Flock idea (also indicated in earlier meeting): introduce a quorum to mitigate unnecessary meetings (+ consider the meeting label) #10
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We had already several meetings that either had no topics that needed a dedicated meeting or not sufficient people attended so that no one wanted to make a decision.
Therefore, we can introduce two things:
enforce the use of the meeting flag, and use it in more disciplined ways, and if nothing is flagged for the meeting, e.g., 24 hours before the meeting, then cancel it.
enforce a quorum (e.g., 3 or 4 people?), and if not sufficient people have confirmed attendance, e.g., 24 hours before, then the meeting is cancelled too.
Just some thoughts to consider :)
I'm worried this will lead to snowballing. If we start missing meetings, no ideas get generated for future meetings, so the future meeting gets cancelled, etc.
I do take the point about sometimes meetings being pointless if there's nothing to discuss though.
@thebeanogamer wrote in #10 (comment):
This is kinda what happened when I tried to restart the security meetings back in 01 or whenever it was... on days there wasn't any thing much to talk about I'd just skip it if no one else was around... and then in time no one bothered to show up because they expected it to be another skip week.
It's kind of a Chicken or Egg problem. We need people to show up to have consistent full meetings, but if we dont show consistent meetings, people wont schedule to come around. So we've just got to do it even if its minor and we're just going over the list of open tickets.
Meetings dont have to be an hour in length. Having a meeting, even if its just 15m of people checking in... is better than nothing. It takes time to show consistency which will draw more people to make an effort to attend.
My feeling is that the meeting is not the only thing that leads to exchange and new topics, etc. To be honest, I think most stuff that came up so far was from outside the meetings? That said, of course that risks is there.
A problem we have now is that the number of people who join the meetings is decreasing and some no longer show up at all, as it can feel like a waste of time -> at some point, there is no longer an expectation that a meeting has any "return on investment" (investment = time & a slot in the schedule).
A possibility could be to remove the part with the meeting ticket labels. If people see there is no ticket or if they feel the ticket is not of relevance for them or so, they can decide themselves to not attend anyway, and then we have still the fall back rule of the quorum.
Another point of the quorum is, beyond ensuring the meeting has on average a higher value & return on investment, that (for example) 2 people will not make noteworthy decisions in a meeting anyway, because of their low number (we had that already) -> so whatever they discuss can be expected to be discussed in the normal channel anyway (and then maybe even with more people to add their thoughts). Just one possibility of course.
That is still invasive, as I have to be at a specific time at a specific "place". Everything before and after must tailor to that, and any appointment can lead to empty space in a schedule. It remains an investment (of time / schedule slots). So I'm not dismissing your argument, but I think we should be careful to assume the amount of minutes is the primary factor for everyone when measuring the impact.
E.g., for me, it actually is of secondary relevance if it is 15 minutes or 1 hour. The primary impact is 5 pm on this day is scheduled.
Keep in mind that since its a community project, part of the point of having a standardized meeting time, is so people know 'if I have a question I can show up at ${TIME} and actually talk to a human, instead of making a post somewhere and potentially be ignored. It's sort of an online "Office Hours" for people to be aware of.
But in order for that to be a thing... we have to be around. It's not like every person has to show up every week. But IMHO, we need to have someone (usually me) that will be around.
Today's meeting was related.
The consensus (just 3 of us though ^^) is that it would be useful to publish an agenda on Discourse and Matrix about a day before the meeting, so that people roughly know in advance about what the meeting is, and to be able to properly prioritize if they have to (e.g., if they want/need to attend). Feel free to add your ideas or thoughts if and how to implement it, or what to contain.
I'm not sure if I shall remove this from the meeting list or not, so I leave it for now. But feel free to remove it from the meeting queue :)
Agreed today:
As the topic was finished, I remove the meeting tag.