Date: May 15, 2024
Time: 9am PT, 12pm ET
Meeting Link: Social Co-op GOAT Gatherings room .
Calendar: Calendar – GOAT
Attendees: Juliet, Jamie, Anna, River, Semra, Vic, Elizabeth
Presented by Semra (see slide deck)
Assessment based on interveiws/convos w/ ppl, observation, and existing materials
Started 5wks ago
Just a subjective view as an outsider
“How to define GOAT to someone who doesn’t know what it is?”
Generated word cloud from responses to that
Then created a 2-3 sentence definition based on all that
Compare GOAT Manifesto, 11th Hour Grant Narrative, website
TL;DR: GOAT is a lot of things
But what keeps it together?
The Intangibles (the foundation, eg, sense of community, shared values, etc) and the Tangibles (the glue, eg, conferences, community calls, etc)
So what’s working?
What’s not working?
Goals for what we want do w/ 11th Hour support, 2 big buckets (see slides for list)
Governance & Stewardship
Strategic plainning and a guiding vision
Other goals identified outside of those stated goals, 2 main areas:
Funding, duh
Making GOAT inclusive & accessible (lots of good prompts here listed in slides)
One more goal: CLEAN UP!
Juliet: not much, what resonates most is having a point person to give attention to recruting and onboarding
Vic: Special thing we don’t want to lose, GOAT has old skool interweb vibes
Juliet: created a Discord but never invited anyone, lol
Juliet: how we decide to communicate becomes culture
Semra: one critical conversation we need to have: how does GOAT communicate w/ growers?
Semra: the GOAT box is for bringing GOAT to farmers, and that’s what we need to do more of (in other forms)
Elizabeth: looking at other groups, GOAT is a lot of “do-ers,” which really makes us special
Elizabeth: FarmHack now has dedicated person to lift up farmer engagement
Elizabeth: rundown of CAFF, including the Innovation Challenge, Small Farm Tech Expo where GOAT tabled
Juliet: ways that we can bring partners like CAFF, Paicines
Juliet: interfacing w/ farmers/producers, the GOAT box is great, even though a lot of stuff is research based, it’s stuff farmers can connect with and gets their attention
Jamie: we need to create that space for farmers before we invite teh farmers. Right now there isn’t a lot of space to get nerdy about programming languages and cultivaters, for examples.
Moving forward: focus on the conference and find opportuntiies to address some of these areas for needed improvement.
Juliet: What confs are ppl attending in near future, or interested in? But first! Semra will give updates on GOAT 2024
Semra: working out deets for Paicines as venue, food cost is a potential issue (~$50k), going to reach out again
Check in with Lakisha Odum for potential funding leads.
Jamie: Lakisha mentioned the No Regrets Foundation (fun name) who maybe has collaborated w/ Paicines before and might be inclined to donate for grassroots ag community stuff. I promised her a blurb about GOAT so she can pass it along.
Can we really do mid September?
Paicines has the week of Nov 3rd open
Sorry I couldn’t make the call today - is there a link to the needs assessment slide deck cc @semra ?
This would be great - assuming it is the same group, the #NoRegrets Initiative helped bring GOAT to EcoFarm in 2023. So they should have a general idea who we are 
Here are the slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kt6eff7qehDgNP5DbYG8xE_LcgUUkAqckJ85aiBbAq8/edit#slide=id.g2713304e314_0_209