The Sustainable CO-OP Store weekly meeting #4

Okay, or Jennifer just came.

Okay, now it's official. Now we're on record.

Okay, hi Jennifer.

Hi.

All right, welcome everyone. How do we start? Um, with icebreaker?

Give a little feedback.

Hi everyone that I haven't met. I was on the first calls with you guys. For now I'm just like coming in and help and I also give advice, but I'd like us to maybe start with a little introduction. Maybe we can all say our name, although it's displayed, where we are right now and what's our superpower. So I'll go to Brad first.

Oh, okay. Um, okay, hope you have superpower come to mind. Um, well, I'm introducing myself. Uh, so I'm Brad, uh, Brad Davis. I'm a software developer from Cleveland, and, um, it didn't really happen. Um, It's my superpower.

Um, well, I can, I can start with inspiration.

Is it like a—

is it an action?

Okay.

I have two superpowers. One, I can drink unlimited cups of coffee every day. And the second superpower is I understand the languages that I don't speak.

Oh, that's good.

So I can communicate easily with people that I don't understand their language. And yeah, my name is Annie. I'm sitting next to Ulla here in New York, but I'm based in Portugal as of last year, the whole quarantine, after 10 years in New York. Yeah, now back to you, Brad, to your superpower.

Okay, superpower. Um, let's see, I, uh, I gotta think of a good— something food related. Um, you know, I have— I can really I can dissect a recipe. I don't know how to put this, but I can eat something and be like, oh, it's got this and this, and then like put together a recipe from it.

Nice.

I didn't— it didn't make it into a comic book, but you know.

Yeah, you want to pass it to someone?

Yeah, Russell, you're right below me.

Sure, yeah, I'm Russell. I'm based out of Connecticut, um, 2 hours from Boston, 2 hours from New York, and my superpower is that I I am obsessed with problems and solving problems. So I often will get, you know, asked something random and I'll just— it'll be rattling in my head and I'll, you know, yeah, so that's it.

Oh, that's great.

You want to pass it to someone else?

Sure, I'll pass it to Erica.

Hi, I'm Erika.

I live in New York, and my superpower is that I am very good with children. I used to be a preschool teacher, and I used to be very successful with the most challenging kids. I'll pass it to Jennifer.

Hi, let's see, my name is Jennifer, and I I live in New York too, and my superpower, I can also drink quite a bit of coffee. So that's—

Let's meet up.

Let's see, I can sit through a lot of Zoom meetings lately, Zooming a lot.

That's a good one.

I can zoom a lot.

It's a good one to have.

Yep.

You definitely seem to keep us functional with your note-taking and stuff.

Oh, thank you. Okay, I think last, the last one. Yeah, my superpower, I was thinking about it. I have so many probably, but no, I think my superpower is I'm like super positive. So even if the situation is like, you know, bringing you down or people are like negative, it's really— I still, you know, different circumstances of my life normally would bring me down. I still stay positive and I think I share this positivity with others.

Nice, amazing. So yeah, it's nice to have a few different superpowers here that makes the collective really strong. I think, yeah, like if you are able to dissect a recipe, that means like some attention for details and solving problems, good with interaction, communication with children, and yeah, super positivity. And yeah, for now we need a lot of Zoom. That's the reality. So yeah, I think it's a good team here. And so I want to ask you all next to imagine that it's— we are 2021, so it's 2031, and the way we receive news probably is going to be on some screen that you press the button in front of us, and you'll see the headline about a sustainable co-op store. What is the headline saying in 10 years from now about that? So I want you to use the chat to write your ideas. Think for 2-3 minutes. And just think of that headline 10 years from now about the sustainable—

so our store, the name of our store into the news.

Yeah, a news that will be—

did we skip over, uh, Annie there?

There's a— no, it's me, but—

oh, that's you?

I have the computer.

Oh, okay, okay.

Just want to make sure we didn't leave anyone out.

Thank you. Oh, great, thank you. Okay, so, but actually I have a question, guys, because I— we didn't designate, uh, the note keeper. Oh, sorry, the note-taker. Do we do it like after the icebreaker? Is it okay?

We can do it after.

Yep, that's fine.

Okay.

Okay, so everyone takes a couple of minutes and writes in the chat a super headline about the sustainable pop star.

Mm-hmm.

Wing.

Okay, so we've had nice headlines there. Jennifer, you wrote sustainable cop store gives $1 million to WWF.

What is it?

Worker—

World Wildlife Fund.

Wildlife Fund. Fund.

So do you want to elaborate on that? So do you think, do you, do you think that Sustainable Coop Store is one of the missions is to actually get some, yeah, to, to be so widely, yeah, to have that 1 million to share? I mean, like, in 10 years you will take over the world.

Uh, well To be healthy and lucrative.

Mm-hmm.

Healthy and lucrative. Let's see, Brad. Sustainable Co-op signs up 50% of US. Can I share a little bit about that?

Yeah, so maybe signs up isn't like the best metric for, you know, success, but you know, like But yeah, I mean, like, I think the idea is to make it as mass market as possible. That's part of the vision there, you know, and I think Amazon is in that range. I believe like their Amazon Prime is in that range of like huge amount of the US population.

I think it's 80% actually.

Is it more like 80? I knew it was like— Crazy number of people.

I raised 80% of US. Yes.

Yeah. So I think, I think that's like, you know, that kind of proves that it is possible to reach that number of people. So maybe was 50% not ambitious enough? Should I have bumped it up? Now that Amazon Prime is 80%, it seems like, well, 50%.

That's good.

You didn't know the numbers, that's why.

I didn't know. So I knew it was a lot.

Erika, do you see it as an educational shopping experience?

Yes, I would like to, and actually Ulla is going to talk about it later. Yes, I think one of the many benefits that we can have, and yeah, I hope so. Yeah, I want it to be like a different, like definitely an experience.

Nice. And then we have Russell and I a little bit on the plastic. We have single-use plastic abolished thanks to Sustainable Coop Store and 5 years plastic-free. I guess I meant also like from packaging thanks to Sustainable Coop Store. So nice, nice headlines for 2031.

Do you think we achieve it in 5 years? Plastic-free? 5 years plastic-free?

Yes.

So I'll pass it, I'll pass it a little bit to you to maybe organize, like, who is going to be the note-taker.

Aha, okay. Um, who would like to be the note-taker? I don't mind taking notes because Jennifer did last time. I did once. Erica once.

I can do it this time.

Okay, sounds good. And I'll try to keep up with Jennifer's standard of And also, I read somewhere it's also good to designate someone who is the time taker, like the minute— the timekeeper, you know, because it can be in a role of facilitator, but it's easier if actually somebody else. So maybe you ask me?

Oh yeah, sure, I can try to do that.

Okay, great.

So I will be the facilitator. I mean, I will try to be, I will try my best to be the facilitator. I read some tips and advices, but never actually have been before. So let's try it. And also after, I can share notes which I took and can be helpful for the future facilitator. They are more like tips like in real life, not like maybe those that we took from some kind of documents. All right, so let's see the agenda. So first, we already did the icebreaker, and now we'll— second point is Erika will follow up to last week's presentation. About consensus. That should take about 15 minutes. And the next one is presentation of our research or ideas, about 30 minutes. Um, that will bring us to around— yeah, let's see, like 30 minutes. And then we have questions and discussions for about 30 minutes. And the last point is wrap up. How did the meeting go? How do we feel? What did we like or what is the way we would like the meeting to run. So let's— I give it now the voice to Erika.

