Meeting best practices (including remote staff)
Planning a meeting
editUnderstand the reason for the meeting
edit- Meetings can share information, solve problems, or make decisions
- Generally, each meeting should only do one of these functions at a time
Have an agenda
edit- Include the agenda in the invitation
- State the purpose and/or desired outcomes
- Choose a meeting format based on the purpose
- e.g. "Go-around" (where everyone speaks), vs. Presentation vs. Discussion
- Estimate the time each agenda item might take
- For longer non-recurring meetings, consider building in a very brief (e.g. 5 minute) in-meeting retrospective
- Was the meeting effective? How could it have been better?
Invite the right people
edit- Require key stakeholders
- Use "optional" where appropriate
- A meeting that is generating ideas or collecting information can proceed even if missing some key people; a meeting that shares information or makes decisions cannot.
- Choose the meeting duration
- [Need guidance here]
Scheduling a meeting
editSee: https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scheduling_tips
Timing that accommodates everyone
edit- Use the Google Calendar "Speedy Meetings" option
- Half-hour meetings end after 25 minutes
- Longer meetings end 10 minutes early (or five minutes if the start time was 5 minutes after the half-hour)
- Choose the meeting day and time
- Use the "Find a Time" feature in Google calendar
- Be VERY aware of time zones
- Encourage everyone to use the Google calendar feature to warn about creating meetings outside your working day
- Also be aware of daylight savings differences
Leverage Google Calendar
edit- Make the meeting editable by all attendees (checkbox in Google calendar)
- Reserve a room if necessary
- Appropriate size (not too big, not too small)
- With screen/camera/speakerphone if needed
- One person often doesn't need a room--can use ad-hoc space
- Engineering admins are available to help
- Can schedule the meeting, negotiating availability of people and rooms
- Give them all the information they need to create the invitations
- Meeting title, who to invite (required/optional), duration (specify that you want "speedy"), preferred dates/times, brief description including links to agenda and/or minutes
- Ask them to make the meeting editable by all attendees
Before the meeting
editPrepare schedule and note-taking
edit- Figure out a consistently good time for all members of the team (e.g., PT mornings to include Europeans)
- Or if there is no consistently good time, try rotating times so everyone gets to share the pain of being on super-late or super-early
- Attach a Google Hangout to all meetings regardless of whether you know someone will be remote, you never know who will work from home
- Set up note-taking
- Public notes should generally be published on wikimedia.org, but synchronous collaborative note-taking requires etherpad or Google docs. Decide which to use and how and when you will publish the notes.
- Include a link to the notes (minutes) in the invitation
- Put the date and a word or two of team name and purpose in the document title
- Create an etherpad or google doc, which serves as both Agenda and Minutes
- Note that etherpad is PUBLIC and anything entered CANNOT be fully erased
- If a google doc, share it ("Can Edit") with whoever is appropriate
- For non-sensitive topics, sharing with WMF is usually fine
- For sensitive topics, share only with the attendees
Team Practices Group standards for sensitivity and publication
edit- Decide the sensitivity at the beginning of the meeting:
- Certainly non-sensitive
- take notes in a new etherpad
- Notetaker moves them to Wikimedia.org ASAP after meeting.
- Possibly sensitive
- Take notes in Google Doc
- Notetaker emails all meeting participants after meeting with deadline (1-2 days) for people to either review and redact notes, or ask for more time.
- After deadline has passed, notetaker publishes notes to Wikimedia.org.
- Not for publication
- take notes in Google Doc
- save Google Doc to team's meetings folder in Google Drive
- Certainly non-sensitive
Prepare materials and agenda
edit- Before heading to the meeting, remind yourself of the purpose and agenda
- Prepare any necessary materials (e.g. slides, images)
- Be aware of any major political or interpersonal issues that might arise
Starting a meeting
edit- If in a room, arrive at least 5 minutes early
- If the room is still occupied 5 minutes before the meeting, let them know you will need the room soon
- And consider evangelizing "speedy meetings" to the organizer (later)
- If the room is still occupied 5 minutes before the meeting, let them know you will need the room soon
- Start the video call before the official meeting start time
- If the video call won't start, try the other browser (Firefox vs. Chrome)
- Sometimes rebooting also helps
- Explicitly set the speakers/microphone (sometimes it is automatic, sometimes not)
- Click the Gear in the hangout, and set speakers and mic to the specific device (e.g. Chat-150 or Jabra)
- If the video call won't start, try the other browser (Firefox vs. Chrome)
- Open the chat panel (by clicking the icon at the top of the left sidebar)
- If the keyboard/mouse batteries are low, email techsupport@wikimedia.org
Attending a meeting
editIf remote
edit- Use a headset
- Choose a quiet environment
- Choose a non-distracting background view
- If at home, make sure others know if they might be on camera
- Consider muting whenever possible
- If bandwidth is poor, reduce video quality
- Click on the 5-bars icon at the top of the hangout
- Open the chat panel (by clicking on the icon at the top of the left sidebar)
- If you type something important into the chat panel, make sure someone noticed it
If in the office but not using A/V equipment
edit- Use a headset
- Don't have the call at your desk--move to ad-hoc meeting space
- Always speak slowly and clearly
- Language barriers, poor audio, or both, can be a problem
- Don't dominate the conversation
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood
- Speak up when you have something relevant to say
- Stay focused on the meeting (minimize emails/IRC)
Facilitating a meeting
edit- Start the actual meeting on time "as a courtesy to those who were punctual"
- If key stakeholders are missing, decide whether to proceed or reschedule
- Remind everyone of the purpose, and quickly review the agenda
- Use the Google Hangout chat feature in case there are connectivity issues so that the room sees it
- Use IRC as a fallback.
