# vNYC: Workshop #2

:date: **Date:** Sunday, December 10 @ 2pm ET
:round_pushpin: **Location:** Orbital, NYC
:balloon: **Video Call:** https://appear.in/vnyc
:speech_balloon: **Chat:** [`#vnyc`](https://g0v-tw.slack.com/messages/C6BE6PYKH/) in g0v Slack (register @ [join.g0v.today](join.g0v.today)) - [logs](https://g0v-tw.slackarchive.io/vnyc)

We're holding an open workshop to continue to plan and discussion resilient conversations project.

:family: **Attendance (@slack):**
* CS (@itsmisscs)
* Dave Hackett (@Hackett) - remote :tv:
* Devin Balkind (@devin)
* Darshana (@dzn)
* Kate Nicholson (@katehnicholson)
* Liz Barry (@lizbarry)
* Patrick Connolly (@patcon) - remote :tv:

## Contents
- [Background](#background)
- [Agenda](#agenda)
- [Run of Show](#run-of-show)
- [Notes](#notes)

## Background

* [Notes from first workshop](http://soul.compositescollective.com/t/workshop-on-conversation-technologies-orbital/145
)
* [Realtime board](https://realtimeboard.com/app/board/o9J_k0Yh6pA=/)
> [name=cs] so empty! i will upload photos i took
* [Discourse project](http://soul.compositescollective.com/c/talk-to-nyc/facilitation)
* [RightsCon Submission](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSceNqtanpKfwvhe0XQN-c9qN5hOZ_soJH1jmKOn7MNuFfDEgA/viewform?embedded=true&edit2=2_ABaOnufdg8KFrbcU2MoKDCS-BlvkX9DNtif9Ea_lwKWCDY1uVuTNyXVEFzRmrA)

## Agenda

* 14-14:15 - Arriving + settling in. Get :tea: :coffee: snacks ++
* Intros...3 keywords per person?
* 14:15 - 15:45 - Resilient Conversation workshop #2
* 15:45 - 16:00 - Break :dancers: :tea: :coffee: :toilet: :deciduous_tree:
* 16:00-16:30 - CC shares current planning/visioning work.
* Feedback
* How was it for remote participants?
* Was the session valuable? Leaving with more or less clarity?
* Facilitator feedback, if you wanna give it :)

## Goals(s)

Areas/topics we'd like to discuss

* Use RightsCon submission (linked above) and content from first workshop to frame the language around the project
* February Trip to Taiwan
* Who's interested? CS, Darshana, Liz, Patcon
* Funding
* ?
* Facilitation Fest 2018 - what's feasible
* Will we have a more generic umbrella name for project soon? Any timeline? How might we decide? (patcon)
* g0v.network?
* How should we work with groups with political leanings? If we're willing, what are our terms? How might we come to them?
* There is a citizen's movement in Toronto called "Our Toronto": https://twitter.com/winbacktoronto?lang=en
* They are modelling off [Barcelona en Comu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_en_Com%C3%BA) municipalist movement
* They are interested in neighorhood engagement and teaching people neutral facilitation process
* What's Composites Collective and how do all the pieces—vnyc, g0v—fit together
* (from liz) monthly after work group of NYC's municipal urban designers have asked Liz (who has widened the invite) to discuss facilitation (for 2018)
* operational collaboration systems
* NYC landscape from Devin's campaign to advance our NYC endevour

## Setup

- Post-its
- Sharpies (easier to read in photographs)
- White board + markers
- 1 computer for remote participants

### Nice to Have

> [name=cs] I won't be there to setup, but most of these nice to haves are at orbital. I think the projector setup would be the most ideal. It's apple air play so we can easily switch between machines

- Yeti mic (it should be in the media console). Set to omnidirectional and it will pick up conversations better for remote folks
- Speakers (broadcast remote folks to room)
- Projector (orbital has one if we work in the back!)
- Put remote person on it
- Share screen from it

## Run of Show

* Review Realtime board with Workshop #1 photos.
* Discourse group
* Using the ["About" post](http://soul.compositescollective.com/t/about-the-resilient-conversations-category/144
) to outline project and participants. Functions as an overview.
* Resilient Conversations (?) is a meta project

### Part 1: Framing the language of the project

#### What are we calling this?
* Last time we discussed facilitation is loaded and dull
* But, facilitation is known and understood
* Landed on some alternatives:
* dynamic conversations
* resilient conversations
* conversational techology
* For RightsCon we submitted: Citizen Facilitator Training: A workshop for aspiring g0v nobodies
* CS:
* A term that fits a myriad of contexts
* A term that is identifiable
* Personal concern that ascribing the training to "aspiring g0v nobodies" raises more questions for interested participants—"am I a g0v nobody"
* A term/description that pays homage to g0v, vtaiwan

**Exercise:** Group discussion

---

#### What is the objective of our training sessions? / What are we trying to do?
* Where the objectives of training session express the objectives of the overall project
* by explaining one we have better clarity about the other
* Why are we recording this material in the first place?

