Been doing a lot of thinking about how to structure organizations such that stuff gets done. 

Bioneers and the All-Volunteer Vs. One-Paid-Position Choice [They Should've Favored the Latter But Didn't]. Talked to Barton Kirk over at SEEDS and former organizer of Bioneers, as well as Erin Copeland: told me that Bioneers has, in other places, been able to be better sustained when there was one paid part time (or even full-time) position keeping the effort going year after year after year. Apparently worked for the [Ohio? Indianapolis?] Bioneers folks. 

That was not the only important observation I pulled from that conversation, but it's startling lesson: to think that sometimes the thing separating successful ventures from non-successful ventures is a choice like that: having one paid person on staff versus having it be all-volunteer. Something to consider for Transition. 

Film Screenings and Structure for That: Lessons in Time, Funding, and Redundancy: Talked to Mark Dixon of YERT, had an interesting conversation about ongoing educational efforts in the form of movies. A possibility: a film team/board. A group of people who share responsibility for setting up film events in Pittsburgh, as a spin-off of Transition--and nobody HAS to be there for ALL events; but ALL share the load for getting a screening booked. Seattle has a group called Meaningful Movies: they have WEEKLY screenings and a board of 8-10 people. They've progressed to the point where they have funding, donations, sold DVD's from previous screenings, food, & then a private dinner for the filmmakers, if they're present. They've existed for 10 years.  

A couple lessons for our movie efforts:

1. Keeping at it over long periods of time: that helps an organization evolve. 
2. Redundancy: having more than one person who knows how to run a screening helps a lot. Having overall duties spread across more than one person also helps a lot. 
3. A donation-based model worked, but they weren't able to run expensive films with expensive licenses CONSTANTLY. Had to pair them with less expensive/free movies the week after. 

[Yes this post was posted later than the title says. Things like this happen sometimes.]