LEATHER & LGBTQ Cultural District

You are cordially invited and encouraged to join any of  the active Committees of the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District:

• Outreach Committee, chaired by Steve Gaynes and David Hyman
• Governance Committee, chaired by Rand Hunt
• Land Use Committee, chaired by Dahn Van Laarz
• Finance Committee, chaired by Pat Collins, Lex King and Jonathan Schroder
• Legislative Committee, chaired by Bob Goldfarb

We also plan to have three “Stakeholder Committees”.

• Nightlife Committee
• Business Committee
• Organizations Committee

There will also be a Nominating Committee, to help us with the process of electing our first Board of Directors.

All of these committees will be active, important, and fun.  Special expertise and relevant experience and skills are welcome, but they are not required. What is more important is that you represent our community with common sense and a sincere desire to help.

Your time commitment need not be great — even just a couple of hours per month could be enough. But the role and responsibility you will have in guiding our group will be critically valuable, and much appreciated.

For these Committees– as for all our District’s work — getting a diverse cross-section of our kinky and queer communities to join in is important. Please help us make sure that we reflect and respond to your interests — as an individual, and as a representative of other trans folks, younger folks, non-binary folks, POCs, or any other element of our broad and beautiful L&LGBTQ spectrum.

You can join any of these Committees most easily by clicking on the words “update your preferences” at the very bottom of any “Mailchimp” email message you get from us.   If you are NOT currently receiving those emails, you can sign up at http://eepurl.com/djdUyf, and indicate your committee interests at the same time.  

You can also sign up for Committees at any of our open Community Meetings.  Or write to the our group’s Chairperson, Robert Goldfarb, for more information.

Notes

All our meetings are free and open to all.  Unless otherwise announced, our meetings are held at SF Catalyst, 1060 Folsom Street (between 6th and 7th Streets), San Francisco, CA 94103.

For most meetings, ASL interpreters and/or wheelchair access will be provided if requested at least two days in advance.  Please send requests to the Committee Chair, or LCD@hellobob.net.

Committee members are encouraged to sign up for an “@sflcd.org” email address.  You can choose to use this for actual email or not, but having the account will allow you to access Committee documents on our new Google Drive, and participate in Committee discussions using Google Hangouts Chat (“@Chat”).  To get an account, please write to Dahn@sflcd.org  and he will be in touch to get you set up.

For your convenience, here are links to important documents relevant to the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District Community Meeting of Wednesday, January 16, 2019:

Agenda.

Minutes of SFLCD Community Meeting 12/19/2018

Draft of Proposed Bylaws Sections for Member Review and Action

Proposed Election Procedures

Feedback Form

Outreach Committee Proposal Regarding Organization Names and Acronyms
(Supplemental info available here.)

Steering Committee Proposal

The Governance Committee is pleased to present the first draft of a number of the Bylaws Articles that we have worked through and are recommending for our Members’ input.

Below are links to two separate documents:

Draft of Proposed Bylaws sections for member review and action — This document reflects proposed language for key Bylaws areas for the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District’s intended 501(c)3 non-profit incorporation.

We have included the Mission and Vision Statements in Article II, which were reviewed and approved by the members last summer, as well as our physical boundaries as described in the approved, legal legislation.

Please read this document carefully and submit your comments, using the link provided, by Monday January 14th. (Please do NOT attempt to make suggestions or add comments to the document itself).  

Note that this draft includes the following Articles: Name, Mission, Boundaries, Membership, Officers and Finance. Still to come are several remaining Articles: Governing Board, Board and Member Meetings, Committees, Grievances, Amendments, etc. Our intent is to provide the remaining Articles for your review before the February meeting.

We encourage your thoughtful questions and comments.  We look forward to the discussion at the meeting on Wednesday, January 16, starting at 7 pm, at SF Catalyst.  A vote is not requested at this time.

Proposed Election Procedures — This document lays out our proposal for how our Board of Directors should be elected.  It includes both material that will be in the Bylaws, and additional details which will be more appropriate for “policies and procedures” documentation.  We want you to know and comment on this package now, because it deals with the Board elections which we hope to have once the Bylaws are approved.  Please read it through and let us know if these plans are unclear or raise any concerns.

Again, to summarize, here are the links:

• • Bylaws Draft for Members Jan 2019
  • Proposed Board Election Procedures
  • Feedback Form

Thanks very much for taking the time to read, think about, and respond to  these materials. Please note that once the Bylaws have been reviewed and conditionally approved by the Members, we will then forward them for examination by an attorney familiar with California non-profit laws . 

We look forward to reading your comments and suggestions. We will address them prior to the February meeting. Please utilize the feedback form so we may have an organized assessment of all contributions.As always, you can keep up to date with the District by following our page on Facebook, joining our group on Fetlife, or browsing our Web site.

Thanks!  

Rand and Ren
Governance Committee
Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District

 

MailChimp

If you are not getting our “mailchimp”-branded email messages, please sign up at http://eepurl.com/djdUyf. This is important, even if you aren’t attending our meetings regularly, so that we can reach you at short notice about City Hall hearings or other events where we need folks to show up en masse.

If you have signed in at a meeting but have not started getting email, please use the link and sign up again. We probably had trouble reading your handwriting.

