Sunday Agenda
- Check in
- Opening Blessing
- Review WWWs
- Weekly event logistics
- Review Agenda
- Cross-quarter ideas
- Strategic planning
- One page plan?
- Social Media and other Connectors
- Michael Laine's Kickstarter ideas
- SolSeed Creed revisions
- Evaluation
- Closing Blessing
Check In
- Brandon: I'm looking forward to this new year and doing good things with SolSeed
- Ben: I’m wondering how it can feel so chilly in here right now when the thermometer says 70 degrees.
Opening Blessing
As we open a new year, may we find purpose and direction. May we bring life. -- Blessed Be
WW(W)s from last time
Organize the WWWs by person and then due date. We’ll start checking in on topical community protocol and meditation for each mini-period between workbees. Holacracy founder Brian Robertson says these are bad: http://holacracy.org/blog/the-insanity-of-the-what-by-when
- Eric … meditate regularly with Ben ... ongoing
- Eric … meditate regularly with Brandon ... ongoing
- Eric … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Eric … Read KickStarter Rules … by next call
- Eric … Locate alternative skating venue … by next call
- <s>Ben … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing</s>
- Ben … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Ben … finish a draft of the Gaia statue videos and upload it … by next call (making good progress)
- <s>Ben … learn about some Imbolc rituals … by next call</s>
- Brandon … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Brandon … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Brandon … renew space.wiki at GoDaddy … by Thursday
WWWs
- Ben … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Ben … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Ben … finish a draft of the Gaia statue videos and upload it … by Thursday
- Ben … contact Jessica Perlstein about her art … by next call
- Brandon … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Brandon … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Brandon … renew space.wiki at GoDaddy … by Thursday
- Brandon … read newsletter draft … by Thursday
- Brandon … call RACC … by Thursday
- Eric … meditate regularly with Ben ... ongoing
- Eric … meditate regularly with Brandon ... ongoing
- Eric … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Eric … Read KickStarter Rules … by next call
- Eric … Locate alternative skating venue … by next call
Weekly Events Logistics
Midweek
- January 7 Work-Bee: 6:30 PM PST / 21:30 EST
Weekend Service rotation: Eric, Shelley, Brandon, Ben
- January 9 Service: 9 AM PST / 12 EST … Shelley
- January 10 Business Call: 5:30 PM PST / 20:30 EST
Imbolc
Cross-quarter moment: Thursday February 4th, 1:30am PST / 4:30 EST
- Celebrate on the weekend, likely Saturday the 6th
- How about ice skating and/or a rainy hike followed by food, a bonfire, and an appropriate board game
- Don’t Break the Ice
- Insecta with the Trilobite expansion? (2-8 players)
- Evolution (2-6 players, could work for almost any of our seasonal celebrations)
Useful links
- Wikipedia mainly discusses the traditional Gaelic festival, with a bit on neopaganism at the bottom
- "Celebrations often involved hearthfires, special foods, divination or watching for omens, candles or a bonfire if the weather permitted."
- The festival focused on the goddess Brigid (Christianized as St. Brigid), who "represented the light half of the year, and the power that will bring people from the dark season of winter into spring..."
- How to make a St. Brigid's cross, preferably out of reeds or rushes
- Riverain: an Atheopagan alternative, includes hiking in the rain (could be appropriate for the Pacific Northwest's rainy winters, less so for snowy Ottawa)
Strategic planning
One page plan?
Brandon wants to see if what we wrote for the core values, beliefs, purpose, etc still works
Core Values/Beliefs
- All life is precious. This is the root of our value system. Respecting and cherishing life is the reason for everything we do.
- The Destiny of SolSeed is to take root amongst the stars. To protect the future of life, we must help it grow beyond Earth and even beyond the Solar system, so it can never be wiped out. More importantly, our belief in this audaciously optimistic goal, and in the epic story of a future with life thriving on many worlds, is central to defining the SolSeed Movement.
- We ALL are precious SolSeed. SolSeed is defined as "the body of all life on Earth," encompassing every human culture and belief system as well as all other species. This connects particularly to the "Openness/welcoming differences" practice below.
- Science as the way to know truth. We believe in the scientific worldview, the principle that observing the world is a far better route to knowledge than religious texts and magical thinking. We talk about Gaia, a controversial scientific concept, and about a Destiny that sounds like a prophecy, but we admit that these are stories, not knowledge. We believe in the Destiny as a worthy and inspiring goal and Gaia as a useful and inspiring metaphor, but what we believe to be true (or rather, as close to the truth as we can presently get) is based around mainstream science.
Life is Precious
- Cherish the Earth
- Embrace Science
- Live in Community
- Bring Life to the Galaxy
Actions
- Build a SolSeed village/society: on hold … could work toward it through small steps like hikes and game nights with interested Portlanders
- Become a player in the <s>space industry</s> Pagan community: Gaia statue kickstarter, etc
- Incorporate the SolSeed Society nonprofit to do or contribute to charitable work: dormant
- Promulgate our ideas through various media: Kickstarters can help with this
- Do something that makes people take us seriously: tree-climbing robot, Gaia statue shrines, maybe a book or making Gaia.Wiki more exciting with a community of contributors
Social Media and other Connectors
- We currently update Facebook irregularly, maybe an average of once every 10 days or so
- We've had a few comment-thread conversations but not much else to show for it
- We have zero Twitter presence
- Our Meetups each have ~30-40 members (except Gaia's People Ottawa has 72) but only rarely attract new people to events … Brandon thinks they have a lot of potential
- The Portland SolSeed Seeing Nature reading group got some people
- Gaia's People Ottawa doesn't ask new members to answer questions, and may not require Eric's approval for people to join (but we probably haven't rejected any requests to join the other groups)
- Interesting strategy: join other Meetup groups and create events on their pages for our events
- Ben has identified several people he should contact and then not done anything about it
- Drip emails
- Videos, esp. Gaia's Heartbeat
Michael Laine's Kickstarter ideas
- Thought the Gaia statue made sense as a kickstarter
- Also thought we should do a smaller kickstarter to do a larger print run of Happy in the Sun … if that was successful then four months later we could do a similar one for another book (possibly another children’s book) … the next children’s book would logically be about Empathy followed by one about Wisdom
- Ben: We could probably start a Kickstarter for Happy in the Sun well before we're ready for the Gaia statue one
Evaluation
- Ben … planning stuff still feels pretty abstract, but it is good to get a sense for the range of possibilities, I hope that we get Meetup people to our ice skating/hiking/bonfire event
- Brandon … building with LEGOs is pretty cool … I read a book called What You Do with an Idea and it was inspiring for me … I'm ready to keep plugging away this year
Closing Blessing
As the new year begins and the days grow longer we are beginning to find our way toward another year worth of achievement in line with our highest aspirations. May we persevere in bringing these achievements to completion. -- Blessed Be