**Exercise:**
* Present: revisit first workshop ideas/synthesis
* Present: revisit Rightscon submission objectives/results
* Post-it idea thon: collect ideas from first workshop #1, Rightscon, and workshop #2
* Synthesis

**Consensus Outcome:**
A collection of sentences that reflects the project. Think: content we could put on the site or present in a one-pager.

### Part 2: Trip to Taiwan

CS: Believe we'll need a third workshop to dive into the trip/outcomes/goals/expectations. For today, (hopefully) we are entering with better definition of project (Part 1) that we can use to apply for funding. Today's focus: Dates, timeline, funding strategies.

#### Funding opportunities

* Jerome foundation offers research grants up to 5k
* Met two people that received them to go to Taiwan
* Crowdfunded through our networks

**Exercise:** Group discussion. Small breakout time to review the requirements for grants.

**Ideal Outcomes:**
* Clearer picture how we plan on funding ourselves/trip. :star:
* Project trello board :star:
* Date for workshop focused on trip logistics :star:

## Notes

**Legend:**
:star: Action items ([:pushpin: Trello Tasks](https://trello.com/b/ZzxRte37/long-term-planning?menu=filter&filter=label:2017-12-10%20meeting))

> [name=CS] _Collaborative note-taking or post your notes to Soul._

Start time: 2:50pm ET

* Intros
* CS: project and team development. exploring delib and participatory democracy processes in past 12 (?) months, with eye to bring to NYC
* Darshana: researcher. (hard to hear, maybe someone in NYC should note-take?)
* Liz: Wrote a piece on vTaiwan last year, and writing a new one on conversation technologies. Meant to inspire a crew of english speakers to become faciltitors at various levels of gov
* Devin: ran for office in NYC, trying to promote faciltiation methods inspired by spanish model.
* Kate: background in design (and media). here out of interest. segue into gov interests from product and media background.
* patcon: co-organizer with civic tech toronto. we run weekly civic hacknights for design/policy/tech
* dave: read liz's article. wants to do segment with local station on vtaiwan process, and looking to interview people. wants to get ppl aware of this in tampa florida area. wants to convene a group to discuss doing comparable things locally. (Q: how do you make government comply with results? interested in elections. state level interest. interested in party platform without party for initiatives / ballot measures.)

* devin would like to talk about operations, ie collaboration systems, and how we work together.
* recap last week
* resilient conversation might be larger meta-project with smaller ones
* CS created realtimeboard, but will migrate some photos into flickr :star:
* patcon can convert post-it images into realtimeboard stickies desired :star:
* Liz summary
* we were frustrated last week about how all our systems and attention economies were gamed
* were talking around a really boring and tarnished word "facilitation", that seemed to be the crux of a fix
* recenter on words themselves as technology, and building a set of [digital and social] technologies around facilitation tools
* "Conversation Technology"
* lots of cyberpunk influences and lingo to mine
* last week was manifesto level discussions
* liz used conversation to help hone the direction in which she hoped to guide the group process of authoring the next article
* does this set up to frame a project?
* Darshana: introducing convo tech to english-speaking world, taking cues from taiwan
* sub-project is to go back to taiwan, do more research, and build a manual or kit to adapt to local contexts (Toronto, NYC, Florida?)
* might involve (1) going to taiwan, (2) bringing experienced facilitators here, or (3) ideally both.
* @patcon explained VR references that we were making, ie. holopolis project
* a radically open government skunkworks project initiated by new digital miniter Audrey Tang (lead architect of vTaiwan)
* technologically self-aware attempt to reimagine how citizen engagement processes might work
* What are we calling this? What are the mental models we'll use? What's the language? So that we can better work together on building this session:
* "facilitation" == dull, but really well-understood.
* if we take weaponized narrative as the oppositional position, what is ours?
* innoculated, immunotherapy
* ok to use contempoary tech as a metaphor, but we should be self-ware of how it might be seen and if the metaphor would "age well" and if we're willing to defend / respond to potentially irrelevent extensions of the metaphor
* immune to attacks on rational discourse that can get to points of consensus
* breaking people out of silos

* Kate: What is the format of this RightsCon thing?

