Starting a new thread for general exchanges.
Hello @reef-external,
Until now I have been taking up the task of drafting the newsletter, and I would like to hand this over to somebody else. Can you please see whether you can find someone for this?
The next episode is kind of urgent, because we’ll need to communicate about the presentations of 29/04 and 06/05 (@reef-recruitment will tell you more).
thank you for your efforts in taking to draft the newsletter text with so much care and attention. a reflection on this point: we are sending the newsletter to the list of people who sign up on the website, and come to the presentations.
in my opinon it’s not worth to put too much effort in drafting the text. our list members they are alredy informed about what the reef is. and they have been invited more than 10 times to the same presentation. i think we just need very simple factual emails saying: next presentation, when and where.
as an average we have 56% of delivered emails that are open. which is not a bad number.
I agree Manuel, the content doesn’t always need to be very fancy. Even though I must say I am kind of proud of the appendix that I wrote, which presents The Reef in case people would want to forward the letter.
That said, it still takes time that I currently don’t have, and so I would like to hand over the task to somebody else.
@reef-external I added the weekly all-hands meeting (Mon 17:30-18:00) that we agreed upon to the NextCloud Calendar.
We’ll work from the NextCloud “Deck” (see the top navigation bar on NextCloud) that Manuel created on the fly. Feel free to start populating this so-called “kanban” board. Manoj’s list is going to be a great help there.
For all @reeflings with a Linkedin account, here is the Reef´s Linkedin page (also linked to personal profiles, I added Lee and Manoj as superadmins, if someone wants access please let me know) https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-reef-cohousing-brussels/posts/?feedView=all&viewAsMember=true
Give it love by following it!
@reef-external In preparation of tonight’s online all-hands 17:30-18:00:
Hi @reef-external,
I am sorry but i won’t be able to join tonight’s call. I should have informed earlier. I am again traveling (in Bangalore now).
Can someone please check if the overview file on Nextcloud is editable in case it will be used in tonight’s meeing ?
Yes, it is editable.
@joannes, for the person taking care of the next newsletter, just a quick note for the sake of clarity: there is an “about The Reef” like appendix for every newsletter. The correct version (21 units, 7 units available, 18 adults, 4 children) is in the version that I drafted two days ago, saved in the 2025-04-28 folder. So in the next version it should be this version that goes out.
Hello @reef-external,
May I suggest that you create a card for your kandan on monitoring?
The task is to login to The Reef’s Google account and check the different registration forms every 2-3 days. The reasoning is that, had this been done, we would have picked up the non-published ad on Habitat & Participation much faster, idem for finding out that we were not getting any registrations because the forms were not on our website. It’s the best source of feedback on how things are going, and it allows for responding as soon as possible whenever something is off.
For reference for the person who would take up this task: when we only had one presentation at the time, the normal rate was two registrations per day on average.
Making it more concrete: I did a quick check today, and I saw that the presentation on 13 May currently has zero registrations. @joannes, can it be an option to act on this with urgency, e.g. to see whether it’s on Facebook, Meetup etc, and to maybe send out another issue of the newsletter?
Just to be clear: I want to be mindful of team autonomy, so you are very welcome to do things as you see fit. It’s just that I have been carrying out many of these tasks for years, so I figure it does make sense to share what I know and see, so that nobody needs to start from scratch.
There isn’t a FB event on the presentation of the 13, I thought of creating it after the presentation yesterday. The reason is the balance between keep things up to date and at the same time avoiding oversharing and that the message becomes a sort of spam. But will try to create it and start advertising as of tomorrow night.
Howevwr, should we maybe discuss objectives and frequency for each way of communicating? Or is it sort of decided that this needs to be done very regularly? I know we are in a recruiting crisis, but for instance, I don’t think there is really an added value in having all the upcoming events on Facebook at once - it kind of loses the perception of special, but I’m open to hear other opinions.
I am not an expert, but for what it’s worth, I think there are two things that need to be considered separately:
Creating an event. This is just about making the information available, nothing more. This I would do as soon as possible, because it sort of becomes a vector. One person may find it in their feed, and their share it elsewhere, and like this is starts its own journey.
Promoting an event. Here I can imagine that one needs to be selective, and that you want to take them one by one. But even there, I can imagine it needs more nuance. If we are having an event on a Sunday to accommodate for families, I reckon that would compete with many other family activities, and therefore would need to end up in the agenda a long time in advance?
These are my two cents, you can do with it as you see fit. What is going to become a real issue here in the near future though, both for @reef-external and @reef-recruitment (for the whole task package, to be clear), is the question of responsibility and accountability. The presentation of the 13th - decided last week! - still has ZERO registrations. Whatever choices you are making, at some point I imagine there will be questions from the entire group, because we really depend on you.
Hello @reef-external,
Given the crisis we are in, and the anxiety this triggers in some people in the group, would you be open to submitting a short written report (0,5-1 page post on Edgeryders) on what has been done so far to increase the number of registrations to the presentation, and what’s in the pipeline? Even apart from the crisis and the anxiety, I figure it’s a good practice in a decentralised group to provide information on some of the essential things that are going on.
My ideal date for this would be the plenary of 15 May. The purpose would be to generate a shared understanding, not a discussion. Would this be feasible?
Yes, we can certainly present our progress on the 15th. Unfortunately I cannot make it myself that evening but will make sure that there is a report, that another team member can present.
@reef-external I’ll be joining the fietstour on Saturday and look what the nice people at brukselbinnenstenbuiten inserted in their confirmation mail to all attendees:
“Voor wie zelf nog op zoek is naar een cohousingplek in Brussel: Joannes van The Reef fietst mee en geeft onderweg wat uitleg over hun startend project in Jette.”
"For those who are still looking for a cohousing spot in Brussels: Joannes from The Reef is cycling along and will provide some information along the way about their starting project in Jette.
Yes, that’s me – and us!
Thank you, Maria, for making this happen.
Whoop whoop 
What’s going on in team External Relations? A short report to the plenary meeting:
thank you for this report joannes, i am not sure i will attend the plenary tomorrow. is someone from @reef-external going to be there?
Thanks Joannes, much appreciated.
Two follow-up questions:
I’d like to get a better overview on which actions have been completed since the crisis has been flagged, and what’s in the pipeline. This is not apparent from the meeting minutes. Would it please be possible to provide a bit of information on this?
It seems like the meeting minutes only consist of a video recording and some AI scribbles. If that’s the case, may I please request that the team holds up a minimum of transparency, and writes up half a page of key points on the meeting, so that everybody who would like to get a quick update can access to it? Maybe it can be as simple as copy/pasting the AI scribbles and do 5 minutes of editing on them?