Talk:Good meetings/Flow

I came up another meeting type that isn't listed in under Good meetings#Taxonomy. The code section below describes yet another bulletpoint that I may add above the other bulletpoints:

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Introduction - This is a meeting where at least one "important attendee" doesn't know many of the other people in the room, and the most important outcome of the meeting is for everyone to know each other better.

• Successful outcome: the meeting ends on time, with everyone having had a proper chance to introduce themselves, and the "important attendee" feels satisfied that they know how to followup with other important attendees
• Successful outcome: no one leaves the meeting with a lower opinion of anyone else in the meeting
• Stretch goal: getting through the agenda
• Non-goal: the stretch goals of the meeting types listed below

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Of course, all attendees of all meetings are "important", but of course, there are going to be some people at the meeting who (perhaps) are responsible for the budget that funds the meeting room that pays for the conference room that the meeting is held in (sorta ike Ronald Reagan in a hotel conference room in New Hampshire in 1980). Some people will believe they've purchased the right to speak, and if they own the real estate that the meeting is held at, they may be able to call the cops. Anyway, thoughts on "Introduction" being added as part of the taxonomy?

I really liked how meetings at the 2018 Technical Conference were charged with producing 4 types of output: Goals, Questions, Actions, and Decisions. I would "be bold" and just add this to your meeting page, but in this case I figured I'd softly ask first since I don't want to disrupt your workplace products. Would this be appropriate to add and if so, where?

I haven't had a chance to update this page since I left WMF in 2016. It doesn't look like it's changed all that much since I've left. I'd recommend being bold; someone might revert you, but I probably won't.

+1 on be bold.

If you're feeling extra enthusiastic, you could even merge this page into Meeting best practices (including remote staff)... >.>

Ha, I saw that one and noticed it hasn't been edited in 5 years. I won't jump to volunteer on merging, though I think it would make sense.

If I were cleaning things up, what I would do is:

• Rename "Meeting best practices (including remote staff)" to "Good remote meetings"
• Create a "Remote meetings" section in this article (the "Good meetings" article), which would be a summary-style link to "Good remote meetings"
• Do whatever editing is required to make each page match up with it's title

As written, "Good meetings" is more general, and was heavily inspired by Valerie Aurora's "Meeting Skills for Inclusive Moderators" presentation (as well as many articles on the topic I had read through the years). The "Meeting best practices (including remote staff)" was inspired by many lively debates within WMF about meeting etiquette, back in the day when videoconferencing tech was even more troublesome than it is today and when hybrid conference-room/remote meetings were even more difficult to do correctly than they are today. Both pages are probably incomplete coverage of their respective topics, and both pages run the risk of being too long (and risking the "dr" part of "tl;dr"). Keeping them as separate articles focused on their respective topics would make the "Good meetings" article reasonably timeless and technology agnostic, and the "Good remote meetings" article would hopefully be a more dynamic article focused on the latest tools and tricks (..and maybe can remain more focused on WMF-specific tech)

Great analysis. Thanks, RobLa. :)

I'm thinking about the agenda for Phab:E198, and realizing that it doesn't fit into the taxonomy given. There's yet another "pre-meeting" type which can be valuable, which has a lot in common with the "problem solving" type, which is "plan for a plan". It's basically: "we know we have a problem, but we have no idea how to even define what the problem is, let alone proposing solutions". Thoughts?