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— 2023 —

Town Hall

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Recording on!

The presentation will be recorded, so CATs in other timezones can also hear from all of us.

We’ll stop the recording after the Q&A.

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Organisers share out

Community Q&A & Feedback

Informal gathering

CAT happenings now and in the future

Time to ask, share and communicate as a group

Hang around in groups to continue the conversation

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Agenda

What we’ve been up to
CIC + Advisory board (5 min)
Mini grants (5 min)
Course content (5 min)
CAT community programs (5 min)
Q&A (15 min)
Breakout (25 min)

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What we’ve been up to

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Mission

We are tech workers seeding climate action in companies, organisations and industries through deep, self-organized community building and support

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Theory of change

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CATs taking action

Optimizing sites & software
Creating website carbon tools
Developing carbon-aware software

Organizing green teams
Hosting lunch & learns
Raising climate concerns at meetings

Sharing climate action & sustainable ICT practices through:

Podcasts
Blog posts
Meetups
Talks

💻 Greening our craft

🗣️ Speaking up at work

🪴 Advocating & influencing

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Here are some concrete examples of what “seeding climate action” looks like.

In “Greening our craft”, we’re trying to reduce the carbon footprint of the software services & products that we create.

When CAT first began, we talked a lot about optimization & ghg accounting.
And now, 5 years later, CATs are creating applications and sites that react to the carbon intensity of the grid.

Speaking up at work is important –

Deeper understanding now
we’ve seen the conversation shift from, “How do I bring this up to my manager” to
“Do you know a sustainability consultant that I can introduce to my company?”

Advocating & influencing: We’re seeing way more of this. CATs are starting podcasts, writing on Medium, organizing their own events.
Excited by all the action… we want to continue supporting this activity.

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Priorities in 2023

Find & develop volunteers / leads to help with community projects
Find an organizer to join the team
Develop funding model for CAT projects
Become a CIC and set up an advisory board

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Priorities in 2023

Find & develop volunteers / leads to help with community projects
Find an organizer to join the team
Develop funding model for CAT projects
Become a CIC and set up an advisory board

Just under 20 active volunteers

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Priorities in 2023

Find & develop volunteers / leads to help with community projects
Find an organizer to join the team
Develop funding model for CAT projects
Become a CIC and set up an advisory board

Just under 20 active volunteers�Welcome Veronica!�

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Veronica�Hotton

@veronica

🎉

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Priorities in 2023

Find & develop volunteers / leads to help with community projects
Find an organizer to join the team
Develop funding model for CAT projects
Become a CIC and set up an advisory board

Just under 20 active volunteers�Welcome Veronica!�Mini grants pilot starting soon!

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Priorities in 2023

Find & develop volunteers / leads to help with community projects
Find an organizer to join the team
Develop funding model for CAT projects
Become a CIC and set up an advisory board

Just under 20 active volunteers�Welcome Veronica!�Mini grants pilot starting soon!�Work in progress: Here’s Melissa!

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CIC + Advisory board

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Forming a Community-Interest Company (CIC)

Purpose: Ensure CAT’s future as a mission-driven, independent community

Establish a legal entity for community benefit, not-for-profit
Enables CAT to raise funds to pay for speakers, workshops, community managers, and new programs
Provides structure for decision-making and leadership roles
Current status: Re-submitted application

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What is a CIC? Legal entity in the UK that will establish CAT as a not-for-profit organization
FIRST - All funds will go to support the community & our mission

We're already doing that, but as more money comes into this space –
it's important to have those guardrails

SECOND - Having this legal status will also enable us to raise funds more formally

Our donations from Open Collective is enough to cover the software subscriptions
but not enough to pay for programming or speakers…
CAT has always been volunteer-run.
So that means CAT's programming is determined by volunteer availability & interest
(Our volunteers are amazing, Began in 2017, we've been volunteer-run for 6 years now Shout out to Andy McWilliams)
The community has grown so we need more support.
In order to be more strategic, deliberate, and inclusive, we want to pay people to help manage the community

THIRD - Provides structure for decision-making & leadership changes.

Right now it's pretty simple, there are just 4 directors: me, Sandra, Chris & Heather
Have to get set up with accounting & tax stuff…
Our plan is to amend the structure so that CAT members have more decision-making power

We just submitted the app & should hear back in a week

and ensure that we stay aligned to our mission of transforming the tech industry to be climate-positive (more about our mission here in our Theory of Change). We want to change our current community structure to be more resilient, self-organizing and self-sustaining. Having a legal structure will also enable us to get funding and additional resources.

More information: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a-st1s0_t34kBK2SC-yqMLnHDiIj9JwOhCbJuaAmWo8/edit#

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Advisory board

Purpose: To provide expertise, advice, and oversight so that CAT can be a more effective & inclusive community of practice

We are seeking:

Representation from Asia, Africa, South America, and frontline communities
Experience in climate policy & sustainable practices
Expertise in marketing and growth, organizing, community management, and governance

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Could be events, learning programs, open source publishing of knowledge or tools, campaigns, research, or something else.