Hi, thank you. Yes, I will try to be as brief as possible, and I'm sorry if I'm about to read this, but it's a little hard to explain for me, so I didn't want to miss any points, so I wrote it. Okay, so after our last meeting, I was a bit confused about the results from our last vote, which was go or no go to further pursue the vision. So I felt that it was my responsibility, one, to learn more on the subject, and two, to review the steps to reach consensus with everybody. I got in touch with Shelley Miller She is Vivek's contact from ICA, International Cooperatives Alliance. After a couple of emails, I finally had a chance to talk with her yesterday. She too was confused at first when I explained to her what I thought had happened, which I will read to you now exactly as I wrote to her to be objective. I wrote: Vivek presented his vision in our second meeting and left an open space for questions and answers and discussion about it. The agenda for our third meeting included the following: 1, determine some rules and systems to work together, which was the meetings and consensus presentation. 2, additional time to go over consensus and questions on the proposed vision. 3, go or no-go vote to further pursue the vision. 4. Highlight the review of the steps to create a co-op. When it was time for consensus, one of the members raised a concern regarding the vision and proposed that everybody share ideas on how to tackle the problem we want to tackle. Some participants agree with them, and the discussion was deviated from the original vote—go or no-go—to further pursue the original vision. And instead, we ended up divided into two groups, one that is going to do more research to support the original vision, and other that is going to present their proposal in our next meeting. Vivek mentioned he was caught a little off guard by this, and nobody intervened properly to return to the original vote. We ran out of time, and the last thing on the agenda was some coffee. In our next meeting, some people will share some research to support the original vision, and others are going to present their own ideas and visions. So that's what I wrote to her in the email, because she asked me to explain to her first what was the situation. So what she told me in our call is that the original vision or business idea should not have been put to vote at this stage, because the club hasn't been formed yet. So she compared it to a conventional company, where only the board of directors can vote. They might own one or many votes, but only they can make these type of decisions. The only difference in a co-op is that every member of the co-op has one vote, but you still have to be a member in order to vote. So in theory, none of us owns a vote yet until we decide to become a member of this co-op and somehow commit to it. So ideas can be shared, but nothing should be put to vote yet. Nothing regarding the business. The way I see it is this: so what if someone votes— someone's vote changes the direction of the business, and then that person decides that they no longer want to be part of the co-op and they leave just like that without any consequences? So it seems a little unfair that because of that person's vote we change the whole thing. So, however, we still need to learn how to reach decisions by consensus, and the best way to do it is to study the process, which is why I'm going to review the steps and degrees of consent or dissent with you tonight, and to practice with decisions that are not going to affect the direction of our mission and vision. So a clear example is last week we voted whether or not we wanted to have icebreakers in our meetings. The decision reached did not affect the business idea in any way. Somehow we did a very good job at that before I even explained how to reach consensus. So, well, anyway, I want to clarify that this doesn't mean that Vivek's vision is the only way to go, but as a founder of this co-op, which are the words that Shelley used, he's inviting us to join him in his separate to pursue this vision. He is very open to ideas. He wanted you to know that. And I don't like to speak for him, but I do want to tell you that he has worked on this project long and hard enough that I know for a fact that he doesn't want to do anything or everything. He really wants this space he envisions to become a reality, and he wants our help. So I don't know if this makes sense. Like, was it clear? Do you have any questions? I would love to hear your input.

Yeah, I mean, for me it's very clear because indeed I know how it is and I also have projects like that where you really spend a lot of time to like reach a model where you think this can work. And this is the moment where you need a team, no? But in order to decide on everything from the beginning, this would be impossible. It would take like so much longer to get to that process. And especially with a large group of people, maybe if it was like 3 people coming together to decide on the vision, then probably Ulla, Vivek, and you had a small group, founding group. But I think this is normal. Like somebody comes with a vision and the vision can evolve and be improved, but it's not a matter of like, Yeah, voting if this is the vision or there's another vision that we're pursuing. Because if there's another vision, then it's another co-op and it's another, yeah, it's another project. And yeah, I think it's really good. And it's also good to like practice the voting system, but indeed there will be no voting till there's an official cooperative incorporated. So then every member can have a right to say in like long-term decisions or decisions that affect the vision and the mission.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. That's it. That's exactly right. So anyone else would like to say something before we go to the steps again?

I also agree. And like the vision, for example, when we started last year, you know, it was something else and it's evolved, but within smaller group. If, let's say, we all met last year before, actually, yeah, we came up with this vision and then we would have brainstormed, that will be, I think, different situation. But yeah, it's already, you know, this whole thing happened, it evolved, and that's where it was the end, sort of. I mean, of course, not the end because it will still change, but it has the core. And that's why I think, yeah, I agree completely that since, yeah, he's the founder, we shouldn't— it shouldn't go under voting. It can go under brainstorming.

And there's at any point, like, it can be like, oh, what do we think on this? And like, we can brainstorm. We can put priorities. We can imagine. But it's not, it's, I, yeah, it's not a matter of voting.

I think so, because probably there are details in this project that will be edited and adjusted and changed, but the core of this, uh, I think should stay the same.

Absolutely.

And it's, yeah, it's good to hear, like, it was good to hear from Shelley, uh, kind of like, uh, Yeah, the confirmation of it.

But yeah, absolutely, we'll make tons of decisions together once— like, like, but the decisions that affect— we'll have decisions that comes from— that come from the members once we decide, okay, we want to go on with this. And we are a team, uh, we are already a team, but let's say like a formal co-op.

To put it that way. One more thing, I was also— it came to my mind, for example, let's, let's imagine that we agree for somebody's idea right now, different idea, right? And we start working for one year in another vision, and then that, that member, the person decides to leave. And, you know, we changed everything for this person, but then for some reasons we don't know why he decides to leave. And I think we all would stay with debt, so that wouldn't be fair.

That's true. We do have to decide, and Shelley did mention that Vivek has to work on setting like a very clear idea. And also something that we have to decide is like what it means to be a member. Like how do you like say, okay, I'm a member now? Is it like you want to be a contract, is it going to be some kind of investment, with work? So then we can say, okay, I'm in, right? I know he's very eager to share with everybody the steps to form a co-op. He wanted to do it last meeting. I think he was a little ambitious. I'm sure he's definitely gonna address that in our next meeting. Okay, hi Adam.

I think the idea of practicing consensus through votes on, you know, smaller issues really resonated with me. I think that's a great idea.

I was gonna ask about approving the minutes from last time.

If everybody wanted, maybe that would be a small thing that we can agree on or disagree, or like someone wanted to change, had something to change.

I was actually wondering why you didn't post them in the end, because I replied to your question, but I didn't know if I should have done something or somebody else should have done.

No, I was just saying after the minutes, usually the minutes are approved, like everyone says, gets a chance to say, oh, you got that, you got something wrong, in case I wrote something wrong.

Okay, so yeah, the formality of like basically blessing in the previous week's minutes for this week, for this week is what Jennifer's asking about. Yeah. Um, I mean, so I, I didn't see anything wrong with the notes, so I would just say that it looks good from me. And if anybody else—

yeah, so I would say like, if we do that, that's why like the minute is here like shortly after the, the meeting. So if we have like an objection of a sort, we can we can mention it. That's, that's how I see it.

So are you saying you don't think we necessarily have to approve them the next meeting?

I think maybe it would be good if one person does it, but not necessarily everyone.

I'm not sure. Okay, why don't we do that? I check— we go through the steps And then we practice with this decision, which is what we have to do. I'm going to share my screen. And I'm just going to focus on that small part of the presentation. Don't worry, I'm not going to do the whole thing again.

So because Adam was late, I wanted my next question— hi, Adam.

We saw you sneak in. Sorry, I had a deadline.

Like you missed—

important part. Um, sorry. Yeah, okay, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to ask if everybody, uh, understands, uh, what Erica kind of, um, cleared after last, last week, and if we can move on to, to the slides that she has, or anybody has questions.

It's also gonna be in the recording.

Okay, right, that's great. Okay, one more.

Okay, here we go. Can everybody see it? Yep. OK. So I'm going to compare it a little bit with the icebreaker that we did. So presentation. A group member presents a proposal, usually with background information. So that was Ulla. She talked about icebreakers, about the benefits of icebreakers, and they were very good. Then we discussed them. And then some people have had ideas. And then there was a testing part where we spoke up and we said, yeah, I think that's a good idea. Yvette actually suggested something like a sunset clause so we can see in a few months how the adverts are going, if we should go on with them. But everybody had a chance to say, I approve of this proposal or not. In the end, everybody consented to the proposal, and there were some concerns that were shared, like about time, and we agreed on keeping them brief and again, like, seeing if they were still necessary in a few months. And then, well, the consensus there was very clear, right? We're going to implement the icebreakers in the beginning of each meeting. Okay, and I just want to go through again through like the range of options that we have. So endorsement, you approve completely. An agreement with reservations, you can live with it, you don't love it, but it's okay with you. You stand aside, you don't like it, but you don't want to hollow the dream. Consent if future reconsideration is built in, so you can think about it, and in this case, like, for instance, you want to include a song response like I did. Formal disagreement but willing to consent, because remember that even if you don't agree with something, you can still consent for it to happen. You're not going to block it. You want your disagreement noted, but you will still support the decision. And finally, you block, uh, the proposal. You do not consent. Even if one member blocks it, then that means we didn't reach consensus. And that's why we all have that power, and that's why it's important again that we are already members, because each vote has the power to block every decision. Okay, so that'll be it for me. If you have any questions or comments or like your input on this—

Yeah, can I ask you, because I am— so is consensus something that you agree as a governance model, or it's connected to cooperative, like cooperative have to function under consensus governance model?

