We met at Louise's house in Finsbury Park.
Present: Claire, Steph, Dave, Gabriel, Robbie, Louise, Andy, Lucie, 2 rats
Action points are in orange.
STRUCTURE
We started by discussing how we could structure our meetings better.
- We all felt inspired by John Jordan's talk and the notion of consensus. We agreed to take part in workshop to learn about group organising techniques.
Steph to contact JJ.
- Decision making: How can we make decisions without the whole group being present?
We agreed that some decisions will have to be made at meetings despite having everyone present in order to get things moving. We will send decisions by emails so anyone can request for it to be re-discussed. If no-one objects then we go forward. Dave suggested to agree on a quorum (a minimum number of person present to make decision). We all greed that any decisions is open to be reexamined at any time.
- Attendance: we agreed that it would be helpful that the people who can't come to the meeting let the group know by email.
- New member(s): we are usually never more than 10 at meetings so we could maybe have one new member joining us. How do we decide who to invite to join us?
Louise to write down waiting list.
Lucie to email them and ask who can commit to come every monday.
- Question week: we discussed ways of engaging in longer terms with a theme (so we don't only read a few texts the night before the session). It was suggested to have a bank ok ideas for question weeks and to have 'modules'.
- Guest: Pippa Koszerek was suggested. We also need to rewrite the email template that we can email to guests.
Claire to email Pippa.
Louise to email the first draft to the group.
- It was agreed that we needed a chairperson for each meeting.
Her/his role:
- Introducing the session
- Go through previous week's 'action points'
- Take notes (and action points)
- Facilitate conversation (trying to bring it back to the original subject, making sure everyone is heard, etc)
- Time keeping (it was suggested we finish discussion by 9 so we have time to plan next session)
- Conclusion (framing it with older conversations, coming with a collective response to the theme, etc)