* CS: teach and train people in these tactics, help them localize / choose what methods will best be suited for their issue and stakeholders
* D: training workshop shares all techniques, them helps facilitators customize for, say, children (shorten workshop), or community not using online types of communication,
* Kate: interesting to hear of methods from AGILE, plus from government, along with "Design facilitation". I faciltated in cambodia the design of a tool for information exchange in medical settings around the world. We supported them to brainstorm the issues and prioritize which ones they could act on -- it was a back and forth. then prototype using our expertise, and bring it back for feedback.
* CS: service design framework?
* Kate: yeah
* Patcon: what kate was saying reminded me of how we say we dont want to make technology the center of this, but i wonder if it's the only think vTaiwan actually did differently.

* kate: in creative seting, you're often trying to build the "best" thing, not necessarily building consensus. Gov does consensus, but doesn't engage well with creativity
* liz: wondering if this is a call to action to the design community to reimagine government process itself, rather than just the little domains that they are often contracted to work in
* ORID process is perhaps a way of breaking down expertise.but in communtiies like the sciences, often come to point in "breaking down expertise", where we're less interested in destroying our mode of income.
* Devin: aggregate, organize, synthesize
* basically lists.
* let's build a knowledgebase, so that we can know what's known and what's not
* liz: that is one model, but sometimes aggregate knowledgebases don't lead to action. could we run these processes in parallel? she is not interested in that knowledgebase building project.
* great way to share info, but maybe not best way to prioritize and advance
* Dave: I thought this was a model process, but it sounds a little more loose that I thought
* CS: in taiwan, they see it as a perpetually evolving process, where they tweak and change tools very often
* Dave: it's a model that's functioning, can we lift it?
* CS: what's worked in Taiwan isn't entirely going to work in Florida or NYC
* Darshana: the movement that brought about this is actually not exactly the same process that's happening now in vTaiwan (it was more of offline)
* Patcon: let's write up minimum viable process (for what happening in taiwan -- not necessarily tech, but social and cultural even) :star:
* CS: this dovetails into what Devin said about the knowledge base of what methods and where they are used. Two potential action items
* Kate: i don't see aggregating tools and method as not related to createing a manual
* "appreciative inquiry" of learning about what methods are working and why
* the other piece is looking at best practices of adapting models
* :star: and then building a manual, in a quick process. I've done this in grad school -- we created a book of facilitation proactices. And over thanksgiving, i created a "misgivings" toolkit that helps people have difficult conversations
* we should have a forum around this for continued discussion
* (patcon) TODO: investigate participedia and similar databases. maybe consider adopting one?
* aggregating phase
* maybe a pattern language for participation tools? (maybe too big)
* patcon's attempt at Civic Tech Pattern Language (with links): https://hackmd.io/s/H1c50iD1M
* Devin: working with Willow, we built an airtable knowledge base http://base.recola.org/
* within that you can curate your own toolbox
* Kate: i just created a toolbox for going to cambodia. Most important thing is understanding why you would want to use a particular methodology.
* Liz: wants to build the "community of practice" and the movement in addition to materials
* patcon: https://participedia.xyz/ beta site (gov of canada working with them, open source at github.com/participedia)
* current website: https://participedia.net/en/methods/vtaiwan
* Kate: aggegrate, then create a manual guide to use a workshop
* Darshana: the workshop is going to feature the vTaiwan people themselves sharing more knowledge than we're going to be sharing
* CS: i see the workshop as
* Kate: being "anti-fragile" by author Nassim . withstand shock and be
* Pangaro's term "resilient conversations"
* Devin: "a resilient collaborative"
* Darshana: that we come together to construct some kind of future.
* Kate: the facilitation process makes thing flow easier. Conducting, condusive
* Devin: haven't yet used game language. VR lanaguge is playing, testing. Games give people an opportunity to create a different future in a way that's not so safe. in the end we're going to win by making politics more fun. Design aesthetic.
* liz: so we should be cautious with "game" words because public discourse has just "been gamed", so convey the right message (BUT LIZ REALLY LIKES FUN). Not willing to give up shaping reality and only shaping a game
* Patcon: idea of creating new spaces in between other spaces.
* Kate: third spaces?
* Patcon: mental models of g0v -- they are mediators between polarized aspects of society. Looking at the space in between rifts that have formed
* Devin: defining scope will help. the project seems like this session at RightsCon. and creating the manual.
* CS: we dont know if we're gonna get in, but we want to be holding these types of workshop. for me, the goal would be a one-pager about what we want to do
* Devin: in that regard, let's list the functions:
* a manual
* training session, long form [recorded very fully]
* delivery of the message at events and through the media
* training
* toolkit about how to record additions to the toolkit
* hardware: 360 camera, access to the shared slido account
* a community of nobodies (online, offline, regional, all of the above)
* "community of practice"? (patcon) community of practicing nobodies hmmmmm
* ^^ a "nobody kit"