Yes, that's the way they reach decisions in co-ops in general. When I will be doing research, that's the way, because everybody has a vote. So I might even— I don't need to share this, but when there's a majority rule, like obviously like 51%, right? There's always a minority that's going to be dissatisfied because even if it's 49, then yeah, the minority is going to be dissatisfied. So when it's— when you reach consensus, it means that even if you don't agree with something, you still consent, you still support the proposal. Unless you block it. Yeah. And then the group has to reconsider. And sorry, I forgot the word, because the presentation was longer. Yeah. Please, you give more time for discussion. Sure, yeah. Probably sleep on it, and in the next meeting, try to reach consensus again. And you can do this a number of times until you decide that it's maybe time for a backup supermajority vote, which can be like 75% has to agree on the same thing. Yes, Sula?

Yeah, you go ahead. Well, I see it's kind of— it's like levels of consensus or consent. Yeah, it's like levels, you know?

Yes, there are the degrees of consent. Until dissent, right? You don't consent, you don't give your permission to go on with the proposal because you have the power to do that as a member of a co-op.

I mean, I can suggest also, I don't know, like, if you're like— there's also this concept of duocracy, like when you propose something, of course, like then you take in consideration certain things, like Will it affect— so when you submit any kind of proposal or any kind of idea, you can take in consideration: will it affect the cooperative? Will it affect any of the members? How will it affect the local community and the nature? So then only when you go through these steps, you can propose something that you also take a little bit of responsibility on, like taking action on. And I've had, like we have, like I've worked with systems where there's not always needed a vote. It's more like the proposal is there, there can be a space for proposals. And only if you're like strongly disagree, like block it, only that person can like have that, it's necessary to like have a vote in that sense. Like just to say, no, I completely disagree. At which point the person that proposed it can have a conversation, like, why, like, you know, what are the reasons, like, with clear arguments. And it's like, yeah, I'm finding that, like, voting on everything, like, also, like, later on in the process— right now it's like, as we said, practicing the exercise— but, like, voting on everything can be also, like, stressful. So it's like sometimes you take responsibility. Oh, I think, like, it's good to open an Instagram page for the sustainable COP. And as a member, you can add it somewhere in a bucket of proposals. If nobody disagrees, you can just start doing that. So that's just like a side note on like a little bit more flexible, more flowing style of like voting. And what is it called? We call it duocracy. Duocracy.

Yes, that can be good because there's always the issue of democracy turning into bureaucracy, right? Not exactly. Not ever moving forward, always like getting stuck, and that's why there's also like the degree of like, okay, I just stand aside, I don't wanna, I don't wanna block this, I don't like it, but like I just stand aside. That's always an option, and the, the idea is always that you're gonna do what's best for the benefit of the co-op and all its members.

Yeah, and nature and local community.

Yeah, of course, like the mission. That's why it's so important, the mission, the values, like, and that's also like, it can be like, like where you— to know where you're going and when it's hard to reach a decision, which will be of course, look back at your values, at your mission, like, is it in In line with what we agreed in the beginning, are we still following this? That can also be of great help. So maybe we can practice by voting. Maybe we can write the proposal on the chat so it's clear. Jennifer, would you like to do that since you're the one that proposed that, please? And then we take turns to share our degrees of consent or dissent or want to block it. I pass it back to you as a facilitator.

Okay, okay. So what it was about the minutes, are we taking this example?

Yes. And, and, and Jennifer wrote on the chat, what is, what, what is the proposal? So we have very clear where we are consenting or not.

So now everybody should Show the degree of agreement, I mean, or consentment. Correct? That's what you mean?

Should we do that in the chat?

Should we do it in the chat? All right.

Yeah.

Is it— what's the official term, approve or agreed or— Consent.

Why am I— I started to hear direct message. Yeah. Okay, everyone already? We have Raftel, Erica, Brad, Adam, myself. Agree and Annie neutral. I guess also Jennifer agrees. Right, so okay, okay, seems like approved.

Great, approved.

So that was a pass through the gate of the consensus.

Yeah, I feel like there is like so many details that we still have to learn about co-ops and the rules, so it would be actually good that we join probably soon, what is it, like an academy.

That's what she highly suggested. She was like focused on this specific situation, but she It's a must. We must get educated on the subject, everybody.

Yeah, just to avoid, you know, like, just to speed everything up and to avoid, yeah, this kind of dragging, because that's actually something that drags us, because we are not sure, we don't know.

Yes, and I would just like to add, like, it happened, but we can, like, always just benefit and learn from it. And like, they will have the chance to share our ideas, our thoughts, our research, and it's good to have also space just to do that without having to reach any decisions tonight, any main decisions.

Okay, does anyone have any questions still about the consensus process or anything else that we talked so far? Nope. Okay, let's move then to the next point in our agenda, which is presentation of the research or ideas.

Yeah, so that was my topic that I wanted to bring up. Um, so let me share my screen. I'm basically just sharing Trello, so let me do that. Okay. So before I share my screen, I'm happy that we had the icebreaker today because I learned that other people are also interested in plastic-free society at some point, which was not something I actually knew was something that was other people actually cared about too deeply or not. So I'm glad that there's at least another person that is thinking that way. One of the ideas that I created a Trello board for, which is not— like I was saying, it's just my idea so far, but it's not like I haven't really integrated it with all the things the co-op is yet. So there's nothing to be offended about or anything. So I just want to share. Let me do that here. Okay. So can you see my window? Yep. Got it. So I came up with two potential values that we could vote on in the far future when we have more member representation and more ideas, but if we could potentially have a vote on making single-use plastic be a co-op value, then we can start to come up with other projects and plans, some of them small, some of them bigger, which have zero cost. So like in the far future, if we did make this a tenet of the co-op, then we could do things like a boycott, although boycotts are really more of a violent strategy, it is a strategy we could potentially use if we already had that in our, in our values. If we don't, then this isn't probably something we would want to do because it's a public statement, right? And so these values would help us, guide us towards, you know, public statements as far as go-to-market, but also just as members talking to other members of other co-ops. It would be nice to know what we have as far as like a shared understanding. And then another one I was coming up with was citizens shouldn't have to pay more for sustainable options. Like if we could, if we could do that, I think we would win, right? So those would be two that we could potentially try to aim for. But yeah, and I pulled, I collected some other ideas and they're in these tickets here. Or these cards here. And I even, I kind of did a case study on KIND bars. My family eats these. We've been eating them for 10 or 20 years. So we are, we do, we have a lot of brand loyalty to KIND. However, they use plastic and they have been for a long time. And I actually have been following the business And I've noticed that over time, they're just, they're constantly kicking the can down the road. So when I, back in 2014, when I was buying candy bar or the granola bars for my children, they said that they would be, they would be go to market in 2020, we'd have a solution for you guys. Well, they kicked the can down the road. And I believe they'll continually kick the can down the road until somebody comes in and says, hey, we're going to make a 4-grain cereal bar and we're not going to use plastic, or we convince them to reconsider their packaging. Either way, we win. So that would be a sort of vertical integration we could potentially try to capture, or we could just try to advocate for no plastic in the packaging and we either merge with or partner up with a company that can produce granola bars that are healthy without, without this sort of packaging and then market it that way. But the idea would be that it would be a single product that we could potentially take through us through the, through the years, where the endgame is we have a physical store and we're not just selling granola bars, but we're also selling all sorts of things that are sustainable. So I'd like to share this with the bigger team, and I'll do that if you guys like it, but I didn't want to try to share this out before having our meeting today because we had the subjects that we wanted to go over beforehand in the beginning of the meeting. So I'll share this now, and yeah, that's really all I wanted to say, and I guess I'll— I can answer questions if you all want. And let me share this out.

You're going to put it in the chat? Yeah. I can add it to the minutes.

Let me figure out how to share it first, and then I'll pass it to the chat because I think it's private board.

So Russell, I have a question. Are you proposing to be— public coercion of specific companies to— so there's, if we do start a grocery, there's two ways of doing it. There's going to all the different vendors and trying to get them to do it behind closed doors, or you're saying that's the best bet. Yeah, do it, do it publicly so that they have social pressure to do so.