Nominate yourself or someone else to be an advisor

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Mini grants

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Why

Mini grants allow us to give small �amounts of money to community projects that align with our Theory of Change.

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Could be events, learning programs, open source publishing of knowledge or tools, campaigns, research, or something else.

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Which projects are eligible

To be eligible for a grant your project must…

be a collaboration with folks from across different companies
have a tangible output
be aligned with our Theory of Change
not exceed ~500£€$ (if your proposal requires more money, this isn't the right grant for you)

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When does this start?

We want to run a pilot in July/August and get properly started in September.

You can apply here

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CAT Courses 👩🏻‍🏫

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CAT Course - Coming in Fall 2023

6-8 week-long course with CATs doing workplace Climate Action

Join weekly ~60min calls facilitated via coaching & peer learning
Create your action plan to implement in your workplace
Receive peer support and accountability for your action plan
Engage with weekly self-study materials to deepen learning
Form long-term connections with fellow CATs�
Fee: sliding scale donation to support CAT & facilitators (~€0-100)

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CAT Community Programs

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CAT Community

Our community is a special place — getting people together across company siloes and valuing deep and nuanced conversations.

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Climate action in tech is more popular than ever

CAT is getting mentioned & attracting more people 😸

Sustainable software is becoming an established skillset 🙌

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Community changes

More variety in job titles & backgrounds
Differences in understanding of climate & sustainability
Broader discussion topics, less focus on ICT emissions reduction & software development practices
More transactional & promotional posts

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Questions: Have you noticed these changes? Have they impacted your experience with CAT positively or negatively – do they help you take climate action at work?

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CAT Events

Goal: Real-time opportunities for members to connect and develop a shared understanding of climate & tech.

Past: CAT Salons (stopped bc organising effort was too big). Branch reading group (stopped due to low attendance). One-off events like unconferences or TEDxCAT.

Currently: Regular CAT Coffee events & watch parties. Coming soon: In-person events!

Issues: Low attendance for events, need organizing support

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• Suggest something new • Local event hosting

Help out: Join our brainstorming session on June 2nd or help with existing events

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CAT Slack

Goal: A welcoming, active & safe space to learn, share and connect about climate & tech

Past: More technical discussions & news

Currently: Mix of technical, entrepreneurial, and climate solution discussions

Issues: Tech x climate questions sometimes go unanswered, knowledge sharing & engagement can be slow

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• Suggest something new • Local event hosting

Help out: Join our brainstorming session on June 2nd or become a channel host, moderator, or knowledge capturer

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CAT website, blog & wiki

Goal: Teach and promote sustainable ICT practices, promote CAT projects, share CAT member success stories

Past: Ambitious!

Current: Starting small. Monthly blog posts, content meetings every other week, ad hoc wiki grooming.

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How to help: Do you have a climate action story to share? Or a how-to or explainer that we can repost? Or content planning experience? Contact @melissa to get involved.

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Key part of a community of practice & our theory of change

Creating & sharing knowledge publicly

Main challenges:

Ambitious – machine learning, data, content plans & workflows
It's challenging bc we're volunteers working async
What we're learning changes quickly

This time, we're starting small. We've been really consistent & meeting every other week & posting at least once a month
Mostly posting about CAT activities, but what's more important is CAT member stories

All the examples of CATs taking action –
They should be on our website so others can see and learn and be inspired

Framing

This is what we’re doing – what does audience think would help it work better?
We need help
We have great events – how do we get the word out?
Maybe have a big annual event? Like an unconference or TEDx thing again?

Main message:

? Reg events at the same time
Or 3 events at different times
People coming regularly and meeting over a long period of time

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Member survey is open again!

https://forms.gle/QHWBZQ2AxHbHWvqx8

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Q&A

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Breakouts

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Thanks

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Appendix

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Enabling connection — stats

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Participants at virtual CAT events

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Groups met through #cat-roulette

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CAT Coffee events�(including 2 socials!)

CAT Salon panel discussions

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Branch Magazine Reading Group Kick-off

~10

In-person Meet-ups

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Watch �or Listening Parties

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Slack programs

Channel hosts are keeping channels active, welcoming, and safe. #greener / #local prefixes are worth checking out!

Members of the #cat-roulette channel get matched every other week with 1-2 other CATs.

Weekly community announcements in #1-announcements

#️⃣ �Channels

🍩 �CAT roulette

📣 Announcements

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Active CAT owned events

Monthly community events with different formats (sharing work, networking, discussions, games, etc.) in 3 time slot options.

Watching existing content together and spending some time discussing what we learned.

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☕️ CAT coffee

▶️ Watch parties

Register on meetup.com/cat-global · Continue the conversation #5-cat-events

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Event types

🐱 CAT owned: Internal events (only Slack members can join)
🤝 CAT co-owned: Collaborative events where anyone can join with CAT volunteers involved in running it
👍 CAT supported: External events where anyone can join

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Learn more: Creating and running CAT events presentation · CAT events Outline page

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Ways to get involved

Slack

Events

Publishing

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We’d also love help with improving onboarding

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