12/2/2025: Who is a Spoke

“Who is a Spoke”, Briar, 12/2/25

This is based on what I heard people saying during our last meeting. If you have amendments you’d like to make, please feel free to do so in the chat prior to the meeting.

I propose that all current working groups at Woodbine become spokes. If new working groups are formed, they can become spokes with the approval of the spokes council. The current working groups include: operations, location, programming, finance, gym, mycology, basement, pantry, research group, yoga, film screening, meditation, dinner, gardening, fundraising, writers workshop, food fight, Tuesday night reading group, and screen printing.

We may want to add something about how each spoke representative must be voted into that position by their respective group

We may also want to consider the amount of influence that any given individual could exercise with the proposed spokes. We need consensus minus 2 to pass proposals. Is there any concern that with the listed working groups, a highly involved individual might be able to influence 3 or more spokes

comments (format: commenter name: comment)

• Ash: i suggest coworking isn’t a working group in the spokescouncil until there are more co-workers
• Violet: each spokesperson could be asked to commit to 3-6 months of representing their wg in the spokescouncil
• Ash: about choosing who is a “spoke” - We state that we value autonomous operation and each working group is functionally very different. Autonomy imo will help ppl feel more excited and accountable if we can also offer clear suggestions to try so ppl aren’t overwhelmed with the ask.For example a working group doesn’t necessarily need to do elections to choose a spokesperson if ppl step up and rotate willingly based on everyone sharing a sense of what is needed
• Ella:Agreed re: autonomy. For a suggested model, one super simple way for groups to choose spokes might be for someone to send out a text “Emoji react if you’d volunteer to be a spokes this term” and then I bet we could find some tool where one of those people who reacted to the text is randomly selected (if needed). Seems elections could become kind of toxic popularity contests, promote competition within groups etc imo
• Violet: super simple tool out there on the interwebs (just searched randomized selector) https://pickerwheel.com/
• paul: here’s a little map I made grouping the WGs by how I intuit they relate to the space
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