FUUCSL minutes March 2008
UUSL Leadership Group Minutes for 3/5/08
Leadership Group Members present: Etaoin Barcelona, Sofia Freenote, Otenth Paderborn, Beacon Questi, Pomona Writer Visitors (for some or part of meeting): Head Waydelich, CoyoteAngel Dimsum
The meeting was held in the conference center in Zoshchenko and began shortly after 6:30 pm. Otenth sent a notice to the UUSL group to invite visitors to the meeting. Pomona read opening words, Etaoin lit a chalice and we shared joys and concerns.
Logging web chat: Everyone agreed to have their remarks logged for the accuracy of the minutes. Otenth will put something into upcoming agendas to make this approval presumed to be automatic for anyone attending.
Worship: Otenth asked us to reflect on our last month of worship. Are the improvements we put in place at the last LG meeting working? Are there any further worship considerations that need to be formally addressed?
We noted that the invitation to new service leaders has been regularly made at services. Pomona sent an announcement to the UUSL Worship committee, soliciting volunteers. She has identified one potential leader who is only available on Saturdays. Sofia noted that there are openings for Service Leader for the last two weeks in March.
[Sofia will lead the service on March 27 and 29. For a list of openings, see the box under the calendar in Lovelace or http://www.uuism.net/uuwiki/index.php?title=FUUCSL_Schedule. WE NEED A SERVICE LEADER FOR MARCH 20 AND 22, 2008!!]
Otenth will send a notecard to the entire UUSL group, soliciting volunteers and requesting that they contact someone in the leadership group. Since Sofia has taken on the job of updating the calendars, her name will be at the top of the list.
General Assembly: The FUUCSL presentation will be Friday, June 27, at 11 am in the Grand Floridian. Etaoin, in consultation with Sofia, is producing a PowerPoint presentation with pictures. A draft version is available at http://groups.google.com/group/fuucsl. The RL photos of Etaoin and Sofia for the program have already been submitted. Etaoin has not yet requested reimbursement. Otenth will also be presenting a GA session in his RL persona on “new media”. After some technical discussion, we agreed to keep the GA discussion on our agenda throughout the spring.
Calendar in Lovelace: The calendar in Lovelace that is receiving the data from the Google calendar is not working well. There are missing events, events on the wrong days, and it freezes regularly. CoyoteAngel agreed to continue the technical discussion off-line with Otenth and Otenth will also contact the creator of the calendar for assistance.
Sofia noted that the FUUCSL classified ad (linked to UUGuru) does not mention the regular time of services (Thursday at 6:30 PM SLT and Saturday at 6:00 AM SLT). She will contact Biz to ask him to add that information to the classified ad. CoyoteAngel volunteered to add the times into the parcel description which currently is set to show up in Search as a classified. The weekly service should also be regularly posted as an event in the Second Life calendar (http://secondlife.com/events/). Sofia will assist any service leader in setting up this event, if needed.
Structure & Membership: The membership group (Pomona, Beacon, and Janu) had separate conversations between LG meetings. They were agreed that a category of “voting member” separate from the larger group of “friends” should carry some financial obligation, but they were not in agreement on the amount. Etaoin added that membership could entail an obligation for financial support or volunteer support (e.g., lead a service, greet at a service, etc.) There was no support for the idea of a new SL group for membership but, instead, that a list of members would need to be held outside of SL, perhaps in Google Docs. If pledges or dues are to be instituted, a new treasurer (a specific SL avatar created for the purpose of holding our funds), who would be accountable to the Leadership Group, would need to be created.
Next, there was a discussion of the rationale for formalizing our structure. Why would we be asking people to become a member? Voting rights - to have a say in the future and direction of the church? Because we need the money? Because we aspire to be a “real” church? Because we want to raise money to buy an island? To spread UU ism? The point was made that for some people, the SL UU service is the only religious experience they have. Etaoin would like to have some clarity on this issue because he would like to connect with CLF (Church of the Larger Fellowship) at GA and we could better see how we might fit with them if we had some kind of formal statement (bylaws?).
The topic was returned to the committee for more discussion. Pomona reported that only she and Beacon remained on the committee and no one at the LG meeting volunteered to join the committee. So, she will be sending an invitation to the UUSL group inviting individuals to join the committee for the membership and structure discussion. We may have a service focusing on the topic sometime after the next leadership group meeting.
Sofia agreed to do the opening and closing words at our next meeting. Pomona read the closing words and we ended at 8: 00 PM. The next meeting will be April 2, 2008, at 6:30 PM SLT in the Conference Center (Zoshchenko 35, 206, 92)