* Patcon: should we build this from the ground up multilingual? can we work on this with them from the start?
* CS: that's a great question. it should be open for translation. The reason i'm focusing on the RightsCon workshop as a thing is tangible that can happen. how are we going to message it and talk about it
* CS: (wrapping up on "name" and "purpose")
* to get logged into all our space: https://github.com/g0vNYC/hub#get-involved
* Patcon: wants a name
* g0v

* CS: there's a larger project, we've just been talking abotu the facilitation project
* what is the larger name for
* Liz: asks everyone to respond to question "is it that we're all working in english?" or is it that we need to convey the sense of multiple locations working together?
* g0v-nobodies channel for this project
* Darshana: we could break it up into multiple channels by project. Facilitation channel
* devin: likes #general-en. that's gets away from the NYC issue.
* CS: this will help sort out that composites collective have their own projects that are in the g0v space.
* Dave: a non-technical name that's good for public relations marketing.
* Patcon: need an umbrella name that can be the name of a github organization where onboarding docs live
* liz: we had a prior brainstorm about g0v-network and we own g0v.network. betaNYC has g0v.nyc
* More bad names: :star:
* "vTaiwan-porting"
* +1 Liz
* "vTaiwan-places"
* "vTaiwan-adapting"
* "vTaiwan-network"
* +1 Liz
* "Talking About Talking Open Organization" TATOO
* discussion on culture: open call for people from different test areas reporting in
* could model off ProgCoders network: weekly onboarding call with a scripted onramp to how people can engage in the rest of the community
* what is a schedule of these "network / global calls"
* patcon: suggested regular "onboarding" calls modelled on ProgCodeNetwork's, where it's a little guided/scripted, and mature members are encouraged to show up and participate as well.

* CS: back up to goal setting

Devin: collaboration tools: the medium is the message, collaboration tools are the medium
* what are tools in use:
* veered away from Google Suite, looking for other options to advance these options for other people. May1st for hosting, not super fun but also easier than an S3 bucket. Next Cloud has same functionality as google docs, but we do use Google Docs for external engagement
* Kate: i'm pretty confused about where to do what. HackMD is new to me, i have to adjust. SHould have a description of what we use and how we use it, if you need help refer to XXXX. This is a barrier to getting new people involved.
* Devin: i've played the game of let's use our own tools a few times, and i think it significantly lowers accessibility. if this is a global network, accesibility will be really important. just jump into the google. on a per network basis, in a survey of how familiar people ar with platforms, google docs and wordpress are going to be the most widely used
* CS: what would you use it for? THe monolithic google doc is equally impossible to navigate. D and & just set up a discourse instance inspired by pdis.talkto.tw this discourse API populates all the websites. The Holopolis timeline reads posts that are tagged in a certain way -- the informmaiton can move. when people want to engage, they can get into discourse. I view our discourse instance as trying to document as best as possible what has happened. soul.compositescollective.com is a place to document leads, documents. "Brain"
* hackmd isn't as nice for sidebar comments and reaching resolution
* we move out of google docs for nitty gritty editing
* discourse has project spaces. generally it contains filtered information.
* Kate: within democracy Kit, people might use a google sheet to draft the information that will go into the open kit. i'm just arriving at the open source world, and the easiest think to use would be google.
* Darshana google is corroding our democracy
* Devin: if this is at the core your going to have accessibility problems
* Darshana: i'm not a tech person and i had never used anything else besides google before and it was fine
* Liz: observes that we have two "camps" sharing deeply hardwon lessons. Devin -- that a committment to open source has blocked movements i've tried to support. CS and Darshana -- that these corporations are eroding our communities' autonomy at the site of our innermost processes.
* devin: articulating clearly the open source preference (and roadmap for making tools appropriate)
* kate: maybe part of faclitation guide is helping people make tool choice? (+1 liz)
* but great first start = what are we doing right now
* patcon: edgi has a rad protocol that's public: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ji0KcSpBvaxceFAsC6uMsX9A-utiyTVPQUow9v0Oq4o/edit#heading=h.vbtmxn6d3dgm
* example of how docs look when using: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LgeB_2SBdxecKlKtDjH1scuOrCl-O0pAcly-Xy9Plr0/edit
*
* Liz: in the meantime there has been a lot of learning about Codes of Conduct, firsttimers onboarding, and peer support to help people do the "Self-care" of learning open source tools
* CS: in sandstorm they used for a while a chatapp that was closed source that had an API, and as soon as an open source version was written,
* Devin: as an "open" movement, accessibility is key. Even using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Word, is a big step to joining the open movement. Community meetings and talking to folks
* Kate: transparency is only good if it's accessible. I'd never know how to get onto this meeting. It's not transparent if you're still trying to get on and you can't. It's public, but
* CS: to darshana's point, what group are we desining for?
* Devin: i spent a lot of time in the Sandstorm environment a few years ago, and i support it. If we're talking about network decision making about infrastructure, then we need process and a rubric. independant groups should do what they want on the edge.
* Liz:
* Kate: make an index of what's where. I want to make a list of tools/techniques, and i don't know where
* patcon: we use a service inventory with civictechto: https://hackmd.io/CwEwrAxsAMAcCMBaesBsBTRxYiQQ3hAE5EAmUkPMAdgCNVToUg==
* we can steal that format
* CS: maybe we need a new discourse instance. Also let's talk to the g0v slack team about adding in #general-en as a default channel.
* Patcon: it's very g0v to use many tools, but on the other hand we're so small that it would be awesome if we could "share a brain"