I think I think personally it'd be in our best interest to try to do it through partnerships first, because that's less violent, but it's not necessarily off the table that we don't, we won't use, you know, if we come up with a replacement and we vertically integrated, I don't even know if we would necessarily need to be coercive at that point, right? Just, we have the product, but if we don't have the product and we're feeling like We need momentum, we could do it that way too.

There's also, we could do, I feel like that idea is really good and we could do like, in my mind, kind of like an RFP thing, but like kind of get an idea of what interest there is in like a Kind Bar but without single-use plastic, either with pre-orders or, you know, somehow like a, Something like that. And go to— then go to Kind or put out an RFP kind of thing like, hey, look, we have these orders ready to go for whoever wants to do— right.

And then Kind would be like, how, how do you want us to do that? So, right, what if— I mean, what if we take more of the role of, of generating that mastery of, of, of packaging? Um, right.

I think that's probably where the high road That probably is where the high road is, Adam. That's exactly right. Where we, we research, we figure out how to solve the problem and then we can, we wouldn't license the, the solution, but we would pressure people to use it. Yeah.

There's, cause I feel like there is space there too, cause there's a lot of existing plastic-free alternatives that have been invented around the world. Why haven't they been in use in all the products we know and love. And so maybe there's some space for us to be that catalyst to join the two.

And granted, we also need to do our own research because those plastics that are alternatives may not be healthy either. So, right, right. So, and like, or maybe there, maybe there isn't a solution. Yeah, like maybe there isn't a solution. Maybe that's why we still use plastic. But I feel like that might not be completely the answer.

Sorry, but I think there's also value into like into staying away from plastic and maybe yes, we can like the Coop Store can be having a role of activism into this into this area. But at the same time, maybe exactly, if there isn't a sustainable solution, then it's not on our shelves and period. Like, we don't have to fight for those cereal bars. There will be like bulk granola that you can have and there will be like different things. Absolutely. You don't necessarily have to have that one product. And yes, I think we can have that role of activists and then just focus on like really what's what products fit with the mission.

I mean, plastic isn't inherently evil.

I mean, in the medical community, it's absolutely essential and it's saved countless lives. So that said, in food delivery, obviously food waste is a massive problem. Plastic solved a ton of those problems. So we would have to find an alternative that works. Obviously, the bulk bins at Whole Foods are great. and dry foods are obviously clean enough to do that. Some foods, um, you do, you do need advanced packaging that works. So there's certainly research to do there. I've, I've always, um, I always like policy issues to things, um, especially when it comes to plastic. Um, and, um, from the beginning of, of this project, I've thought that, um metrics were incredibly important. We're, we're, we're always assuming plastic is bad, but we have to being able to quantify why it's bad, quant, and figuring out exactly which plastics are bad, what products generate, et cetera. There, there is no consensus there. So just like there's a nutritional label on all products right now, because the FDA, it wasn't always like that. What if there was an ecological label on everything that we were the group who tried to advance what those metrics might be and then project that against whatever products we do end up selling?

Yes. As you mentioned, Annie, like not having— not having the option so consumers don't have to decide if they like the plastic or not. Like when they're there, it just happens. And it's also like what Vivek is referring to, like reaching the masses. They are there, it's convenient. As you mentioned, they don't have to pay more for it and it happens to be plastic-free also. And also there's some alternative now, like compostable packaging, and these bioplastics that are a little controversial. I've been doing some research on them because, for instance, this bioplastic made from corn, and then there's other options that have other impacts in the environment. And yes, compostable, but to what degree? All of this is things that we definitely have to do some research on. Because as you mentioned, Adam, some things, some packaging needs to be advanced to keep the freshness. Like chips, there are no— I've never— I haven't found like any like package-free chips, for instance, or things that need to—

Mexico? In Mexico, do you say that?

Yeah, yeah.

Right, you don't need to store them. Yeah, that's one of them.

You can make them in the kitchen and have them as an option for people to snack there, like within the hour. But if you wanted to sell them so people can take them for like a road trip or something, you need packaging. And Russell, I really like your ideas. I think they really resonate personally with the mission. We are definitely plastic-free driven. And I love that part where people don't have to pay more for sustainable. If it becomes— of course, these big companies, their prices are hard to compete with. But little by little, we can— bulk, just bulk, because there is no packaging for things that don't need packaging. That, that can help us like balance the prices of things that might need like a packaging that in the beginning is going to cost more, right? But the more we sell, hopefully the bigger the demand is, the price can get— we can lower the price.

Yeah, over the long term, I'd like the, the group to think about if there were a narrower tact to take with regards to how we accomplish some of these ideas. Instead of being, okay, we want to revolutionize distribution, we also want to revolutionize how items appear in the store, we want to revolutionize delivery. It's like, okay, is there one area where we can focus on as opposed to solving all of those problems?

I think that's gonna— that, that question is gonna be better answered once we are divided into different committees, because we can assign different tasks to each committee, and that's gonna be— decision-making is gonna be easier, and people that have certain abilities or experience or like interests can, can do research or whatever needs to be done in a specific subject.

What we would be actually capable of, I think. Once we move on and move forward, we would also know. But anyway, guys, like, yeah, that's— thank you, Russell. That's a good idea. And definitely we can talk more about this. And I think we have to keep with the time. So maybe we can pass it to the next person if somebody has a presentation or— Idea. I'm going to go to 2.5 hours meeting this time. Can I just ask, are we—

did we decide that yes, we are boycotting something? No, no, that was just a—

it was just an idea for future deliberation, but we're not going to be voting tonight on anything. All right, let's see.

I can go next. Yeah, great, go ahead.

Um, with the caveat that my computer has been running slow and we're going to see how it handles screen sharing. But I think, I think we can make it happen. Hold on. Okay, can you see? I'm in Google, Google Slides here. Everyone see? Yep. Let me see, does it still work when you present? Can you still see? Is it like full screen for you guys? Yep. Perfect. Okay, because I only shared the window. All right. Um, yeah, so let me get my notes out too. Um, so I wanted to dig into the e-commerce part of this. I know this is— it's kind of a small part of the, uh, the vision for sure, but I think it was part of the— like part of the things we need to do in the vision, like a kind of an activity we would have to have. So I wanted to dig into a little more and kind of explore what would that would look like with the, like, within the parameters of what we were talking about earlier. So I first kind of wanted to do a survey of like who is doing sustainability in e-commerce. And it actually, a lot of companies that seemed that you kind of, at least I thought of as sustainable, don't really have a lot on their website or in their e-commerce store actually to really show like, oh, this is like how sustainable this is or like to show that it is sustainable. They kind of assume, you know, like these products are sustainable. But I found a couple, so I wanted to point them out. I found this Elite Elite Beauty website, and they do beauty products. And if you can see my mouse, they have these details about packaging, which I thought was really interesting. Package is a glass bottle. It tells you kind of like how to expect it and how to dispose of it, which I thought was really interesting. Oh, too many at a time. Suns and Swell does— Swell, or sorry, it should be Hands and Well. Foods, food products, had some compost information, which I thought was pretty cool. So this is, you know, not safe for work. I don't think we can consider this work yet, but anyways, but Naked Body does like beauty product kind of stuff. Then they had a whole page and actually multiple pages about all their suppliers. And really kind of told a story about the sustainability of the supplier. And they didn't really go into it in their products, but they definitely talked about sustainability on their site. Brown Living is out of, I think, India, and they had just— it was just kind of a page on their sustainable packaging, but I thought it was interesting that they do 100% plastic-free packaging. So it was pretty relevant to what we're trying to do. And they kind of went into more details on a little bit how they do it. They didn't really say like, this is exactly what we use, but some of it's upcycled pro-consumer box, paper wrapping. And I had a link there too if anyone wants to dig in more. Warby Parker. So there's not much on their website about their sustainability, but they do have a report. Report. And actually, I think they renamed it to— it's not sustainable report anymore, but it's something similar that they do every year. The impact report, sorry, it's now called the impact report, where they detail every, like, every different— all the different aspects of the sustainability in their company. It's a little bit about— it's a little bit more of a, you know, I guess all this is kind of marketing, but it's very— the report is very marketing. Speak about how great they are, but still found that interesting. And I found this Verna Street Coffee, and where they talked about where, who is being, who is certifying these products as organic or certifying as kosher too for this one. I think that was the last one there. So that kind of gave like a, it's like an overview of like what is possible there. And a lot of them, I noticed that I think a lot of them were just focused on transparency, transparency of showing, being transparent of what their practices are. And even if they're not, you know, I think some of them were not necessarily like perfect and, you know, like it was just kind of like, this is where we're at kind of thing. And I found that really interesting. So that took that and kind of wanted to think about what, what does the site look like, take it kind of one step further and like brainstorm. I'm sorry, let me jump back to the first page here.

