Staff Meetings

Purpose

Staff meetings are to be scheduled out with as much advanced notice as possible to allow everyone to move their individual schedules around to attend.

Who Does It

This should be handled by one of the upper staff members. It doesn't need to be the same person every time, but someone needs to take responsibility for this.

Necessary Tools

The person who is in charge of scheduling and announcing staff meetings should:

• have access to the #castle channel in chat,
• have access to create campaigns in mailchimp, or someone willing to work on those
• have access to create messages in social pilot, or work with the social media team to do so

See Also

• Meeting Policies

Policy

• Meetings should be scheduled out as early as possible
  • WHY: This helps people move their schedule around so as many people can attend as possible
• Meetings should be announced using relevant tags in discord, being posted on the meeting page, and mailed out in mailchimp. Optionally they can also be announced on social media to attract new possible staff
  • WHY: Very few of the staff members monitor discussion. If the meeting isn't announced they won't know about it, even if it's posted where they can see it. Announcements help take the burden off the staff to keep track of the meetings.
• A meeting reminder should be sent out using relevant tags in discord a few days before the meeting and also a few hours before the meeting
  • WHY: We all have busy lives and forget. The reminders help keep us all on track so we can attend.
• Meetings should be scheduled approximately once per month except for the 2 or 3 months before con which should be twice per month.
  • WHY: Closer to con we need more meetings to actually pin final details down. Before con they're mostly about keeping up the momentum for everyone and creating opportunities to plan, collaborate, and ask questions.
• Meetings should avoid other events and special internal deadlines ("Con book hell") when at all possible. It is not always possible.
  • WHY: Meetings generally require high-level staff to attend who are frequently also people who table at other events or have to meet those internal deadlines.
• Meetings are open to all staff members, volunteers, and non-staff/volunteers unless necessary. Generally, heads-only meetings are only called for emergency situations and policy decisions.
  • WHY: Emergency situations or policy decisions are generally handed to the upper staff before the rest of the staff to keep the circle small and left to the people who are responsible for the various departments. For general con planning, we want as many people as possible in a meeting to get them hyped about planning con. Non-staff/volunteers are encouraged to attend in the hopes that we can convert them to staff/volunteers.
• Early-year meetings may be run on short notice, but a schedule should be hammered out as soon as possible.
  • WHY: Early in the year, it's hard to get momentum to get going. Generally anything before May is bonus productivity. We consider May the "starter pistol" to get serious, assuming a con in October/November.
• All meetings should have agendas. Utilize the #meeting-agenda channel to jot down plans. Encourage department heads to also jot down what they want to talk about during the meeting. As much as possible, agendas should be provided to the staff before the meeting.
  • WHY: It helps to be prepared for a meeting. From the presenter side, you can keep things on-topic if you actually have a topic to return to. Knowing the different things planned to discuss allows you to go from point to point. From the staff perspective, knowing what will be in a meeting allows you to mull it over and prepare things to bring up.

Steps

Creating the schedule

1. Determine what the staff will be okay attending. Not all staff members can make Saturday meetings, so it's generally best to poll the staff to see what they can make.
2. Lay out a meeting plan.
3. Run the meeting plan past the staff heads and change as needed. Not all heads will be able to make all the meetings.
4. Run the meeting plan past the general staff and change if reasonable.
5. Post the meeting schedule to the website.
   1. Log into BACON
   2. Navigate to the website editor (More options -> Staff Home -> Other -> Website)
   3. Find the staffmeetings / Staff Meeting schedule and click "Edit page content"
   4. Update the sections as necessary
   5. Click Submit
6. Send out the meeting schedule to the MailChimp mail list with a link to the schedule on the website
7. Announce the meeting schedule on social media with a link to the website

Announcements & Reminders

1. Create a MailChimp campaign for every meeting, to remind all staff and volunteers that it is happening.
2. Schedule the campaign to go out 1 week before the scheduled meeting
3. If there's a known agenda, update the relevant campaign to let people know what's planned. If the agenda isn't ready soon enough to email it out, post it in chat as early as possible.

Meeting Notes

1. Create a google doc for the meeting notes owned by the SCIENCE google account. If necessary, create it with a personal account and transfer ownership as soon as is reasonable.
2. Make the google doc editable by anyone with the link
3. Copy all agenda items into the google doc as section headers
4. Post the link in the #meeting channel for people to update
5. Ensure that at minimum one person is responsible for taking notes. If possible, get multiple people to take notes together.
6. After the meeting is over, review the meeting notes and update as possible, filling in details or nuances that were missed and correcting grammar
7. Post the final meeting notes link to #meeting-summaries
8. Email the meeting notes out in a MailChimp campaign for people who missed the meeting

Meeting Checklist

This is for general meetings. Emergency meetings generally happen faster and may miss reminder/announcement items.

▢ Meeting is scheduled/planned

▢ Meeting is posted on website schedule

▢ Meeting has been announced with relevant @-tags in discord

▢ Meeting has been (or is scheduled to be) announced in MailChimp

▢ (optional) Meeting has been announced on social media

▢ Meeting reminder email went out 1 week in advance of the meeting.

▢ Meeting reminder announced in discord with relevant @-tags in 1 week before meeting

▢ (optional) Meeting reminder went out on social media

▢ Meeting reminder day before meeting in discord

▢ Meeting reminder day of meeting in discord, 1-3 hours in advance of meeting

▢ Open meeting voice channel to all discord users to attend

▢ Meeting notes document is created and posted in the meeting channel

▢ Someone is responsible for taking notes

▢ All agenda items have been discussed or intentionally put off until the next meeting

▢ Meeting notes have been reviewed and polished

▢ Meeting notes have been released via discord and mailchimp for the people who did not attend