-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 2
2016 02 04: Meeting of the Provisional Board of Directors
February 4, 2016, at 20:00 UTC online at https://appear.in/aegir.coop.
The special meeting of the Aegir Cooperative Provisional Board was called to order at 20:12 (UTC) on Februrary 4, 2016 by Christopher Gervais.
- Christopher Gervais (Montreal)
- Herman van Rink (The Netherlands)
- Guillaume Boudrias (Montreal)
- Cameron Eagans (Boise, ID)
- Jon Pugh (New York)
- Joseph Leon (Western Mass)
- Colan Schwartz (Toronto)
- Nicholas Roberts (California)
N/A
It was agreed that Christopher Gervais preside over the meeting.
N/A
Work towards founding the Aegir Coop began last fall. So far we've:
- Prepared the forms to register our cooperative status with the Québec Government (not yet sent)
- Translated sample cooperative by-laws into English (from French) https://github.com/AegirCoop/aegir-coop-docs
- Developed a financial model for a business plan
- Developed support service offerings
- Subscribed to and configured a hosted AskBot service
- Subscribed to and configured a hosted RT service - http://ask.aegir.support/
- Begun building a marketing site for the Coop
- Wrote Privacy Policy (to be approved by the board once coop is formed)
- Drafted Terms of Service
- Drafted Acceptable Use Policy
- Set up gh-pages to host bylaws and policies - http://coop.aegirproject.org/
- Set up gh wiki to host meeting minutes https://github.com/AegirCoop/aegir-coop-docs/wiki
- Created drupal.org 'organization' node https://www.drupal.org/aegir-cooperative
- Reserved http://appear.in/aegir.coop
- Created https://pad.riseup.net/p/aegir.coop-meeting
Q: Is Chris doing all the paperwork? A: So far yes, though Guillaume has volunteered to help and any further help is greatly appreciated.
Q: What is the official structure? A: Producer's coop.
[Explanation of the different types of legal structures for cooperatives in Canada]
The reason why a producer's coop makes the most sense is that we're distributed among several countries. If we were a worker's coop, labor laws would be very complex, whereas as a producer's coop can just deal with companies or individuals and leave to them the responsibility of knowing the countries' tax laws.
The documents (bylaws) should ideally be helpful to the members, not just a legal technicality.
We can use Jekyll for a blog and/or the meeting notes. We do have the wiki right now: https://github.com/AegirCoop/aegir-coop-docs
Work remains to establish the coop. This includes:
- Submit forms to register our cooperative status with the Québec Government
- Requires:
- Agreement on the form particulars
- Signatures from founding members
- Requires:
- Finalize Coop by-laws, req'd following acceptance of coop forms
- Requires:
- Further linking into Law on Cooperatives, for easy reference.
- Further cleanup, editing and re-writing
- Individual review by Provisional Board members
- Review by Coop consultant (maybe)
- Requires:
- Agree on business model:
- Requires:
- Review of financial model with coop members
- Requires:
- Write business plan:
- Requires:
- Agreement on business model
- Write-up of explanatory text
- Requires:
- Finish building marketing site
- Requires:
- Some design work
- Fleshing out text for
- Requires:
- Register 'aegir.coop' domain
- Blocked by:
- Need to provide Gov't coop approval for registration to proceed; may be able to reserve.
- Blocked by:
- Finish and approve public policies
- Requires:
- Review and adoption by board
- Requires:
- Organize and hold initial General Assembly to formally adopt by-laws, elect officers, etc.
- Blocked by:
- Need Gov't coop approval
- Draft by-laws should be pre-approved by members
- Requires:
- Time, place and agenda to be established and communicated to members in writing.
- Blocked by:
- Start a bank account
- ...
- [Christopher] Send email re. coop forms
It was agreed to have the board meetings on Thursdays at 20:00 (UTC).
Currently the location is online at https://appear.in/aegir.coop.
Thus, the next board meeting is scheduled for Thursdays, February 11, 2016, at 20:00 (UTC).
At 21:00 UTC, Christopher Gervais adjourned the meeting.