Re: GNOME Website Meeting

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 10:58 -0400, Christopher Warner wrote:
> In all frankness, everytime this comes up there is some form of Stop
> Energy.. I feel a meeting as described below, will produce nothing
> but. 

Real-time meetings can be incredibly productive, but only
if you ruthlessly stay on topic.  These are lessons I've
learned from running documentation team meetings.  Here's
what I've learned about running good meetings:

1) Set an agenda.  Put it on a wiki or whatever, but don't
encourage people to just add stuff to it on a whim.  What
I usually do is write the agenda with a note telling people
not to edit the it directly.  Then I have a section where
I encourage people to leave comments and suggestions.  I
may incorporate some of those into the agenda.

2) Appoint somebody to run the meeting.  This person is
responsible for making sure everybody sticks to the agenda.
When your coordinator says it's time for the next item,
you move on.  When your coordinator tells somebody to be
quit, that person shuts up or is kicked from the channel.
(We've never had to resort to that.)

3) Make sure somebody takes minutes and posts them to the
mailing list afterwards.  Not everybody can attend these
meetings, and you don't want to exclude people.

I was terrible at doing (2) and (3), largely because I'd
always have to dig stuff up to answer questions.  So I
couldn't pay full attention to the channel to keep it on
topic and take notes.  I asked Paul Cutler to coordinate
our last meeting, and he did a terrific job.

--
Shaun