2019-09-09 Hypha: Public Lab, overview of weekly meeting protocols

Date: Mon, Sept 9
Who’s here? patcon, lizbarry

Patcon had informal walk-through with Liz Barry, Directory of Community Development at Public Lab, about the protocols for weekly meetings in their distributed organization (10-year-old non-profit).

Notes

Org uses two Google calendars
1. one for daily availability
  - each person fills expected work-day down to 15 minute precision
  - doesn’t change after, and shouldn’t change often
  - changes to events in this calendar are logged in a spreadsheet
  - used to determine payroll
  - one person has role of auditing that regularly, so not changed after (affecting payroll) and last-minute changes not made (affecting coordination)
2. one for any internal meetings/events and vacation/travel time
  - yes, both in same calendar
daily check-ins
- every morning, people do written checkin in #morning-hello channel
- expected within 30 minutes of start scheduled work day
two types of weekly meetings (Monday & Wednesday)
- each have a facilitator and note-taker (cycled via scheduling spreadsheet)
  - all take turns doing these roles (no one gets a pass)
- both start with fun personal checkin-in question created by facilitator
1. project update meeting
  - starts with personal question
  - not intended to be conversational, just updates
    - in practice, senior staff sometimes ask for clarity and make things more conversational than intended, but new ppl don’t appreciate this
  - lots of little projects in template (see below), and updates are offered
  - status check, to prevent people working alone or autonomously from going off the rails without sharing
  - projects are free to use any time tracker
2. discussion meeting
  - people add discussion and questions to meeting agenda in advance (advance notice important mainly for big discussion items)
  - if controversial topic, people should be alerted in advance, to come prepared
  - bottom of doc included “commitments & decisions” section, filled out on the fly
    - reviewed before end of meeting, and assigned to ppl. revisited next meeting.
    - tends to be place for misc action items that fall outside project scope
    - gets emailed out each week for accountability

Template

About

Tracking status:
- I am feeling good about the tasks and timeline.
- I have some concerns with tasks and workload.
- I am not on track and need support.

Project A

Tracking Location: [github / trello / asana url] Tracking status:

Project B

Tracking Location: [github / trello / asana url] Tracking status: AS Tracking status: JS

Xxxxxx

Tracking Location: https://github.com/orgs/hyphacoop/projects/2?card_filter_query=xxxxx Tracking status XX: Tracking status XX:

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