April 15, 2007 General Meeting Minutes

Present: Mike, Tobie, Rachelx2, Ryan, Christian, John, Possum, Will

Facilitator: Possum

Minutes: Rachel G

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Agenda:

1. Space

2. Promo

3. Wiki

4. U of T/AFU

5. Dance Dance Revolution! Planning

6. Visioning Process

7. AFU Mailbag

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1. Space

Christian in the past has used other apartments to host his courses, but he wondered if it would be easier if the AFU could provide a list of spaces available to use. It was agreed that it would be a good idea to consolidate our space resources and make them visible for any interested party. Rachel M stated that with every new semester she will email all course facilitators with available spaces, but is agreed that maybe a resource page should be created that lists all AFU friendly spaces.

2. Promo

Christian asked the question about the most effective way to promote courses. All agreed that more needed to be done on this front. Outside of the website, more postering could be done for the new semesters. It was suggested that the Dance Dance Revolution! could be used to kick off the new courses with each facilitator giving a short introduction to their course.

A committee could be set up to do more promotion.

3. Wiki

Rachel G, Christian and Tobie all wanted to become more Wiki-friendly (posting pictures, general editting, page creation, etc.). Possum said he would put on a Wiki demo at the end of the next general meeting for anyone who is interested. There was also some thought into putting a mini-tutorial on the website.

4. U of T/AFU

Ryan reported in about the student group on U of T campus. He said he was working with Dave to get things up and running but there was first the issue of renewing the group with the student union and administration. Ryan will be running a membership drive and will be asking anyone within the AFU community who has any "ties" to the Universtiy of Toronto (faculty, students, graduates, alumni, etc.) to join up. An email will go out along with a more general posting on the website.

Again, there was some talk about branching out to other campuses across Toronto (OCAD? York? Ryerson?) but that might wait until things first get off the ground with the U of T folks.

5. Dance Dance Revolution! Planning

There was some confusion as to what efforts have been put into the planning of the party. Ryan, Christopher and Ashar all seem to be making posters for a party that yet has no date or venue. Rachel M and Mike said they would look into booking a space, while Rachel M and Tobie said they'd be the street team for postering and such. Christopher offered to mash-up some records and DJ and Ryan has threatened to do the same.

Right now, it's looking like the party will coincide with the new semester and will be for May 13th.

6. Visioning Process

There was a report back from the Visioning Process about the April 3rd and April 13th meetings. Everything is going swell and things are starting to take shape. A tentative agenda for the day's (June 23rd?) activities will be sent out to the general list with a call for in-house facilitators for each session (with between 2-3 facilitators for each session):

10:00-10:45: History of the AFU (Open)

10:45-11:00: Break (if we have the time)

11:00-12:00 Why are we here? (Open)

12:00-1:00 Eats (Rob and Rachel M)

1:00-3:00 Diversifying the AFU (facilitated by Sharmeen)

3:00-5:00 Where we would like to go (Ryan and ?)

There was some discussion about the out-sourcing of professionals for the Visioning Process. Possum echoed Rob's concern about how Marxists conceive of "anti-oppression" differently than anarchists and that maybe the AFU as a group should decide, in-house, what this means to us... Although neither were opposed to it for the anti-oppression workshop, both Ryan and Tobie had reservations about paying for professionals and how money is used as the standard to legitimate certain types of knowledge and knowledge workers over others... Mike stressed the importance of the workshop since the AFU needs skillsets not available to what appears to be a homogenous ethnographic group... In relation to the issue of diversity, Ryan raised the question of the retention of new people at the general meetings and John also mentioned that this is tied to the need to expand the group--while Rachel M said neither of these are necessarily a concern or issue.

The next committee meeting will be held at Ryan's house (email to follow).

7. AFU Mailbag

Mail arrived at the 519 from our buddies in California! Rachel M made the commitment to create better ties with the Santa Cruz folks.