If you get these mailings and there’s something wrong — your name misspelled, whatever — please click on the “update” link at the bottom of the email and review and change the details. You can fill in missing info (like phone numbers or mailing addresses) if you like, and also check off the Committees you want to hear from.

If you are getting emails at multiple addresses and you like that, fine. If you don’t like it, you can use the link at the bottom to unsubscribe from the one(s) you don’t want to get. But please be careful and check your “Committee memberships” on any record you plan to delete; you may want to then edit the record you are keeping, to stay on that Committee.

Getting an Account

Most of what the SFLCD does is entirely open to all — like this Web site.

However, in order to comment on some documents — and especially to join interactive discussions — we do require you to be authenticated. (Otherwise we get flooded by spam, or worse.) The way we do this is by giving you an account, with a username (something@sflcd.org) and a password.

Note that this is, in fact, an email account.  However, if you don’t wish to be bothered with checking a second mailbox, and you don’t feel the need to send email “From” your sflcd.org address, we can help you set up forwarding so everything sent to this account gets automatically forwarded to your regular, personal emailbox.  It’s up to you.  (See “Forwarding?” section, below.)  

So, how to proceed?  We want to make it easy for you, but it is necessary, and we appreciate your patience.

First, send an email to our GSuite Administrator, Dahn, requesting an account and telling us the name you would like to use.  By default, your username will be set up as firstname.lastname@sflcd.org, but if you have a unique preferred handle (something that you are actually known by), we are happy to set you up as preferredname@sflcd.org instead.  

Dahn will respond to your email request by generating an email from “The G Suite Team” with a “reset password” link — click on the link to set your password and you’re in!  

Email Setup

The easiest way to access your sflcd.org email is to browse to http://mail.sflcd.org.  You will need to log on with your username and password (at least the first time, and again occasionally when Google decides to ask for it.)  As always, you can configure the email to look and act in various ways.  Click on the gear-like “Settings” icon in the upper right and choose “Settings” for more options, including the option to turn on email forwarding. (See below.)

If you need help configuring your computer, smartphone or other device, please ask us for help.  

Note that our MailChimp mailing list is not integrated with this system.  We will continue to send meeting announcements and such to your personal email account, unless you request otherwise.  [Send your request to david.hyman {at} sflcd.org and be sure to include both your old, personal address and the new one.you want us to use. ] 

Forwarding?

You now have an sflcd.org account.  Use it in good health.  However, if you have decided that you prefer to have all your sflcd.org email forwarded to some other existing personal email account, follow these instructions: 

• Browse to http://mail.sflcd.org and logon with your fresh new sflcd.org account and password.
• (Optionally, read the welcome and other email messages waiting for you there.  If you find them interesting, you can forward them to your personal account.)   
• Now find the icon in the upper right that looks like a gear; click it and choose “Settings”. 
• When the settings page loads, click on the words “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” near the top center. 
• Click on the “add a forwarding address” button near the top.  Enter your preferred personal email address. 
• Wait a few seconds, then check that other email inbox for a message, and follow the instructions to verify that you requested this forwarding. 
• You can now close the “GSuite” email window and never bother with it again.  

Documents 

You are now ready to start commenting on SFLCD documents, or even creating new documents on the sflcd.org drive. (All documents on this drive become property of the SFLCD, of course.)

If you don’t already have Google Drive working on both your computer and smartphone, we would strongly encourage installing it.  Apple users can install it from here, Android users here.  Alternatively, browse to https://drive.google.com.

Note that even without Google Drive, you can access any documents that we send you a link to:  just provide your sflcd.org credentials when requested.  But (among other things) having Google Drive makes it much easier to find older documents (Hint:  Look in the “Shared with me” folder within Google Drive.)

Another tip:  If you ever are denied access to a file, or seem unable to comment on it, double-check that you are logged into the GSuite account.  

Chat

Next, we encourage you to install the “Google Hangouts Chat” (aka @Chat) app (available for Android or iOS) on your mobile device.  On your computer, you can install the app, or just use Chrome and browse to https://chat.google.com, then sign in with your G Suite account. 

When installing the app, be careful:  you want the “Hangouts Chat” app — the one with the “@” icon, authored by “Google LLC”.  There is also something called “Google Hangouts” (with a quote-mark icon). that is for personal chatting, not for use with GSuite.  And there are tons of other similarly-named apps.

You should find @Chat very much like Slack (if you have used that), but better integrated with the other Google apps.  Taking time to view a Youtube video like this one, or read an intro like this one, could be very helpful.  

Within @chat, be sure to join the “rooms” for all the Committees you are serving on; you can also create your own special purpose rooms, or do one-on-one or group chat with anyone within the sflcd.org community.  Be aware, though, that you can’t use this app to chat with folks who do not have sflcd.org accounts.  

Share and Enjoy!

That should get you started.  In the future, we hope to test and set up “bots” to help us schedule meetings or conduct polls, or maybe even use Google Hangouts Meet for remote access to our meetings. 

Be aware that any content in your sflcd.org account — documents you create on our server, even the contents of messages you send and receive on it — is the property of the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District organization.  So please use this resource appropriately.  Thanks!

Please do let us know if you have problems using any of this stuff.  We aren’t exactly the Tech Squad, but we would happy to help.  You can reach us at dahn@sflcd.org, or david.hyman@sflcd.org.