Working groups are governed by the Working Groups Agreement.
Working groups (status):
- Ambassadors (hibernating)
- Assembly (active)
- Catalysts (vibrant)
- Collaborative funding (active)
- Comms (active)
- Enspiral Brand (active)
- Gatherings (vibrant)
- MoneySwarm (active)
- Pods (active)
- Ventures (hibernating)
Anyone can start a working group. Working groups are where we do work on the network. Often a working group will be initiated by someone with high context but low capacity for action (e.g. directors or catalysts), and then they'll recruit contributors with more capacity. Working groups will often be temporary, though some will be permanent.
Catalysts will keep an overview of all active working groups, and clear out the inactive ones on a quarterly cycle.
Standard operating procedure for working groups:
- have a name, e.g. "Assembly Sprint Working Group"
- have a scope, e.g. "Take the Board's recommendations about Foundation finances and turn them into decisions."
- membership: a named list of people who are in, plus a way for people to join, if appropriate
- have a page in the handbook sharing this basic overview
- a Slack channel using the
wg-naming convention, e.g. #wg-financial (and optionally, a private Slack channel #wg-financial-private). The #wg-all channel is a place to connect with all people active in working groups. - reporting: post updates in the public Slack channel and in the newsletter
- involve people in decisions on Loomio. (Tagging Loomio threads with the
wg-label will make them easier to find.) - task tracking: we use the Improvements board for task tracking. Read the Improvements Guide and talk to the Catalysts if you'd like hands-on support.
- rhythm: align to the two-weekly sprint rhythm set by the Catalysts (e.g, sprint 15 starts on Monday Oct 31.) The sprint rhythm corresponds to the "milestones" on the Improvements board. All active tasks on the Improvements board have a Milestone, i.e. which sprint to we expect to finish the work.
You can take as much of this structure as is useful!
[see also: Working Groups in the Loomio Handbook]