boxcar brain dump

So Boxcar is getting a little busted. People don’t neccesarily trust each other to hold responsability. Responsibility gets hot potatoed around between collective members without people being really excited about the things that they agree to do (“Yeah, I guess I can do that”). New volunteers are turned off because they get stuck shelf reading or tidying instead of doing things that more closely match their experience, talents and skills. Shift workers, traditionally the backbone of the collective and designed to take on additional functional and structural responsibilities besides staffing the store, often don’t have the time, or the desire to fulfill additional responsibilities.

These structural difficulties create a culture that mask more serious interpersonal conflicts, but because there is always a fuck-ton to do, and the conflicts can always be contextualized over issues of responsibilities, attitudes or communication never get addressed.
How do we fix it?

I think instead of the existing organization structure (collective, board, shift workers, shift coverers, random volunteers, coordinators), we should better seperate and define responsibilities. This will let people be more accountable, let us advertise our needs better to the volunteer community, and let existing volunteers focus on their involvement being more centered around things they’re stoked on. Maybe a good way to do it is to begin to describe existing responsibilities.

First, my “job”, the technology coordinator:

Responsibilities

  • Maintain/update website CMS software (Postnuke)
  • Train collective members in using CMS software to update the boxcarbooks.org website.
  • Add/Remove/Maintain e-mail accounts and mailing lists for collective members
  • Troubleshoot and coordinate with webhost on issues that effect e-mail/website
  • Add features/bugfix online store software (http://boxcarbooks.org/shop)
  • Train collective members on use of online store administration software
  • Add features to the store inventory software
  • Maintain the store computers (update software, add new software, remove virii, spyware, etc), printers, and the wired and wireless network

Irresponsibilities

  • Backup important data

My job would be made way easier by the creation of the following “jobs”. The technology coordinator would focus on software/hardware infrastructure development and would coordinate the other tech “jobs”. She would also be able to perform their tasks if neceesary. The other tech “jobs” could be either community volunteers, IU service learners, or high school interns.

The new tech job breakdown:

Technology Coordinator

  • Add features/bugfix online store software (http://boxcarbooks.org/shop)
  • Train collective members on use of online store administration software
  • Add features to the store inventory software
  • Organize meetings with the other technology-oriented volunteers
  • Coordinate the addition of new technology-oriented volunteers and train them
  • Be the general point of contact for technology issues/questions/ideas from the rest of the collective
  • Be the bottom-liner for the responsibilities of all the other tech volunteers
  • Train new

IT Coordinator

  • Maintain the store computers (update software, add new software, remove virii, spyware, etc), printers, and the wired and wireless network
  • Backup important data

Web Coordinator

  • Maintain/update website CMS software (Postnuke)
  • Train collective members in using CMS software to update the boxcarbooks.org website.
  • Add/Remove/Maintain e-mail accounts and mailing lists for collective members
  • Troubleshoot and coordinate with webhost on issues that effect e-mail/website uptime

Software development volunteer

Responsibilities

  • Assist in adding features/bugfixes to the online or store inventory software

Requisite Knowledge/Interest

  • Programming in the PHP and/or Visual Basic for Applications languages
  • Knowledge of the MS Access or MySQL database management systems
  • Knowledge of (X)HTML/CSS/Javascript and other web technologies
  • Use of version control systems such as CVS

Software test volunteer

Responsibilities

  • Shadow Boxcar shiftworkers/store volunteers to learn how inventory software is used
  • Develop and run test plans/scripts to test that new features/bugfixes added by the Software development volunteers don’t break anything

Requisite Knowledge/Interest

  • Use of Microsoft Access or web-based software
  • Programming in Java
  • Use of version control systems such as CVS

IT volunteer

Responsibilities

  • Assist IT coordinator in managing Boxcar store computers and network

These are “jobs” that aren’t neccessary, but if we could find people who wanted to do them, it would be cool:
Open format coordinator

  • Convert store documents into formats compatible with opensource, multiplatform software
  • Replace proprietary, commercial software on Boxcar store computers with opensource software

Web content coordinator

  • Develop website content to document and promote new books, upcoming events, art shows, etc on boxcarbooks.org

So that pretty much covers my realm of influence. Here are other “jobs” that I see at Boxcar that either exist, or should exist. In any case I think they should be as distinct as possible:

  • General coordinator
  • Shift worker
  • Substitute shift worker
  • Volunteer coordinator
  • Art coordinator
  • Tabling coordinator
  • Event coordinator
  • Tabling volunteer
  • Store volunteer
  • Finance coordinator
  • Fundraising coordinator
  • Textbook coordinator
  • Consigment coordinator
  • Newsletter coordinator
  • Section coordinators (responsible for making ordering/return suggestions for a particular section, writing reviews for some books in that section)

In the past, many of these responsibilities have been handled by comittee, which is fine, and can still be the case, but I think it would be great to have a bottom liner for all these things, even if most of the work is done collectively.

Update:

So here are some other ideas that I came up with that, for me, motivates the need for reorganization:

We expanded our business, let’s expand our organization!

Why?

  • Lack of trust in responsibility
  • Consolidation of responsibility
  • Shit not getting done (or done well)
  • People aren’t stoked about the responsibilities they take on

This leads to …

  • Stress
  • Bad interpersonal relationships or not improving on struggling relationships
  • Focus on maintaining existing operations or making money > vision
  • No one seems stoked!

What’s the problem? Maybe …

  • Size/closedness of collective
  • Traditional role of shift worker no longer relevent (maybe they should just man the counter and not be expected to carry other responsibilities)
  • Not using volunteers well/attracting new volunteers

How do we fix it?

  1. Define responsibilities.
    1. What we each do
    2. What’s not getting done
  2. Seperated responsibilities into roles (or “jobs” if you want to be assy)
  3. Assign/accept roles (realistically) within the collective.
  4. Find new volunteers to fill unfilled roles
    1. via flyering
    2. asking friends
    3. bloomington volunteer network
    4. volunteer callout event
  5. Reevaluate roles based on new volunteer reality
  6. Train new volunteers and go!

Remember: responsibility != ownership

Everyone should be able to help with/provide input/make decisions about things that they’re interested in/excited about. But involvement also has to reflect one’s ability to follow through. How do you “enforce” accountability without hierarchy?

Added benefits:

  • put the “community center” back at the center of Boxcar by expanding our operations to include more people in the community.
  • new blood = new directions, new relationships, new programming

Is this a minor repair?

Personally, I feel like Boxcar has some more fundamental questions to ask in terms of defining and justifying its existence and demand for resources in the community. These questions are more important than any of the organizational questions asked above. But, I guess I don’t feel like there’s much organizational momentum to ask these questions, and I don’t know if I have the energy, or if Boxcar is the priority in my life to do this alone. I guess that’s why it seems important to grow in substance rather than in size, to expand our human assets rather than our financial ones. Then, maybe the momentum, energy, and desire to ask tough questions will be more collective and thus less intimidating for us to address.

Still, in thinking about justifying Boxcar’s existence, I’ve been keeping notes about what people articulate as Boxcar’s mission in our own words:

  • support local publishers
  • support local authors
  • support small presses