Tips on How to Run Meetings

Before

  • Line up topics and people to lead discussions about the topics
    • Keep an eye on Discord for potential topics
    • Keep an eye on the activities in the repos
    • What are the hot topics in the community
    • Are there any "Future Topics" from the past meetings
  • Friday before the meeting – copy and edit the previous meeting agenda
    • Exclude attachments in copy
    • Update the date, remove the old recording, add in the Zoom link, remove past meeting attendees
    • Remove no longer relevant material
    • Update all of the content from the last meeting
      • If details were collected in the last meeting for an item to be discussed again, remove the details in anticipation of new details
    • If Action Items were defined in the last meeting, see if it is appropriate to include them in this meeting (contact assignee)
    • Add links were useful to the content to be discussed – e.g. to specific issues, pull requests, presentations, etc.
  • Day before the meeting:
    • Post on the appropriate channel(s) in Discord a note about the meeting
    • Review the Meeting Agenda to make sure it is up to date and ready
  • A good idea is to set calendar entries to remember to do the "Friday before" and "Day before" tasks

 During

  • Open up the agenda in your browser, ready to share, plus any other pages needed.
  • Join the meeting, greet people, claim host (click on participants, button bottom of the screen)
  • Share your screen
  • Start the recording
    • I usually record locally and upload the recording after the meeting, but others record to cloud
    • Ideal: Capture the recording start time, and times of key events so you can provide the recording timestamps of when discussions start
  • Intro for the recording, go through the page (summary of agenda, anti-trust notice, code of conduct, welcome, intro)
  • Topics - where possible, take notes on the meeting agenda page as you go – or on paper to update the meeting page after the meeting

After

  • If recording locally, rename recording the "YYYYMMDD - <Name of Meeting> Call Recording.mp4" or something similar
  • Drop recording on page and change into a link
  • Check the "chat" and see if there is anything there that should be added to the meeting agenda page
    • Perhaps as a list of chat message under the recording
    • Perhaps by the relevant agenda items
  • Update the notes made of the meeting
  • Document any to dos for others at the meeting
  • Note any "Future Topics" that came up in the meeting
  • As appropriate, 
  • Remember to click "Update" (smile) on the page