A Haven for Humans' Journal

Awesome Weekend Recap

http://community.livejournal.com/havenaughts/6198.html

Hmm, it totally slipped my/our minds that this should go here, I think. But hey, we've been busy!

Last weekend, that of Jan. 25, some of the core Haven-people got to sit in the same room for half a night and talk shop. Looking back on it, a lot was accomplished; more than I think we gave ourselves credit for at the time. All of it's still working notes, so I won't post those here, but I will post a recap of the things we worked out, as a starting-point for more details, a yardstick of our progress and a reminder that a lot gets done when we're in the same room!

Before I say anything, though, there should be huge thanks to

shrinking_cate,

riotmod, Jame, Ken K. & Tina, without whose input this would not have gotten so far, or been so amazingly good. Or fun. ;)

The following subjects were fleshed out quite well, and there will be separate posts to discuss them in detail soon:

Voting: We now have weighted and "general population" voting, and what each should be used for, as well as polling, its uses and the rules for doing it. We've done an awesome job of giving the population as much say as possible while retaining order and fairness, I think.

The Board: Who will be on the board, how they will get there, for how long they'll stay, and what types of things the Board will do are all on paper now. Yay!

Committees: We now know how committees will generally work, how their leaders get and keep and lose those positions, and how they should work together.

Investment: Some good ideas were had for how people should invest initially in the Haven project, though we're not firm on what the "reward" for investing in the startup should be.

Financial sustainability was heavily discussed, and some good ideas thrown around for how to get the project to fund itself as time goes on. There's still a lot to talk about here, but we at least got a handle on some of the major avenues.

Community values, which will form the basis of all our decisions, really, were discussed quite a bit, and I think we've got most, if not all, of them written down now. This wasn't an easy conversation, but we handled it admirably -- no blood! ;)

Other things we touched on, but still need to develop much more, are membership requirements, process of becoming a member, fees for different tiers of membership, the justice system, self-sufficiency, and the corporation structure. But that's a good thing, because I, for one, would be upset as all get-out if I didn't have a reason to get all these people together for another chat. Chasing a dream like this, absolutely nothing gives you the warm-fuzzies like knowing that you're going to be doing it with the most awesome people you know!

Okay, gushing done. More details soon, and thanks again to everyone who participated and made the gathering possible!

-Kallisti