This is Figma. Yeah, cool.

Yeah, you guys can see this here. So I wanted to throw together throw together a site, the goal being take best practices in e-commerce and have a good design and be very fluid and be very easy to flow through the site for users, but also add on our sustainability, add on more details about what makes us special, I guess. Let me get rid of all these lines here.

Brad, can you just remind us what your background is?

Sure. So I'm a software developer and focused on like user, user UI, user experiences and stuff. Nice. Yeah. So, so it's a little— I admit it's a little— this is kind of based off a template and a lot of the stuff is kind of basic, but I want to put, you know, we could focus on members here, a big section about us. I'm sure that's going to be a big part of it, focusing on the community favorites. You could focus on suppliers or farmers, very member-focused on the home page. I wanted to jump to— let me see if— let me do it this way. Over here, going into like search, zoom in, over here is kind of like a General search page, the normal, like categories, searching by brand, by rating, but also I want to add something here about like how much plastic does this product use. And obviously they're all the same here, but you know, there could be different levels. I thought of the plastic, maybe it's like a bioplastic, we think, you know, that's like good but not great. That could be, you know, 2 drops I thought oil drops might be a good metaphor for that, where it's like good but not great. And then other products would be used fully paper and it would be like just one drop.

Yeah, you could do like the amount of plastic per serving of something.

Yeah, and have different levels of like, if you may, I feel like different members or customers would have different levels of how much they really want to look at. Maybe they want to look at price and the number level of plastic.

Also, I've seen that some companies focus on how much plastic each purchase saves. That's good too. Sure.

So let me jump to—

I have a question. Have you thought about— Oh, yes, sir. Oh yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Oh yeah, have you thought like how would we, um, yeah, how would we categorize though exactly? We would do it ourselves or because we would trust the companies? That would be very hard.

I think we would do it ourselves. I think that's definitely, um, you know, uh, or, you know, I mean, there could be like a committee that decides that. I feel like that would be like a good committee thing of You know, maybe it's a committee that brings on new products and like decides that then, or, you know, there's a separate committee that just decides what categories we feel are important. I think that's definitely like for these niche sites that I was looking at, that categorization is a big part of like their identity in like a very, like in a subtle way, I guess, but still in an important way.

We will need to decide what our sustainability standards are first. Yeah.

So I get this is a little bit jumping ahead too, to your point, but I wanted to give it a little— have a conversation, give some structure to it. So I thought for like a product details page, we could put in lots of information here that I think could be relevant. Obviously, like harvest— like some of this is kind of— maybe we can't get harvest time, or maybe we don't really know what delivery time would be, but we can do a best guess there. Have packaging information, have disposal information. I love that— how to dispose of products afterwards. I was— I thought that was a great idea. I think the more details we put into this page, the better. I think pretty much everyone will respond well to more information. I don't think anyone's going to say you put in too much information to a product's detail page.

Yes, I agree with you. I always scroll down to see what they have to say, description and everything.

Yeah. And I think I think because of the membership thing, reviews are going to be big too. I didn't really like mock out what the reviews would look like because I feel like they could be just kind of the same as, you know, other sites. They're going to look pretty similar. But I think the quality of the reviews will be pretty important for us.

Do you think that could reach masses?

As far as, do you mean reviews? Or like quality reviews?

Like, I know everything what we would have there actually, because I feel like that would be another, um, it could be more for a niche than, than for very wide.

Well, I guess technically yes, for sure. Um, you know, the technology could definitely scale. Um, it's not technically, I don't, you know, this isn't doing anything too different from the standard e-commerce technology stack that other companies use. So on that side, for sure. There's definitely stuff going on behind the scenes as far as sourcing and distributing. The stuff, Adam, you were kind of talking about, there's just a lot to think about on that side of the operations. It's definitely a question of how much can we scale and how we're going to do that. But technically, I mean, and design-wise too, I think for sure the design I think could scale to that size. John. Okay. So I just wanted to— I guess the checkout page is pretty standard besides having delivery be kind of a big difference here. Of picking delivery or pickup, or I guess possibly shipping, you know, I mean, shipping could be fit in there too. This is kind of, uh, pretty standard, like I said, to stick to like standard, uh, user experiences that people are used to and adding on the sustainability.

But can you go back to the Brown Living slide?

Oh, sure, sure. Full screen. Do you want me to go to the site and look at it?

Oh no, I just wanted to see again, uh, just how they laid that out. It looks to me that's— it looks pretty good. Yeah, and the colors and the photograph, uh, it's, it's got a nice—

because, yeah, I don't know about Design across the board was pretty big for a lot of these companies. Let me zoom in. This was kind of, like I said, when did I just sign the block? Like, this is just kind of like a static content that they probably don't change a lot and doesn't change with the products. So it's not really connected to the products. I think we'd want to go. I think we want to connect all of our sustainability stuff to the products that we're selling, even though I think that would be more work. But it was very interesting. I think there was a lot of good details about what they do.

Yeah, easy on the eye, I think.

Yeah. So yeah, I think design is definitely one of those things that we have to keep to the best standards out there. To be competitive.

I know you're— we're speaking about, um, user design, or, um, but it brings up some more macro questions, which is great. Um, it's, uh, it's like, what is our value-add when that we're going to give to, um, our distributors and that we're going to give to our clients or our customers, right? So we're right in the middle. So what can we give to them? What are we going to become expert in that's going to— Both sides. Exactly. That makes people want to sell their stuff here.

Yeah, I think there's— well, I think, you know, once we get up and running, I think just having buying power is one thing, right? Being able to go to a producer and saying, this is how many people, how many members we have, how many, you know, things we've sold in your category. We think you would do well in that category. Category 2, so this is about what kind of sales you can expect. So I think that's one thing that I can think of off the top of my head.

It's going to be tricky to populate an entire grocery store online from day one, having all that inventory, etc. So I almost go back to Russell's idea of, what was the granola bar? Kind Bar. It's like, it's like almost like what if we started with one company and try to help them transform their products? And I almost see like a potential of like a tipping point. It's like, hey, we got this company to package it this way. Once you sell one massive company like that, then it's like, okay, maybe we can get we could add products one at a time or something. Maybe just a non-traditional way of filling our shelves.

Yeah, we're candy bars one day, we're Kind Bars one day, and bananas the next, depending on how we figure it out. Right. Become opportunistic on how we— what problems we solve and in what order we solve them in so that we're always growing, but we're We're taking small calculated risks forward. Um, although like trying to do a candy— or trying— I keep calling it candy bar, but I'm trying to do a granola bar isn't, um, it seems like it should be easy, but it, you know, trying to do the whole vertical is really hard. So we'd have to try to figure out how we fit in, um, to an idea like that. And it doesn't even need to be a granola bar, it could be muffins or something else, I don't know. But if it's just one thing, then we can kind of focus on that and we can test out our shop online, we can test out our in-person pickups depending on the types of products and depending on the capabilities of our company and our group, we'll be able to take on more and more risk without— yeah.

If you got— do you guys know Woot.com? Yeah, you like single product. I mean, like, I guess they started doing single products. That's how they got started. It was like all overstock or, um, just like any, you know, any kind of products they could find that were like cheap. And then it would be like a one-day sale and they would kind of just like move products as fast as possible. Um, so, and they sold to Amazon there. It was like, it was a pretty big site. It still is, I guess. They do a lot of other stuff now. My other thought too was dropshipping is another option. I don't, you know, I mean, I don't know how much we'd be able to do in this category, but dropshipping in general is where you have no warehouse. They just, you just place orders with the producer and ship, then they ship directly to the consumer. You're just basically their marketing department. For them. And you, you know, depending on how sophisticated you get, you sometimes send them your boxes that you, that they ship, you know, they package it up in and your marketing material. And sometimes it's just like they just, they just ship it to whatever address that, you know, you give them and you kind of act as the middleman of collecting money and, you know, writing them a big check, you know, once a month or whatever, you know.

