The world's first city-recognized LEATHER & LGBTQ Cultural District
For your convenience, here are links to important documents relevant to the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District Community Meeting of Wednesday, January 16, 2019:
Minutes of SFLCD Community Meeting 12/19/2018
Draft of Proposed Bylaws Sections for Member Review and Action
Outreach Committee Proposal Regarding Organization Names and Acronyms
(Supplemental info available here.)
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:
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
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.
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!
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. ]
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:
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.
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.
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.
At a recent Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District Community Meeting , Mark Bonsignore of the San Francisco Parks Alliance updated us on the progress of the Eagle Plaza Project.
Located directly in front of the SF Eagle Tavern on 12th Street at Harrison, Eagle Plaza will be a new public gathering space in San Francisco’s Western SoMa neighborhood: a green, safe and well-cared-for shared pedestrian way for relaxing, gathering and celebrating LGBTQ, leather, and community. Their motto: A New Community Plaza and a Celebration of LGBTQ Heritage.
Both planning and fund-raising efforts are proceeding well, but the “Friends of Eagle Plaza” invite the involvement and support of anyone who cares about our District. You can sign up to be kept informed here, or download their Donor Information Packet here.