View source for January 24th, 2015 Worcester Planning Meeting

Meeting held at the Worcester Public library.

Participants:
* James O'Keefe
* Noe Kamelamela
* Steve Revilak
* Lucia Fiero
* Jason Fiero

= Agenda = 

# 2014 Review
## Campaigns
## Events
# Objectives and Tasks for 2015
## Goals
## Organization 
### Rick Falkvinge's Swarmwise book recommends a particular organization.
## State Reorg?
### Currently the Pirate Council is made up of the Captain, First Officer, Quartermaster, and 3 others.  
### Perhaps we should define roles for the 3 other Pirate Council members and expand their number: PR/Media, Activism, Swarmcare and Web/Info.
## Establishing Regions?
### Swarmwise suggests dividing into 20-30 regions.  
### Jason worked on a first draft of a map which Jamie has expanded with this [[Region Proposal]].

= Notes = 

== Campaign Review ==

We've had some reviews of campaigns and events on a discrete basis,
but we should also review them as a whole.  How could we have gotten
more people to run for office?

Noe ran, and tried to convince other people to run.  Young people
believed that running would take ridiculous amounts of money, or
ridiculous amounts of time.  It's no worse (in terms of time and
money) than enjoying hiking or skiing.  Campaigning is easier in the
city, where one can walk from house to house.  Local races are easier
than larger races.

Frank Capone is running for city counselor at large in Medford.
Platform is police accountability and municipal internet.  It's a
non-partisan race.

In our last call for candidates, seven people were interested in
running.

Campaigning helps your interview skills.  It's easier to talk to a job
interview after talking with hundreds of people while campaigning.

We'd like to stress getting a critical mass of people running
together.  Having a critical mass makes more things possible.
It's beneficial for candidates to do things together.

College chapters.  For most universities, a chapter would require
support from a certain number of students, or from a faculty member.
Logistically, it would be easiest to start with campuses nearest to
where we are.

Having SCATV membership (and programming) has given us exposure that
we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

We have a database of approx. 400 supports.  We tried to contact
them a year ago, but never finished the job.  Should try that again,
so that we can organize better.

Joe is planning to run for state rep again (in the same district).

Why run?  You'll meet your representative, and they'll remember you.

Openness and decentralization.  General philosophy: if you'd like to
do something, and it aligns with general Pirate goals, then you should
go ahead and do it.  You don't need to seek permission first.  If
you're not sure, talk to three other pirates.  

To run many candidates, we'll need a decentralized structure, and we'd
like to encourage groups to pursue their own initiatives.  If you say
you're a pirate, we trust you, go run with your idea.  Use your best
judgment and be responsible.

We have a code of conduct.  There are a bunch of things in there we
can use (when proposing decentralized work).  Our code of conduct
should go up on the main website, in the 'about' section.  Noe may
make a video about it.

== Events ==

We did 26 events from May -- Dec 2014.  For 2015, should we aim for
1--2 events per month.

Running for office seemed to generate more interest than events.
Running for office shows people that we're serious about doing things.

Consistency is a good thing.  We've marched in the pride parade for
three years in a row.  None of the other minority political groups
have done that.

This year, let's try not to stretch ourselves too thin.

Perhaps we should have different teams to work on ?  For example, a
Cryptoparty team, a video team.

Would it be useful to work on DIY cryptoparty kits?  Put together sets
of slides that others can use.  Put together some videos on how to
organize a cryptoparty?

For future cryptoparties, we should focus on hands-on / workshop.
Should also add segments to address privacy and security on mobile
devices.

== Goals ==

Replace Mailchimp with CiviCRM.  Perhaps replace other things with
CiviCRM.

More TV shows.

Building infrastructure to support bill advocacy.  (e.g., being able
to tie members to their legislators, so we can do better ``contact
your legislator'' campaigns).

Last year, we devoted a lot of time to events.  Perhaps this year, we
could devote more time to issues (or issue-related events).  For
example, Net Neutrality was one of the most popular topics selected
for piratecon.  We probably can't influence the FCC or congress
directly, but we could work on local issues related to net
Neutrality.  For example, municipal internet.

For municipal internet, we need to build a knowledge base.  For
communities that have municipal internet: how did they get it?  What
were the infrastructure costs?  How do they pay for it?  For
communities that don't have municipal internet, what are the
obstacles, and how could those obstacles be overcome?  If someone
wanted to bring municipal internet to their community, what concrete
steps could they take.

Perhaps we could organize a research meeting/hackathon, to start
pulling this information together.