So I've seen those situations before and they generally apply to expensive items. I've seen them with car accessories for off-roading people. And so they'll wait for a batch of 100 people to order some bully bar or something and then they'll send all that out at once. Obviously with groceries, it's just a different item, much less expensive, so it's hard to You don't want someone to be like, hey, do you want to wait and then buy a granola bar with us? Like, so it's a little trickier, but there might be a way to do it. Like, um, for example, say, um, you created a relationship with farmers because food waste in America, a huge problem, right? And when you, when it comes to being environmental, like, uh, reducing food waste is almost one of the best things you could do. Um, so What if there was a way that we— you use that alert-type business where, say, I'm in the Hudson River Valley, I have 10 farmers, and then I get an alert from one farmer who says, hey, I have 10,000 melons that the stores aren't taking. Then I'm like, OK, great, I have this market where we could offer them crates of melons on this one singular date. So you kind of give the farmer like a secondary market where they could do that. So I could see it working there.

Hey, sorry guys, it's—

yeah, just to facilitate a little better and not run behind time, we need to move to the next Thanks so much, Rod, for your presentation.

Thank you, Rod. I really like seeing already something that looks concrete, and I agree that it should be user-friendly. I'm a big shopper, so it's important, and it's nice. Thank you so much for your work and for your presentation. Yeah, sure.

How do I, um, try to stop sharing my screen? Usually there's like a green button. It's the arrow next to it. Popping up at the bottom.

Share screen. It's the small arrow, I think. Yeah, hold on.

You can just see if it— well, the problem is I have my little—

I can also do it for everything.

Okay, can you do it? My toolbar is stuck. I'm like on a Mac and my toolbar is going in the way, I think.

Cancel. Um, thanks.

Okay, done. Um, so is anyone else there that has a new idea that would like to share? Okay, if, if not, um, I don't have a new idea. I just wanted to see kind of how I see the main vision. So for me, it's mostly, I see it as education, which I would like to like implement in the vision. And comparing to Apple Store classes that they run and teach how to use Apple products, I would like us to also have classes, workshops, seminars about sustainability, plastic, about co-ops. So that's why I think it would be great to have a physical location because we would, we could run those workshops there. And because education, through education, we can, we can really change the mindset. That's why I think it's very important. And yeah, there is group of people that are interested and they know about the topic, but there is huge massive group that doesn't. And if we created a place that is very inviting, people would come and maybe they will start with shopping, but eventually they would be interested in coming for classes, workshops to learn. Especially learn about alternatives because that's what people, you know, they buy what is there many times. That's mostly the masses they do. It's there, they— so they don't know what alternatives are. So that would be also great. And we could also, I was thinking, in the same space to have, to invite activists, PhDs, professors, or some representatives of sustainable products or companies. And I think people would come. I mean, that's how I see it. And another thing why I kind of support the version, I see this store as basically a farmer's market but in earth. And farmer's markets are really successful. And if you, I don't know if you guys go, but I go frequently and people just go there, you know, they wake up early and they go. And it's really that if you go towards the end of the farmers market, there's nothing left. So basically, that's why I believe in the main vision, but I see it as, yeah, basically putting a farmers market into our store. So that's what I wanted to share. Anyone has questions?

Yeah, thank you. Do you actually think that can be a good idea to invite the producers? Like maybe you can, maybe can be like even like a day, Sundays with all like producers and farmers, they can present their products? Yeah, totally.

That's what I was also saying, like inviting not only people like knowledgeable on one like teaching theory, but yeah, actually different people, even producers, because we even ourselves, I don't think we know what kind of plastic it is, what is good, what is bad, you know. So that will be great, I think.

Yes, I agree with you. I think as I mentioned in our headline that I would like I would like it to be like an experience. You go there, you buy food, it happens to be zero waste or plastic-free. There are seminars, workshops, you can learn something, you can grab a sandwich, people are friendly, like a concept that people like and that people just happen to fall in love with. Answering your earlier question, Ulla, you asked to Brad, if I may say, do you think this will attract the masses? I don't think the online part of our vision is for the masses. I think it can be in the long term once, like, if we have a physical location that is attractive, that is successful, that is an experience, as I mentioned. And we happen to also have an amazing online store, right, for the people that I'll say, like, if there's not a location in, in that place and people can recommend it, and we, as we can have like a post on Instagram, or like we have like also online store with more products or some products that you don't find in the store, just like any other store that has in-store and online option. So, but the hook, to put it that way, is like that experience that people would have when they go to the physical location.

Right. And I did very small research about online shopping and— I mean, online grocery shopping versus regular shopping. And as much as it's growing, and statistics show it's growing with a huge speed, it's still just a few percent that population shops, like, does grocery shopping online. Even though it's growing, and I found somewhere that it's going to, like, last year I think it grew by 10%, and by 2025 it's going to grow at 21%, I think. But it still takes such a small area that that is, that's why I still, I mean, I believe in both. Online grocery and physical, but still, you know, support the physical location. And that's what I found about that.

Yeah, cool.

Um, when I, uh, I used to work on the Lower East Side, and my architectural firm was partner with the Hester Street Fair. And we had a couple locations around the city where we would have marketplaces, usually twice a week. There would be a lot of craft stuff and grocery stuff as well. And organizing it wasn't too complicated, but it's Undoubtedly a positive for the community, um, um, for sure.

Yeah, definitely.

That also answers— I don't remember who asked about also that— what is— I think it was you, Adam. So like, what is it gonna make us— oh, but you ask about like vendors, what is it gonna make them want to sell? In our store. Well, we are giving back to the community in many different ways and to the environment too. So that's the plan. So I think that's one of the reasons why people would like to buy from us or sell with us.

Yeah, especially if they have similar values as us. And we have to find, you know, suppliers that match with their values. And the pitch is, you know, you could sell on Amazon if you want, but you're going to get— it's going to be way more competition. They're not going to match up. You know, you're going to get all sorts of different customers, whereas here it's going to be specific people looking for products that exactly match what you provide.

Okay, great. Um, Anyone else like to share before we move to the questions and discussions which are across the entire region? Not yet, unless someone else wants to say, because actually in the beginning— so is anyone And like, does anyone else want to share anything else?

I'm, I'm not gonna share it. And I also did some like e-commerce research and also physical location, location research, and I can share that presentation with you. It's not even done because there's so much. And I realize that there are many companies that have like little parts of what I want to do, but I haven't found one yet that has everything you want to do. And the other thing I did that I also like to share with you, and I will like I will make you editor so you can add, uh, pros and cons on 3 different subjects, which is like having, um, a grocery— selling groceries, um, present of having a physical location, pros and cons of doing online only. Just, um, but I'll— it's not necessary that I should write it down because it's something we can all do later and you can check it out.

Well, that would be great to hear. And also, I forgot in the very beginning to ask if anybody else—

you said add to the agenda?

Yeah, I forgot, you know, the meeting we were supposed— I was supposed to ask if anyone wanted to add any item to the agenda. I'm sorry. I actually was the one who wanted to add something.

I wrote that on the Trello.

Approved. I wrote this on the Trello, but to be honest, so my question is, and I brought it up, I mean, I posted those already last week and how does everyone feel about Trello? And do you consider, or have you considered other platforms for ideas and brainstorming? And communication because just personally me, I mean, I've been using Trello for a year for my own work and I find for this project very complicated because it's not visual at all. And I'm really lost sometimes. I don't know where to post, to be honest. I don't know, maybe just me. So I was actually talking to Annie about it and For her project, she's using a platform called Miro. It's mostly for brainstorming for ideas. So if you guys would like to, we could share this. I mean, she could share the screen and share kind of her experience, how is she using it. But just tell me if, like, if it's anybody's concern or would you like to go there or you—

No, yeah, let's take a look.

All right, so yeah, yeah, I'm not there anymore. Yeah, so I've been—

I think I've been sharing it and I've been using it in, I think, in the last— just in the last years. Basically, it's a giant whiteboard where you can put a lot of items. You have, I have here like a map. So what I like is that everyone can be at the same time on the board. So you can actually brainstorm on different things. We do things like, yeah, like organizing even this, like today's agenda, what is it? And you have like sticky notes here and different colors and you just add another one and write. So you can do things like that very easy. We, I like, for example, to like decide on like priorities, you know, what are, what in this case is a, it's about an online event planning. So it's like, what do we think, like who are going to be our attendees? And then like we put like all kinds of sticky notes and then we'll see like where the majority of the attendees come from, like from this brainstorm, no? So you can also add pictures to it and it also has a Kanban option, which it is a little bit like Trello, no? Where you can add a task, you can assign it to someone from the group, you can add a tag, you can put a link and so on. So you can have this included in the same big whiteboard. So basically you can keep everything visually in the same place, including you can bring in, upload saved files, things from Google Drive. You can just bring in a presentation, you can add it there, or you can have a document, for example. Right, where is it? It's like too tiny here. Yeah. But I really, I mean, it takes a little bit of it. Like if you go through like a couple of tutorials, you really can get the whole platform. And I really find it useful for collaboration with a lot of people. Like we're doing this with like partners. So we are 5 already in the group organizers. It's very useful just for 5 people, but then we brought on board some partners and then it gets just like a larger group. Yeah, and it's been really helpful. I don't know how you guys—

Can you link to specific pieces of content? Like, can you send a link to someone else, like, of the, like, exactly what you're looking at on your screen?

