Meeting Notes 6/21/2012

[Cherie Brown]

Over the course of the meeting, we discussed our impressions and feelings about the Transition Towns model and whether or not we were inclined to follow it in the Knoxville area.

We looked at the "12 Ingredients (Steps) of the Transition Model" (available here).  Step 1 is to form a steering committee and "plan its demise from the outset."  The committee spawns sub-groups that are based around major areas (energy, food, local economics, etc.), each of which features at least one person from the original steering committee.  The other steps can be reviewed at the provided link.  We discussed whether the steps appear to be linear and how flexible we believe the model is to what we would want to do.

Overall consensus:

- Many are interested in the Transition Towns model.  Some are not yet very familiar with its requirements.  Some are prepared to align officially; others are not.  We believe that under the requirements of Transition, we would not be able to gain official status anyway without first working with the model for a while.

Pros 

- The provided network is good; 200+ groups are in, plus "mullers" (unofficial groups)

- Good timing with PlanET (http://www.planeasttn.org/)

- Provides name recognition to people who are interested in, and investigating, issues around peak oil

- Overall agreement with goal of decreased energy usage

Cons

- Some dislike the tone of the Transition US web site due to its emphasis on "promoting" the idea of Transition, like marketing

- Not sure if it is possible to do Transition Towns without the awareness raising part, which is overall controversial or not of interest to many in the group

- Not sure if getting "whole community buy-in" is a practical goal - and which seems to be a goal of the model

Primary concerns:

- We want a plan of action

- We want the freedom to do what we decide is best for our area

- We understand that Transition is not intended to work for an area the size of Knoxville but feel that this is our starting point

Decisions:

- We want to unofficially move forward with the Transition model and will postpone a decision on whether to officially align

- We want to look into PlanET as a group

- We will brainstorm possible practical actions we might take as a group, or as sub-groups, on the guild site, and discuss these ideas, plus those people bring, at the next meeting

We will meet again in two weeks, date and place TBD.  The following meeting (four weeks out) we plan to be back at the library, with AV resources, and Mark can give his prepared Transition presentation.