Hi @juankbell, @Pumbi, @alexsotodigital, @Oxytocin, @CryptoReuMD and @fujiar 
I was asked, as part of the Feedback Commission, to give feedback on your retrospective.
I want to say up front that I don’t have previous experience with the CoCC, and I’m not a delegate of the Token House, so I may be lacking important context.
I have simply read your report (this thread) and the resources you link to in it, and I will be sharing my thoughts on that basis. My intent is not to be finding faults with your work - I love the idea of the CoCC, and it is my impression that you are admirable representatives of the Collective! I will simply try to point out what I think could be some next steps and room for further improvement.
I hope my feedback may be useful to you, and that you will kindly correct me where my comments reflect a lack of contextual understanding. Please also let me know if there is anything you need me to expand upon, or if there are specific points that you would like my feedback on. If you like, you are welcome to give feedback on my feedback.
With a little luck, we can all learn something from the process.
Feedback on the format of the retrospective report
The overall structure of the report is clear.
I like how thorough you are in trying to communicate how the CoCC supports the Optimism Collective. In some places it does feel like your are trying to ‘sell’ yourself. I think an effective report simply focuses on giving the reader the information they need.
I'm wondering if maybe this points to a structural issue around these retrospectives - possibly there is a general tendency that it is not clear (to anyone) if they are primarily supposed to a) assist an internal process in the council, b) communicate facts to the broader community and/or specific target groups, or c) create visibility around the council and argue for the council's legitimacy and/or entitlement to future funding etc.
The report text is long. The individual answers from each council member may feel redundant to readers who just want a quick executive summary of how the council is doing. I personally appreciate that you show your human faces, but I think it would be helpful to give a short collective answer to each main question and keep the individual answers in a separate document that you could link to. That way, readers who are in a hurry can get the main points fast, and people like me can click the link and study the details.
Feedback on context and specificity
As someone who has not previously engaged with the CoCC, the report feels somewhat abstract to me in some places. I can tell that you have clearly thought a lot about these things, but it feels like I’m missing some context. …That is a very broad and unspecific piece of feedback, I know, but allow me to make two suggestions that can maybe be useful for you:
-
You mention office hours. Where and when do they take place? Who attend them, and how do people find you? Who should do so? I think it would be great if the report could share a link for those who might like to get in touch and learn more. This may not be the main point of the report, but it is an obvious chance to actually reach out to the community and invite people in.
-
Some of the answers given in the report are very unspecific. For example, in the impact assessment section, Alex writes: “I think we are on the right track, but changes are definitely required in the domain of this council.” And Pumbi writes: “We feel that the CoCC is currently dependent on other structures and cannot exercise or reinforce decisions autonomously without the intervention of other parties.” These comments may work well as part of your own internal process, but as an outsider I don’t learn a lot from them, and you may not get a great response if other readers have the same problem. I think it would be good to concider who you want to read your report (and who will in fact read it), and then be very specific, like: [Here] is a concrete problem we have identified that we would like to handle within our mandate, [here] is our suggestion, we need [this] from [that government body]. We have done [so and so] to reach out, but we ran into the problem that [explain].
Feedback on the concrete contents of the report
You have many (!) awesome points around wanting to expand the scope of the CoCC, engage in community education, working closer with other government bodies, etc.
However, I fear that these points partly drown in all the text and the five different perspectives. An executive summary with a short list of specific suggestions and concrete action points that all members of the council agree upon would produce greater punch.