You can invite people to the board, yeah.

But I guess, can you say like, oh look, I want to send a link to this program recap spot? Do you know what I mean?

Like a zoomed in link? So, so like everything is also in a, like a frame. Like everything can be designed in a frame and then you can save the frame. Okay. Create a frame, export it. Yes. Okay. Cool. Yeah, what else can I show you on it? Yeah, you have also templates of all kinds, so you can add mind mapping, as I said, the Kanban.

I have another kind of more open-ended question. How much stuff do we want to put into Miro or Trello. Yeah. Do we want to do— do we want to try to have all of, uh, basically everything in here? Do we want to try to do like— because I'm sure this can do comments too. Yeah, exactly. We could do all of our communication in either Miro or—

normally when we do, I mean, we also like— yeah, you can add, uh, you can have like chat and everything, but we still prefer to have like the voice on Zoom Zoom. And then also when you have a lot of users, you can follow one user. So wait, let me see if I— somebody's like presenting. Yeah, exactly. So like here, if there were more users, you would see like different avatars and then you go by like following, you click on it and then you follow that person. So if somebody is presenting, then you see like how they move in the board.

But it's mainly for like sharing ideas, not for communication.

Yeah, I would say that it's mostly for brainstorming and like sharing ideas and keeping everything in one place.

But it's probably good for presenting during a meeting.

Yeah, or you can organize the same way, like you can organize your agenda there, you can like create like a space space for what you want to discuss.

It feels like a wall you would have like in a meeting room, in a physical meeting room. Exactly, like a detective board of sort, and just put everything and connect it. Um, and maybe, uh, Brad, I would say that we would— if, if we decide to do this, we have like one wall for each committee and one general board where we— things that are concerning everyone.

Yeah, you can do that, but the board is like so big that you can have actually sections within the board. And yeah, you can also have everything. Yeah, also the main— the boards can be locked also, so if you don't want to like change things on the board, you can lock it.

That's good.

It's probably one of many options. It just happened that, well, I told Anja about it and that's what she's using, so I just—

we can try a couple.

Maybe you guys have different alternatives. I really, I'm not familiar, that's why.

Yeah, maybe that can be our vote for our next meeting, practice consensus. And also, there's still the communication issue because we have like this long thread of emails which certainly is like very formal. So some people were suggesting other platforms just to say comments, like it would be like a WhatsApp group or something, but not there, obviously. But like, what would you suggest? Because I'm not very familiar with many options. I would love to hear.

Yeah, so last meeting we talked a little bit about potentially trying Notion or Slack as two other chat, more chat room-like workflows potentially. Have you, have you heard of Slack or Notion either? So I can't demo, I don't have it logged in, but I can share my screen and just Maybe I am logged in somewhere.

You sure? You want to show?

Yeah, I'm not logged in on this computer. I was going to show Slack, but can you show it?

Uh, yeah, come on, let me see. I haven't actually used Slack in a while, but I'm still in a group that I can, um, see. Otherwise, I'll log in as well. Okay, yeah, let's do this one, see if anyone's in there. Loading, loading, loading. Yep. Okay. Yeah, I can show Slack really quick.

Okay. I assume you have Notion covered as well. Yeah, I can do—

I don't know if I have a good example of Notion because I've only used it in like one team.

All right, then Slack's probably better for this group too, I think.

Did I share my— am I sharing my screen now? Yep. Okay, I might still— let me see, can I move? Okay, um, well, I mean, I guess the tour is it's pretty simple. Um, so you have these channels, right? You can add as many channels as you want. There's a bunch hidden here. You can— these are— there's a bunch, tons of channels that I'm not even on. So usually there's like, you have like tons of channels for very specific things. And then you kind of have more general channels that more people are in, and then like a general channel that like everyone's in. And then it's basically just a chat room that kind of you can link to stuff. You can, you can see here like certain links will kind of pop up with more info. I got, and you can do threaded messages. I'm trying to see, you can see here there's like people who commented on this. And so there's like a thread off of this comment that this person had, and you can do, you know, link to more stuff. And, and so this is the— this is in the browser, but the— there's a desktop app and like a mobile app that all function very similar. And I think that's kind of the other advantage is that you— everyone has like the same functionality no matter what device you're looking at.

And there's various— yeah, and I can jump in this. And then there's sometimes people build workflows using this tool to like approval processes, or there might be a bot to answer a question. But just, just for us as a group just starting out, I think it might make sense to have something like this so that if there is like a random question or a random thing that you want to talk about, or get opinions on, you could drop it in a place that's more, less formal than email, but still something that people could check like once a week or once a couple days just to tune in and check in more asynchronously.

And do you find it like, is it easy to find things if you like, let's say you didn't check it in few days?

This, I mean, yeah, you essentially, you would scroll up and the days are divided by these, those markers that you see there. And then they also have a search. So if you, if there's something that you remember having a conversation about, you can use the search and it will typically, it'll find that part of the communication and bring you right back to the conversation so you can reread it. Yeah.

Yeah, so I just like put it up there and maybe you guys didn't see this point for the agenda. So maybe we can think about it or you can suggest on the Trello so we can all get familiar and next time we can talk about it. I'm not sure if that makes sense. What do you guys think?

So would it be an action item to— create one of these groups and practice this week using it?

We could, we could try that.

You could try that. Yep. You guys won't.

Okay. Um, Brad, do you want to work with me on that?

Sure. Yeah. All right.

I know Vivek used to use Slack and, um, so maybe he also has some input. Okay.

Yeah, we, we use Slack for my day job, so I— that's basically how I communicate with my boss and all my colleagues, more, more, more than email or even Zoom.

But yeah, it's definitely a step up from email, and so I think for, you know, if we move all of our conversations from email to Slack, I think everyone will notice it's a lot better.

Okay. Great. So that would be great.

As far as communication, like, I think if we go with Slack, we'd have to find something else for documents. Like, I— we either have to stick with Google Docs or like Miro or, or something for like documentation and things. I personally, like, I personally really like Notion. Like, I've used Notion with Slack and I feel like they work together really well, but you know. I mean, we can look at all sorts of stuff.

Okay, that would be great. So we still have 15 minutes left, which is either left for questions or maybe Erika would like to share her— yes or no? I'm not sure.

No, I can send the link about the pros and cons. We don't need to go through it.

People can actually check it out themselves.

Yes, and I would like— I really like the last item in the agenda, like, to share how we think this meeting went and suggestions and just review our action items on whatever, have the space.

Okay, great. Okay, how did you guys feel about the meeting? What did you like or what did you dislike and what would you like to see in the next meeting, our future meetings?

Well, we fit within 2 hours, so that's a good thing. We'll just get that, get out of the way. Sorry, can you— Our time management was better, so we're getting better at that.

Um, I feel like it was productive. I feel like everyone was heard.

We didn't hear Jenny very much this time. I felt like the—

I don't know, I feel like we could streamline things a little more with having the same facilitator and the same minutes taker every time. But it was nice to meet Ani.

Thank you. Yeah, I can't see you, but good to be with you guys on the call. I'm hopping all around, so didn't really have time in the last weeks.

And also, like, you asked to change your email, right?

Yes, I think. I don't know if Adam, if you got my email about adding a different email to the Trello board so I can keep all my boards in the same area.

Sure, we'll do that later. Yeah, great.

Nice. Yeah, what should I say? Well, I, yeah, I think I like, I like the, I like the flow and I like that you guys had the ideas and you had all this research done, I've learned from it for sure. For— I personally think 2 hours, it's long. I generally lose my focus after a little bit, briefly after 1 hour. So I don't know if you want to keep the 2-hour format or like if you want to— like, if personally I would prefer even less. Like if there is for a meeting, I do all my meetings between like 40 minutes and 1.5 hours. Mostly we usually set it for 1 hour and then go a little bit over, but that's just a personal thing. Maybe at the beginning now, just to get more content and moving things faster, 2 hours is necessary.

