Survey Alert, Sociocracy, and Shipping Issue 1

Hello again fujoshi, fudanshi, fujin, and friends! We’ve been busy this past month, so there’s lots to share.

Without further ado, let’s head into it!

Exploring Sociocracy

As a company, we’ve been thinking hard about how we want to structure FujoCoded LLC. We’ve always known that being a top-down, hierarchical company does not align with our ethos, but that doesn’t mean we can just forego any type of structure. Unfortunately, effective shared governance is a tough problem to solve with sneaky pitfalls around every corner!

After a lot of research, we’re now looking into a non-hierarchical governance system called Sociocracy. This past week, we had our first asynchronous brainstorming session about what different ‘domains’ we would need to account for as we implement a sociocratic structure for ourselves. There is still a long way to go, but we’re excited by the possibilities this model opens.

We may be a Limited Liability Corporation, but that doesn’t mean we have to follow the capitalist model of corporate governance! Thanks for helping us try something different, and look forward to more updates with our progress in this area 😎

Project Updates

And now here are the updates on our current major projects…

Recent Progress on Our Backerkit Campaign

As a precursor to sending our backers survey, wherein backers will be able to confirm their rewards selection and add new ones, we made one last push to finalize all our add-ons. This included:

• Creating two variations on the bonus IT’S OVER 9000! sticker design to celebrate the campaign’s final total
• Confirming the art that will be used for the stickers themselves, which include comparing different-sized options and making final decisions about what sizes would fit best on everyone’s laptops and notebooks
• Launching the sponsor wall we’d started coding during the campaign to showcase our higher-tier backers. (You can see it by inputting the konami code on our website, or by clicking the buttons in the footer!)
• Visiting local screen printing shops to make a final decision about the size and fabric weight we’ll use for our tote bags (after the online samples we got failed to meet our quality standards)
• Preparing our test containers of ✨Git’s catboy bathwater✨, personally filled & sealed by Ms Boba’s own hands

When all that was dialed in, we put together the backer survey and submitted it to BackerKit for review. They gave us a few minor improvements to make, and now the survey is finally ready!

FujoCoded Storefront

We’ve also begun working with one of our longtime collaborators to build out the FujoCoded storefront, where much of the merchandise offered during our BackerKit campaign will eventually become available for purchase and help us start covering some of our recurring expenses. (You can always become a Patreon supporter if you’d like to contribute on an ongoing basis!)

As you’ll learn in the next section, we haven’t been able to get shiny new contracts from our would-be lawyers yet, but our longtime collaborators know us well and are comfortable continuing to work under the same informal “we will pay you X money for Y money” contract agreements we’ve been able to make up on our own so far. We’re chomping at the bit to hear back from our legal contacts so we can at long last offer official lawyerly contracts that fully reflect the respect we have for the work of our contributors.

What’s Next for the FujoCoded Backerkit Campaign

Now that the survey is ready, backers can expect it in their inboxes later this week. If you’re a backer who supported us at a tier with physical rewards, you’ll need to select your exact preferences—what color T-shirt, what tote bag design, which FujoBoard slogan you want paired with your charcuterie spread, etc.

• 👀 Heads up: Some of you will receive the survey early. You’re our test group! Please let us know if anything about the survey is confusing, so we can correct it before it goes out to every other backer. We’re counting on you!
• The rest of you will receive the survey later next week. It will be sent out in shifts, so we can’t say exactly what day you’ll get it.
• You’ll have until the beginning of July to fill it out.
• (But we’ll keep pestering you about it the whole time so you don’t forget 😌)

Lawyering Up

As we mentioned in our last edition, we did reach out to legal counsel, but lawyers tend to be busy folks and we’re still waiting on them to reply! We’re hopeful we’ll be able to make contact soon, and will continue pinging them in the meantime.

With that said, we would still love any additional lawyer recommendations in the following domains:

• employment law (as it relates to 1099 contractors) intellectual property law (as it relates to character design)
• international law (as it relates to employment and intellectual property)
• corporate law (as it relates to limited-liability
• corporations established in Wyoming.)

You can find a more detailed list of our needs in this lawyer search document we shared during the campaign.

Recent Progress on the Fujoshi Guide to Web Development

The comms team would like to apologize for an off-by-one error in last month’s newsletter. We mistakenly referred to the first volume of FujoGuide as “Volume 1” when in fact it has always been called “Volume 0.” Whoops 😅

Here’s our progress on the correctly labeled volumes:

• Vol. 0, Issue 1: Git is getting closer and closer to its day in the sun. Using our new shared, centralized task list system, we’ve codified a step-by-step plan for delivering the digital preview of Issue 1 to our KickStarter backers. This will help spread the workload more evenly across our team and (hopefully) keep us on schedule.
• Vol. 0, Issue 2: GitHub is fully written and reviewed, so we’ve recruited beta readers! Most of them are returning betas who helped review our first issue, but there’s a few new faces as well, so we’ll be able to test how well the issue works for anyone reading them out of order.
• **FujoGuide’s Online Counterpart: **We’ve also made progress on the part of our website where we’ll be hosting the digital resources associated with our first issue (mentioned last month as a “FujoGuide Wiki”). The section is now in preview mode as we draft the articles that will go there.

What’s Next for FujoGuide

Let the beta begin: Now that beta readers have been recruited for Vol. 0, Issue 2, we’ve scheduled the beginning of the beta process for this coming week.

Digital FujoGuide delivery: As discussed above, we’ve hammered out a plan to get our KickStarter backers a digital copy of Vol. 0, Issue 1: Git. Here’s some of the steps we’ll be making progress on during the next month:

• Collect all artist, writer, and editor credits for the credits page
• Add a “command list” section for easy review of what readers learned in the issue
• Add “flavor pages” (like lore sections) to make our guide even more fun
• Create a feedback form to get feedback on the issue from our KickStarter audience

Once this is done, we’ll do one final styling pass and get our preview edition ready for your inboxes!

Digital Rewards pack: We’ve also outlined a plan for how we’ll finalize the Digital Rewards pack, which will benefit not only our KickStarter backers but also folks who backed the FujoCoded LLC BackerKit campaign. Our tentative projection is mid-July, but if we don’t hit that goal, we’ll let you know in our next newsletter.

Hang Out with FujoCodedOn Twitch💬✨

For the foreseeable future, Ms Boba will be streaming only once a week instead of twice. There may be an extra bonus stream here or there, so keep an eye on either social media or on our new permanent “streaming schedule” page.

Here’s the schedule for upcoming Twitch streams—nothing specific is currently planned, you just get to hang out with Ms Boba as she works on campaign fulfillment stuff and other company needs.

June

• Thursday, June 20 @ 3pm PDT: Coworking time!
• Thursday, June 27 @ 3pm PDT: Coworking time!

July

• Thursday, July 4 @ 3pm PDT: Coworking time!
• Thursday, July 11 @ 3pm PDT: Coworking time!

Speaking of streams, we recently had a very exciting BobaBoard stream where our founder Ms Boba walked viewers through launching their own BobaBoard realm. While a BobaBoard volunteer is working to add a summary to our documentation, the BobaBoard comms team is working on cutting the recording for time for those who prefer learning by watching. Our goal is to ensure that anyone interested in starting their own realm has an accessible tutorial ready to go. Watch this space!

That brings our second newsletter as an incorporated company to a close 😎 Another very full month! Don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s any other aspect of our blossoming business you’d like to hear about.

Looking forward to share more progress with you next month,

The FujoCoded LLC Team (sociocratically selected seamonkeys)