# Dante: AGM Pre-work

## 1. Values alignment

### Enneagram

> Nine
Nines are defined by a desire to live in peaceful harmony with their environment. They want a sense of balance and calm, and aspire to a kind of homeostasis where nothing disturbs their inner peace. They tend to be easygoing and accepting of what is happening around them, but can become resistant and willfully oblivious when something in the environment threatens to throw them off balance.
Nines are accommodating and agreeable, and readily adjust to the people around them. Nines believe that they simply don't have strong opinions or urgent needs of their own, so they are happy to go along with what other people want and need. To others, they appear gentle, pleasant, and easy to be around.

Yup, sounds about right.

### Values alignment: Part A

> 1. How are these values relevant to your work? How are they not relevant?

**Curiosity:** Most of us would not be here if we weren't a little bit curious, I think we need to be curious to remain open to different technologies and ways of working together.
**Intersectionality:** Definitely. I came to Hypha because I expected safe harbour to all kinds of people. I don't enjoy working in an environment hostile to me or others.
**Honesty:** Definitely, I need to know I can be open with my colleagues and they are being open with me.
**Self-agency:** Yes, I want to be able to choose the projects I dedicate my time to and how to best deliver my work.
**Solidarity:** I like the idea of giving and getting mutual support with partner organizations.

> 2. Think of instances/events in the last year where Hypha individually or collectively embodied these values.

The conversation we had around vocabulary and gender (girls/guys/folks) was a good example of curiosity, honesty, and intersectionality values being present in the group.
It was neat to see the interest in buiding something to support the call for proxies from Signal. I saw curiosity, solidarity, and self-agency there.

> 3. Can you think of instances where Hypha has not embodied these values and/or adhered to them in a superficial way?

We could do better if we claim to value intersectionality, solidarity, and honesty.
Mauve asked us to consider moving away from Cloudflare and our response was 8chan is the same as YouTube.
I was disappointed that we closed the door on wearing masks for this meeting because other people in the building are not wearing them.

> 4. What do you value when you're working on Hypha projects?

My teammates.
My work.
The chance to work on technology I can explore freely.
The opportunity given by clients to deliver something we can stand behind as a group.

> 5. What kinds of attributes do you think are important in the people you work with?

Empathy, curiosity, and a willingness to share (points of view, know-how, jokes).

### Values alignment (ICA Values): Part B

> 1. Do these values resonate more or less than the shortlist chosen by Hypha?

About the same. I feel like they are saying the same thing with different words.

> 2. How do values, in general, guide the work you do?

They are peripheral to my day-to-day activities, but they frame the question of "what kind of organization do I want to work for?".

> 3. What else guides the work you seek out, or are drawn to do?

Doing something I haven't done before.

## 2. HYPHA 2030 - futures and possibilities

> Let's look ahead 8 years from now.

1. Public institutions in Canada at the federal, provincial, and local levels continue their long demise. The exodus of doctors, nurses, teachers, and farmers is barely balanced by the influx of climate refugees.

2. The climate crisis reached a tipping point with the North America heat wave of 2025. With dwindling agriculture yields and freshwater deposit levels, the push to re-think and re-build food, transportation, and housing infrastructure continues to drive investment and attention towards local-first, low-energy alternatives.

3. Hypha has partnered with a growing number of municipalities to manage and operate virtual and physical community hubs to nourish tech and civic literacy, regenerative practices, and self-sufficiency (digital and otherwise) in collaboration with similar projects throughout the world.

## 3. Strategy work

### 3.1 Growing Hypha

> Do we see lack of diversification as a risk? Should we be diversifying our revenue sources?

Yes, and yes. I would like it if one crypto winter did not put the organization at risk.

> How should we prioritize what we want to work on?

1. Will it pay the bills? 2. Does it align with our stated values?

> What kinds of skills and competencies do we want to add to our team?

I think this should be driven by the projects we take on.

> How do we support solidarity work?

Fund wherever possible, assist with labour when available.

### 3.2 Ways of working

> What kind of soft skills should we look for during hiring?

Ability to communicate effectively and absorb ideas easily.

> What kind of support can we provide to people so they can learn on the job effectively?

Have more joint work sessions and time dedicated to writing for others.

> What can we do to help with cross pollination among projects?

Schedule more share-outs. I've realized I'd like it better if coffee break was set to something other than noon.

> How should we iterate on our onboarding process?

I am not aware of any major gaps.

> Is there a minimum viable project management structure we can apply across all our work?

I like the GitHub project board.

> What kind of peer review mechanism can we put into place?
> How should we divide administrative work? Is there a role we can carve out?

I don't have enough data to form an opinion on these.

## 4. Key Administrative Topics

### A. Vacation Policy

> Would you like to change the current vacation policy? Y/N

Yes, define a set amount of vacation days.

> In your role, what factors do you think are important for a vacation policy?

Clarity, and the ability to fully disconnect for at least a week at a time.

> If you were working a full 4 day work week, how much vacation do you think is appropriate?

4 weeks per year.

### B. Timesheets

> What is the purpose of tracking our time and how does it contribute to the sustainability of Hypha overall?

I think it helps us 1. know how we are spending our time, and 2. make sure we are billing high-paying customers appropriately.

> Are there better ways to track our time than timesheets?

Fixed hours per month maybe?

> How can we align our time tracking across projects in how we are padding/adding time (i.e., Are individuals responsible for ‘padding’ their time to capture misc. thinking/untrackable time or is the project lead responsible before sending it to the client)?

I spent a while thinking about this only to conclude that we need to state the problem(s) driving these questions first.

### C. Foreign membership

> Do we agree to ammend the bylaws to allow for foreign membership? Y/N

Yes.

### D. Salary bands

> Do we need to adjust the bands?

Salary bands should be adjusted regularly to account for inflation. Any more than that, as long as our income allows it, I have no issue with anyone's pay going up.

### E. Tools

> Is Hypha’s infrastructure and tool choices (Google Suite, Matrix, etc.) working for you? What would you like to change?

I'm happy with them. A lot of our work has to be done through Slack and Discord, but that's OK.

> Aside from the tools themselves, are the norms we’ve developed around tool use working for you?

So far so good. I would like to develop a more formal process around billing clients.

### F. Peer feedback

> Do you feel a peer feedback process is necessary (Y/N)?

I don't think so, but I'm open to trying it.

> Do you have any additional considerations for how the process should be run?

I have been in design reviews where the person presenting the work just kept getting dumped on by several peers and managers. Power dynamics become more apparent as we grow, so maybe we should have a neutral party in each session (someone who is not giving/receiving feedback) to keep us from piling on each other.

### G. Conflict resolution

> Do you feel we need a conflict resolution policy (Y/N)?

I don't think we need one, but I'd rather have one in place before we do.

> Are you interested in being a member of the committee that drafts the conflict resolution policy?

Yes.

> Are there considerations for the committee that you’d like to surface?

Not at this time.

### H. Budgeting

> We’ve surfaced some budget requests for next year already:

I'd put education budget at the top.