But yeah, I think someone before mentioned maybe we move it to every 2 weeks, but maybe in the beginning, I think now in the beginning we kind of need this time. It's my personal feeling.

And wish for the next, maybe to get to know each other personally. So maybe we can do some little breakout rooms also, so we can have like a little mini side chat on the side. Yeah, and a little breakout room. And pass it to whoever else wants to take the word.

How do people feel about the size of the group at this point? Should we try to recruit more people to come to the Zoom thing? I think it's— I think we've left it very open, like anyone can come, or— but I want to know if people think we should like start like being like, everyone should come, please. Please come, you know, like how much should we push that?

I think we, I think we should because we need, we're gonna need a lot of hands. And Vivek has like a series of emails like, okay, you can watch the first meeting, they're already, you know, there. And then like, okay, so if you like the first meeting, then the next one, and some like some follow-up emails so we can share them with you, Brad, or whoever wants to invite more people.

I think, yeah, it's a good idea. I agree. But also I've heard like from a couple people that they would like to be, but it's really overlapping their other meeting and they choose this. So I mean, I know we cannot like do it perfect for everyone, but yeah.

Do you think How many people do you think— is that multiple people you've talked to about that issue?

Like, that was Emily. She was on the first, maybe half of the second meeting. And then our other friend, uh, Ashley, she finishes work at this time when we always start. So by the time she gets home, that's why, um, so that, that's the two people I talked to. But I agree with you, I think we should recruit soon more, be good.

There's a splash page that I guess Vivek or someone made, and it has the date up for the first meeting. Reset that for—

ah, yes, we were supposed to work on this just before going to the retreat. He thought maybe that's too much to take care of right now. So I guess when he's back, uh, we'll, we'll do it because he kind of mentioned it to Erica. And they also— I, I cannot access his laptop even though he left me his password.

We are kind of done.

But yes, to reach out to the people that RSVP for the original event, which haven't been like really following up, just like saying, okay, there's still time, like you missed the first meeting, but there are recordings. And yeah, just because there was like almost 100 people that RSVP'd.

Yeah, maybe, maybe like a relaunch or something is in order after we get the kinks ironed out of You know what I mean?

Definitely. I definitely agree with that, Jennifer. Some sort of relaunch would be probably in order once we have a better idea about where we're going in the next steps, especially if we just need manpower and not any particular skill. If we can get a project like that. Figured out, then it makes sense to try to keep our email list warm.

Well, I personally start to feel more comfortable sharing my thoughts with the group, and I was— I'm happy that I was able to like clarify what, um, unless I was a bit confusing. And, and yeah, like, I, I feel happy with the results of this meeting, and I also think it was productive. And I just— it was nice to just have space to share our thoughts.

Yeah, right. Um, yeah, I think Brett is Taking the notes, right? Uh, what is— so maybe we review what is for the agenda for next time.

Review the, the, oh, the notes from the meeting?

No, no, not the notes, like what— sorry, the action items. I'm sorry, for the next time we said, okay, um, we said definitely about to discuss the platform, platforms.

Um, then Russell and Brad, we're gonna create a Slack group so we can test it out. Um, yeah, and next we wanted to maybe vote on whether to use Miro, um, just to share like ideas or not, so that can be added.

Well, but would anyone like to test it on their own maybe before we vote? Because I mean, we saw it. Yeah, I don't know if it's—

that's how I understood it, that Russell and I would kind of test out a bunch of different things. Okay, present. I'll present. Okay, that's what I was— that's kind of understood. Is Erica— was that what you understood too, or is that Sound good?

Um, yeah, I'm not sure if there's like an action item for everyone, which I think there should be. Would it be to like, um, yeah, I think we need to do something.

So what will— me and Brad will try to get the Slack group up, um, the next day or two. Shouldn't, shouldn't be too hard. It's a free service until you get a certain amount of messages, and then even then it'll Um, sorry, I hear feedback. Um, there's a— it's a free service, so we can try it and see if we like it, and we can get invites sent out. And it's— there's no obligation to join, but if you want to test it out with us, you can. I think that'll be— and then next meeting we can talk about whether that was a success or not and what we want to do going forward. Um, same thing with Mira— we— Miro. We can Annie, is that free to use or?

It's free up to like 3 boards. So yeah, it's free. That's why I was saying that you can put all the information in one board because it's actually, it's like unlimited the space on one board.

OK, so maybe you two would pair up and try to get a Miro that we could share out to everybody.

Yeah, we can do that. We can do that together.

Yeah, you mentioned that there are some tutorials, right?

Yeah, and they're very good tutorials. Just watching a couple of videos can take you through the whole—

Cool. So yeah, just create the board and send us invites.

Yeah. Sounds good. Okay, um, I think that— I think the meeting—

can I add an agenda item that maybe for discussion, something for discussion? And I don't have a presentation, but maybe for discussion, um, that we talk about what, what kind of commitments, like just commitments in general. What, how we feel about commitments.

Okay, what do you mean by commitments exactly?

Like, I was thinking about this the other day, that like, I can work on this for free, or I can work on it for $30,000, or plus a year. But because of my particular circumstance, I can't work on this. I can't accept less than $30,000 a year, except I could do it for free.

So to a certain extent, right? Is that kind of what you're saying? Like, you can— you have this much, I guess I'm kind of where like, I can do this many hours for free. Otherwise, like there has to be like some sort— we'd have to have like revenue and then we can bump up to something else. Is that kind of what you're saying, Jennifer? I don't want to like— yeah, that's on your idea.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, okay, um, yeah, I can work on it for free just indefinitely, I guess. Yeah, for a certain amount, like hour—

like a certain amount of hours per week or something, per month or something.

Yeah, but if But if we, if we somehow could figure out how we could pay ourselves $30,000 plus, that would be— I wouldn't— that wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is a big conversation, um, that we should get to, so thanks for bringing it up. Um, but yeah, discussing how, uh, say the next 6 months is going to work versus You know, at what stages of the business do we account for hours? Do we start doing it already? So there's loads of things to think about.

Yeah, I— for me at this point, I'm considering my labor donation. So basically donating my time.

I understand that, but we have to get on the same page, everyone. Come to agreement on that.

Yep. Yes, we do.

So Jennifer, you would like to talk about this on the next meeting, or you would like to— that's just, that's just one.

Um, the money is just one question. Um, what other kind of commitment? Like, uh, I don't know, we were saying like to make a co-op, we— there's a meaning of membership. Like, what's the What's the meaning of membership? And there's some kind of commitment involved to show up to meetings or to do some kind of amount, number of work, or other—

I mean, if there's multiple levels.

To do some research on like the different types of membership or how like different companies have started. That can be like my action item. Like, what is— what are some— how does— how do membership start in the beginning? Because obviously you will have like, as the company grows, co-op grows, you can commit to more hours, right? When it's like a full-time job, whether now, but like, how can you start and say, okay, I'm a member, I can give this. So I'll do some research on that.

If you need any help, I can help with that.

Okay, so maybe a final checkout for everyone.

Let's see, what do you want to dream about tonight?

Oh, what I want to dream about. To be in the deep, deep powder in the woods.

Wait, what kind of powder?

Like, you know, snow. Oh, okay. I'm watching videos about snow. I just want to go.

Come back, come back to Colorado, please. I would love that. I'm the opposite. I'm gonna dream about, you know, a trip to Cancun or something. She just— I can go whenever I want. I'm not running for office, so—

just landed just from there. I'm from Cancun, so— oh yeah, yeah.

Are you like, you don't want to go to Cancun?

Yeah, I do, I do, I do.

Oh, you do? Okay, you still have good—

Timeshare with you, Brad.

Jennifer, what are your dreams?

Uh, I think I'll be running. For some reason I have a lot of running dreams.

I hope I dream to just have a solution to something.

That'd be a great dream. Even in your dreams?

Even in my dreams. Cube, anything. Solve it.

All right, Adam is the last one.

I think I share Russell's dream, or I would like to at least.

Well, I will dream about being in a field of sunflowers. Oh, nice. And seeing a spaceship coming to pick me up. She has crazy dreams always. I have surreal dreams.

All right, thank you, thank you so much everyone. Thanks everybody.

Thank you, bye, have a good night, your time and energy.

See you next week, I hope.

Yep, see ya.