PUN Organizing Meeting
October 19, 2020
(rescheduled from October 12)
8-9:15pm Eastern Time


Present: Jim, Neil, Kai, Jordan, Sifaan (Sri Lanka), Charlie(CDonly), Dylan

Repeat Mission Statement: PUN is a digital community that helps young people pursue self-directed learning by providing resources, mentorship, events, and friendships.

• 1) Discussion about using Discourse with Discord
  
  conversation and engagement is tricky… one option is to reduce the number of channels…. another option is to add a forum… seems to be people prefer the live discussions to engage more… don’t want to grow too fast with too many
  

IDEAS: 
— reduce to How about just a few multi-purpose chat rooms (lounge, dragons-den, serenity-room, library)
  — archive the old rooms (maybe link to them on the website?)
  — keep the INTRO channels
  — consolidate the server-intro and rules.
  —  move the mental health ones with a title, “serenity-room”

  — create a bot to have new members post their Intros with a special symbol so it automatically counts as an Intro and automatically posts to “member-intros”

  — Expand the roles to have a ping on their interest… so we don’t need separate rooms for that, just mark yourself with a role/interest


PROPOSAL: Try the new changes and check back at the next meeting to see if we should keep them or revert.

** 2) EVENTS and CLUBS:
Want to make an announcement?  Need support in some way?

Book Club:
new book (Snow by Orhon), 1^st meeting on Thursday, October 29.

The Book is Snow by Orhan Pamuk. It’s originally in Turkish, but we will be using the English translation by Maureen Freely. The first meeting is Thursday, Oct 22. By next meeting, people should try to get a physical copy of the book, read the first 4 chapters (30 pages), and have at least one firm topic they want to discuss with everyone.

• 3) Update on Board of Directors
  
  Kai and Jordan have accepted their offer to join the Board.JIM: Extend the invite to more people that are on Discord

• 4) Report on National Youth Rights Association’s conference
  from Katherine and Kai
  
  – hold till next time
  
  
• 5) 21 DAYS: After the War (“Pandemic Pod Programming”)
  
  JIM will be using the 21 DAYS channels during November to pilot the 21 DAYS game
  
  
• 6) Return of ‘Youth on Subjects of the World’:

What subjects should they discuss in upcoming episodes? 

IDEAS:
-Look for inspiration from Education In Transformation / EDIT   —
-Comparing Alternatives to Mainstream Education w/ Jordan?
-“Unschooling Myths”
–Kai -> would like to come on the show to discuss the name
–Katherine -> would like to go on the show to discuss young people’s voice in the SDE movement
-Transitioning from Public School to Self-Directed Education
-What habits/perspectives need to be ‘unprogrammed’ when you leave school to pursue SDE?

THEME: What do you need if you are “thrown into the deep end of the pool” and suddenly find yourself in the SDE realm without any preparation or planning?

• Confirm next meeting:
  
  Monday, November 9, 8:00-9:30pm Eastern Time