brings many new things together including -

Show & Tell – Collective Agency’s new community coworking blog where our members can show you what is happening and tell you about what they are working on here.
A new identity that shows who Collective Agency is courtesy from Alicia of Alicia Nagel Creative.
Digital strategy, search engine optimization and WordPress consulting from Todd of Zero Strategist.
Programming, UI/UX, WordPress development from Fitz of Fitz Ryland Design.
Clean completely revamped information infrastructure and taxonomy to improve user experience.
A new powerful, fast and secure web host (WP Engine).

We will be adding many new features, pages, more content, blog posts and more functionality to different parts of the site over the next few months. Thank you to all of the members of Collective Agency who provided feedback, time, input, content and expertise to the overall initiatives.

If you have any feedback or input on our new site ,we would love to hear from you on our feedback page.

Cap on Scholarship Memberships

Fitz Ryland — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 01:16:19 +0000

Preamble: Why Scholarship Memberships Are Important

Scholarship memberships ensure that there is a variety of incomes amongst members here. It is helpful for everyone to be around those making different amounts of money each year. It is helpful for those making very little money to be around those making very good money to realize that they are worthy of making what they would like to make. It is inspirational for those making a good bit of money each year to realize that sometimes there is more to work for than money.

Proposal

Cap scholarship membership to 33% of the total membership. Scholarship memberships will be filled on a first come first serve basis. Once all spots are filled we will start a waiting list for the next scholarship spot to come available. If we fill all scholarship spots and then loose members at the regular membership level so that the group consists of more than 33% scholarship members we will not ask any scholarship members to leave. We will wait for attrition to rebalance membership before taking on more scholarship members.

Current Numbers as of 12/7/2012

15 out of 58 [26%] of our members are scholarship members.
8 more scholarship memberships would be available with our current member distribution if this proposal passes.

Why?

Public Perception – It is important that we maintain an image as a supportive workplace where anyone is worthy of working here. We cannot be known as just a place where you can get cheap rent. Being the cheap place to have office space would devalue the space for non-scholarship members and attract scholarship members that do not value the community.
Business Viability – We make very little money on scholarship members. If our membership consists disproportionately of scholarship members we will not make enough revenue.

Other Relevant Facts

Membership is $250/month for a flexible desk membership
Membership is $380/month for a reserved desk membership
Those making less than $35,000/year can pay $160/month for a scholarship membership
Those making less than $20,000/year can pay $50/month for a scholarship membership

Rate Change Proposal

Fitz Ryland — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:13:09 +0000

My Thoughts On Our Rates

Proposal

Change Flexible membership rate from $320 to $250
Change Permanent desk membership rate from $495 to $380

Why?

Lower the single largest barrier of entry to becoming a member of our community.
Encourage current members to refer new members.
Set our prices closer to market rate of services that are seen as similar. (We provide office space, but we are fundamentally different from private offices or executive suites.)

How We Will Make up the Difference

I am asking members currently paying the grandfathered rate of $160 to volunteer to pay the new rate of $250. A few members have said that they would likely do this.

We will need:

11 (10.5 more accurately) members currently paying $160 to volunteer to pay $250
OR
4 new members sign up
OR
A combination of the two

Rates of Sort of Similar Services

This chart is only a comparison of only our rates NOT amenities and services. Most importantly, none of these places have the community that we do. It is sort of misleading to really compare all of these directly.

Interactive Chart

Membership Drive Update 1

Fitz Ryland — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:30:55 +0000

We have started the membership drive! Our first meeting was hugely productive, establishing many of our initial priorities and objectives. Some simple and some quite complex. Thank you Tom Boeker and Molly Danielson for your help in getting the ideas flowing in our initial meeting. Our first two immediately actionable tasks resulting from our first meeting were tidying up a bit and conducting a brief survey of members. Aimee, Tom, and I spent a whole morning (and a bit more) making all of our resources more accessible and visually appealing. Member Scott Crabtree of Happy Brain Science suggested that we conduct a Net Promoter Score survey of members to test how willing members are to recommend this place to other people. The responses have been and continue to be hugely informative. If you are a member please fill out the survey. It will take less than five minutes and will be extremely helpful in knowing what we can do to make Collective Agency even better.

Our next steps will be to continue gathering information and resources that our community might have to offer. Concurrent to gathering resources we will be starting the outreach effort in full force. Do you know of an event or meeting you think a representative of Collective Agency should attend? Let us know and either Aimee or I will do our best to be there. Or, even better, go yourself and remember to tell the group about Collective Agency.

We are currently exploring more ways to collect feedback including a more in-depth member survey and a general feedback box or form. In the meantime, please comment on this post or send Aimee or I an email.

Fitz
fitzryland@gmail.com

Aimee
saysamara7@gmail.com