Hi Liesbet, I have also felt rather frustrated with the flyer saga. I don’t know if this conflict is the source of the delays in printing etc., but in any case I think it is worth going navigating this conflict until the end. I felt that my comments and concerns were fully ignored, which is against some of the basic principles of sociocracy. However, I don’t want to adhere too much to the rule book because I haven’t done a training on working methods and sociocracy in a while, and I may get the theory wrong, bu to me “doers decides principle” cannot mean getting away with one’s idea at all costs. Even less in a collective project like this where we are organised in working groups and seek feedback for a reason and, to some extend, we all need to feel a certain level of ownership on what we do.
A while ago, we had a discussion on ER on updating the flyer and this post included some ideas from other cohousings, if you follow the links it will take you to specific examples that reflect flyers with quite a lot of info in them. I agree that this exercise is entirely subjective, but to me it was certainly not at all about reinventing the wheel. This was also discussed orally, but I can’t remember when and the type of meeting (it was certainly before the creation of team external).
And to finalise, because I am also very tired of this discussion, I have to say that to me the flyer is no longer the point of this conflict anymore. I agree that it won’t be critical in attracting people to the project -the flyer that we have now is very basic and yet it gives us many registrations. That’s why I can also agree to your proposal. However, coming from a professional work environment where I am used to hearing very often that a good agreement is one in which no one is entirely happy, I really think this is the way to work in a team or on anything that involves a collective result: you give away things, expecting that the person who thinks differently will do the same and you can reach some sort of halfway solution. As said between us, happy to meet and discuss this over a coffee (and without the heaviness that written language can create).