Freegle Reps Report 2010-10-23

This report is a summary of the Reps' activities since the mid September Reps Report http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Freegle_Reps_Report_2010-09-19 until 23rd October 2010. There were 845 messages on the Reps group in this period.

Media/External

1. We continued to discuss how to encourage volunteers to get involved in national and local media and publicity.
2. We noted Adam had been nominated for a Community Champion Award; and encouraged people to vote for him.
3. The mailbox advised us of a possible networking opportunity http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/
4. We noted Caroline's urgent message to Central about a free place for the London Community Resource Network conference on 14th November on 'Sustainable Communities 2010: Building the Big Society'. Cat contacted the organiser, and managed to get two free tickets one for her and one for Paul.
5. Cat and Paul attended the UK Aware Catalyst Networking Event on 14th October.
6. We discussed the 2010 Green Awards, and noted that Liz (Enfield) was trying to see if they would waive or discount the £150 fee.

Arbitration of Carol's Suspension

1. The majority of the period was spent collating evidence for the Panel dealing with Carol's suspension case and answering questions from the Ombudsman and the Panel; this activity also accounted for over half of the messages. We estimate that we have spent around 80 hours on this case over the last two months.
2. This is the first time the Arbitration process has been used, and so teething problems might have been expected. The Reps - Ending Terms of Office Procedure was designed as a long term solution, with a number of steps before arbitration, so the current case is particularly difficult for all parties. A significant part of the correspondence in the first part of the period was about process rather than about the actual case, but the great majority of the work has been in preparing the evidence for the case.
3. Once the case is over, we think we there needs to be a review process to see what improvements could be made for the future.

Day to Day Freegle Operational Matters

1. Alison notified us that she wants to step down from the role of Freegle Historian, and we will be looking for someone to take over.
2. Jacky and Susan, who run the Freegle Mailbox, contacted us to discuss the 'Birthday Greetings' they have been sending to each local group. We felt these greetings could be dropped as there were some negative responses, but they then started getting positive responses, and so will be continued for the longer established groups for now.
3. The mailbox team forwarded us a question about selling being allowed on a Freegle Cafe group. This was then raised and discussed on Central.
4. A Freegle volunteer contacted us to tell us that in September 2009 they had formed the legal companies Freegle Ltd and Freegle UK Ltd. We established that the next cost (for filing) was not until September 2011. No action has been taken action at this stage, this would not be a decision within the current Reps' remit.
5. We received an enquiry on how the Manchester Investigation Panel was progressing, given it was set up over six months ago. The Rep observer on this Panel is Edward (he took over from Mark), and he undertook to encourage the panel to write their final report.
6. The mailbox team copied us on an email they had sent to a local group who was asking for moderating assistance.

Yahoo Group Platform

1. The mailbox team passed an email to us from a mobile and web developer who had obtained a small grant to develop a mobile application for re-use groups. We polled and agreed that Edward should be the contact person for this offer of help, and keep Reps informed. They have since expanded their aims to cover a full replacement site and have been invited to Tech, and are discussing it there.
2. The mailbox team also passed on an email to us from a local group member who wondered if we had considered alternative platforms. We invited him to join the Tech working group.
3. The mailbox team passed on a concern from a local group member on the impact of the Yahoo group remodelling. We subsequently noted with relief that the new format was to be opt-in rather than mandatory.

Structure related discussions

1. We briefly discussed the proposal to set up a database as an alternative method of contacting volunteers, and then made our contributions on the Structure Working Group.
2. We briefly discussed the wording of the point in the Reps Working Practices which said 'Reps will appoint Officers from among their number as required', but then made our contributions on the Structure Working Group.
3. We agreed that as soon as the work is completed by Structure on the best practice guidelines for working groups, we would initiate a 'Sits Vac' type advertisement on Central, which would also include the Freegle Historian role and specific Media and Publicity roles.

New Groups

1. We continue to log applications for New Groups from outside the UK.
2. We briefly discussed Freeshare's announcement of a new group, and agreed that the proper route for affiliation with Freegle was via the New Groups Assessment Team.

Reps Team Operational Matters

1. Under our 'monitor and object' we continue to make a weekly check on the UK IPO database to look for anyone trying to register the Freegle name. Nothing has been found so far.
2. We had 17 polls in this period of which 12 related to Carol's suspension. We had decided that all evidence sent to the Ombudsman/Panel, and all responses to questions from the Ombudsman/Panel, needed polling and agreement from all Reps on rather than our usual 6/7.
3. The Reps email address was not operational for a while, due to Yahoo blocking addresses where there is an autoresponse and an autoforward to a Yahoo Group. This has now been fixed, but we have had to switch off out auto response & rely on manually acknowledging emails.
4. We discussed setting up a Skype chat, but have not yet arranged it.

Reps

Back to Freegle Representative Group or Freegle Reps Report 2010-09-19