[dave returns]

*
* what is the we
* Composites Collective is an entity that hired D with a visa. we run our contracts through it. It's our corporate entity.
* we're all here to talk about vTaiwan. Additionally, CS and Darshana and i are also writing about other models, does anyone else want to do that?
* Devin: so it's a business entity. Composites Collective is a business entity + brand for consultancy and maybe a media brand. CC can be hired to consult. If we need a 501(c)3, i have an entity for that called Sarapis. the vNYC is more open than any of these entities. When we talk about tools, CC obviously has comprehensive sovereignty over the tools you use. When we get to the network, that's when i want to have more process and other considerations about helping people join. Who's responsible for the index page? How are we going to produce it?
* Darshan: we should have infrastructure working group
* Patcon: clarity over who's speaking. We're presenting work on the vNYC that's sponsored by Composites Collective.
* CS: maybe we could wrap this discussion with a values statement on tools
* what are our values :star:
* what tools do we use? :star:
* g0v's core ethos about open source that pushes through over time, even tho they also have google stuff. They give grants to HackMD -- funding the open source versions of closed source tools that they really need.
* patcon: research how they prioritized tools when young and early? :star: (patcon)
* Devin: let's make an index page of what's in vNetwork scope. what should i read to know what this is about? Where a senior former City Council can feel like they belong.
* working effort: https://hackmd.io/MYRg7CCcBGBmsFpIA5YBMEBYBM3EENsA2aBaTABgFYR94BTNEWIA
* CS: the only ethos is open source
* Patcon: g0v primarily organizes on facebook. Clearly they have a breaking point for when they take their values down a notch.
* Devin: ???
* patcon: shared edgi protocol as an explicit place to share deep detail on process and tools.
* people said "WHOA THIRTEEN PAGES"
* patcon said that there is an emerging convention within EDGI of having a little yellow call-out box at the top of docs, that summarizes the main process, that then links to the full protocol: ([example](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LgeB_2SBdxecKlKtDjH1scuOrCl-O0pAcly-Xy9Plr0/edit))
* CS: shared as an idea for the visual simple thing that could link to the comprehensive protocol http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/servicedesign/index.html
* https://watchout.tw/

* Kate volunteers that if we write a longa$$ document, she can work with a graphic designer to turn that into an accessible index page.
* kate demo'd airtable
* patcon: and it has a really rad API to boot
* example: ProgCoders network uses it generate a public list of slack channels, plus they have history of their slack channel stats
* https://github.com/CivicTechTO/prog-channels

### Action Items (for wednesday) :star:
- [ ] list the tools we use and why -- Kate, CS, Darshana
- do this on Patcon's hackpad
- [ ] point g0v.network at that hackpad ^^
- [ ] also look into buying govzero.network and gov0.network patcon
* soon to be a thing: https://www.101domain.com/zero.htm
- [ ] create airtable -- Devin
- [ ] create mailchimp
- [ ] write signup questions in mailchimp and create form: liz and team
- Name
- Preferred pronoun
- Email address
- Your Location (city, state/province, country) <-- how should we format this?
- City
- Country
- What is your interest in vTaiwan?
- I want to try out vTaiwan-like methods in my own area
- I want to know if there are other peopl organizing in my area
- I want to stay occasionally posted on what's going on
- other (please describe)
- [ ] set up newsletter signup form
- [ ] create calendar (team -- can this be google?)

----

### Notes (CS)

- aggregate of all the methods
- kate has a manual from facilitations :star:
- manual from mis-giving :star:

## g0vnyc, CC, and :heart:

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