- For recurring meetings, start with any issues left over from the previous meeting
- Be especially aware of when remoties want to speak
- Try to keep the meeting in good order
- If more than one person is speaking at once, most audio channels get fuzzed and the end result is the remote person can't hear a thing
- Boldly (but politely) ask if deep discussions and long tangents should be taken outside the meeting
- Last item in the agenda is dedicated to planning the next date/time.
- Take a log of what has been decided for each item and who is in charge (kind of an action list)
- Send that log to participants and let them review it
- After it has been reviewed, diffuse to other non-participants
- Stick to the agenda
Notetaking
editMake sure someone is taking notes
edit- In some cases, "everyone" can share note-taking, but the facilitator still needs to monitor
- One person taking notes is usually better
- Can be the facilitator, or rotating attendee, but whoever takes notes will be distracted
- For recurring meetings, don't make the same attendee take notes every time
- For important meetings that require intensive facilitation, consider bringing someone in just to take notes
- If using etherpad, don't enter anything that is private
- Security vulnerabilities
- Vacation/travel schedules, health stuff, family details
- Passwords
- If notes will be copied to wiki later, enter them in wiki format to start with
- == and === and ==== surrounding headings
- * and ** and *** for bullets
- Write any dates unambiguously. Use ISO 8601 format YYYY-MM-DD.
Take a log of what has been decided
edit...for each item and who is in charge (kind of an action list)
- Send that log to participants and let them review it
- After it has been reviewed, diffuse to other non-participants
Ending a meeting
edit- Start to wrap up a few minutes before the official end
- For a speedy meeting, remember the earlier end time
- Summarize key decisions and next steps
- Do not let the summary turn back into a discussion
- Agree on who will post the notes, and in what form
- Have a plan for any open items with no clear next steps
- End the meeting on time (or early)
- Don't let the meeting expand just to fill available time
- Ending early is a Good Thing™, as long as the agenda was covered
- If appropriate, offer to set up a follow-up meeting to continue the conversation
After the meeting
edit- Copy meeting notes to a wiki page
- If in doubt, get permission from attendees first
- Scan for anything that should NOT become public information
- Circulate a link to attendees
- Make sure people follow up on their action items
- If a recurring meeting, set up the next meeting's notes
- So people can immediately start adding to the next agenda
Additional thoughts
edit- Remote people like the staff mailing list. It helps them keep connected to the life of the office, and it's easier for them to contribute using channels that are asynchronous.
- Remote people like it when San Francisco people hang out on IRC. It helps them feel connected socially and casually
- Be deliberately, explicitly nicer in text (e.g. smileys), because people will default to a non-nice reading of your text
- If it's urgent, call your colleague on the phone. (And other items from this list.)
- Meeting creator in charge of policing participants:
- make sure people speak one after the other
- agenda is respected
- each item is allocated its amount of time
- meeting end on time...
- the shorter the meeting (less than 1 hour) the better. People start losing attention after 40 minutes or so
Summary/detailed-style notetaking
editmain article: Good_meetings
One notetaking format that can work for large discussions is:
- split screens
- left screen shows summary of meeting key issues
- try to create NPOV summary of the discussion
- one tactic that seems to work: reframing discussion as questions to be answered and/or unasked questions that were implicitly answered
- keep it to one screen
- right screen shows more detailed transcript
More details can be found in the "Note taking" section of the [Good meetings] page
Notes
edit- http://oduinn.com/images/we_are_all_remoties_latest.pdf (slides from an April 2015 talk at the WMF office)
- Christopher Groskopf’s Tricks for Going to the Office without Going to the Office