Minutes for January 23rd Meeting

Minutes for January 23rd Meeting
Peace Lounge at OISE, 3-5pm
Facilitators: Adam & Sara
Minute-taker: Robyn
Time-keeper: Emily

1. Sara (IF Theatre), Robyn, Hartley (McMaster/York), Jana (York), chris (catalyst/York), Bonnie (SPIKE), Matt (catalyst), Laura (York), jes, Emily, Brendan, Kye, Adam (IF Theatre), Corvin (catalyst)
Regrets: Jenny, Stephen, Simon

2. Change Agenda item 9 to “Structure of Conference Sessions”
Add “Attending PTO 2009 Conference” as Agenda item 10.

3. Report from Meeting with Ellie Frieland: chris & Brendan
Sonia from Minneapolis and Ellie from the Board compiled a handout for our organizing committee
--note from president
--background
--budget 2007
--PTO conference timeline
--more documents (evaluation sheets, etc.)
--notes from evaluation meeting with conference participants 08.
No history of formal process with formal vote in deciding where conferences will be held; Ellie is enthused that we want to take the conference on in 2010. They recognize us as the organizing group for PTO 2010. Casual meeting with advice, conversations about the history of PTO
Dates: last 2 weeks of April (non-starter for American participation – hinders participation).
Or end of June (which might not be out of the question – might become more accessible for public school teachers)
PTO has a mandate to work with groups to get their proposals to an acceptable level. 99.9% of proposals are accepted for the conference – but this might be something we want to reevaluate. Our local committee nominates speakers and PTO board invites them. PTO board has $500 budget for speakers. Boal workshops in past have funded part of the rest of the conference.

4. Committees: Written Brainstorming Exercise
-Actions Needed: accommodation, fundraising, billeting, interpretation, making the program, food, coordination between/across communities, childcare, contacting presenters, phone tree, website/blog, budget, registration/database tracking
-Committee Headings: Space/Accessibility, Communication/Outreach, Programming, Hospitality/Housing, Fundraising/Finance, Making it to PTO 2009, Steering Committee
--Communication/Outreach: Matt, Brendan, Robyn, jes (youth advisory), Hartley, Corvin
--Programming: Matt, Sara, adam, chris, Stephen
--Fundraising/Finance: chris, Laura
--Hospitality/Housing: Brendan, Emily, Sara
--Space/Accessibility: Laura, Bonnie, Adam, Corvin
--Volunteer Coordination: Laura, chris
--Attending PTO 2009: jes, Robyn, chris
--Anti-Colonial Committee:
--Executive/Admin Committee (Committee of the Whole)

BREAK
-Committee signup and contact information exchange (committees are provisional)

5. Decision-making
Can committees make decisions or do decisions having to go through organizing? How will decisions me made? How will the steering committee be formed? How big should steering committee be? How do we start now with a steering committee?
--Informal (but rigorous) consensus – with capacity for anyone to invoke formal consensus
--Group autonomy (task policy), but no large decision made without consulting with committee of the whole
--Less structure as it emerges
--Conference has not been pulled off in this way (democratic) before

6. Are we using OISE?
--Food? Cafeteria has been closed, but there should be storage room
--Available for free
--Most presenters request A/V – making it difficult/expensive for non-campus conference space; we cannot get it for free at OISE, but free space might ameliorate the cost
--Bahn Centre: UofT (St. George just above College) – new, lecture hall and lots of room
--housing/space committee should have a chance to look around
--OISE as a hub – jumping off point for self-organizing
--get a deadline from Daniel for booking OISE space
--Corvin: getting a campus group to sponsor for space at U of T

7. Outreach – Building on Community Mapping
--How can we diversify our core group?
--Making concerted effort to get out of academia – get out of communities that are predominately white, academic
--Laura will do outreach with film fest she is helping to organizing
--Recruiting through community centres sustainable participation
--TCDI: solidarity and communication with that group
--Should we think about how to market this conference to community groups?.
--Conduct analysis of why this group is so white?
--How did each of us come to know about/be invited to this group?

8. Communication
--We have no one way of communicating, and that’s confusing
--Have we been losing people by our lack of/mis-communication
--Phone tree and email – prioritize communication methods (ex. for a meeting cancellation, we should use the phone)
--Listserv: use Google group we already have in place (subscribe people rather than inviting them to subscribe)

9. Structure of Conference Sessions
--Comments by Stephen (see comments to the Tuesday, January 20, 2009 post)
--Matching issues/community organizers with the programming of the conference
--Delegate these comments to programming and outreach
--Fringe approach: invite people to host sessions
--We don’t need to wait until 2010 to do something (ie, we could program events in the fall – PTO events as well as outreach and networking opportunities)
--Open Space Technology: meeting is decided at time of meeting; agenda drawn up democratically. Have sessions in the program where agenda is decided upon people showing up to the session (which happened at PTO 2007)
--Stephen: bringing in fieldworkers or taking visits around Toronto visiting communities
--How can outreach and programming engage with each other (because they need to constantly be in touch
--Coming up with theme for conference sooner than later (delegate this task to every committee)

10. Next Meeting and Task Review
Next Meeting:
7:30PM Thursday February 26th (Tentative location: OISE Peace Lounge)
Facilitator: Hartley Jafine
Minute-taker: chris cavanagh