This documents procedures, norms, and logistics of the Council's sync meetings.
The Council meets once every other week.
On the first meeting on or after the 14th of July, 2023, the Council will re-evaluate whether this frequency still makes sense or whether it should be changed.
The meeting happens in some video call software (e.g., Google Meet).
The meeting has reached quorum if at most 2 Council representatives (and their alternates) are not present (i.e., N - 2).
If quorum is not reached, then the sync meeting is canceled and the agenda is gone through asynchronously in chat.
Detailed minutes must be taken of the meeting. The meeting minutes must be made public before the following meeting (or a delay must be publicly announced and resolved as soon as possible). After the meeting, Council members must review the minutes to ensure that the minutes reflect their understanding of what occurred in the meeting. Once there is consent that the minutes are accurate, they are released for public viewing.
Minutes may be found in the 'minutes' directory of the leadership Council team repository.
When there are sections of the meeting that involve topics that cannot be shared publicly,
such as topics covered in the private decisions list,
those minutes must be stricken from the published notes, with a marker to indicate there was a private section.
A copy of the notes containing the private section should be sent to the [email protected] mailing list by the Librarians.
Council members should not share the private contents with anyone without prior approval from the Council.
Some private topics are only temporarily private, such as being deferred until some public announcement is made. In this case, the Librarians should strive to backfill the published notes once it is safe to include them.
The meeting has the following assigned roles:
- Facilitator: the facilitator is in charge of pushing discussion along, calling on hands, formally asking the group whether there are any objections to a particular motion, and keeping the discussion on agenda.
- Scribe(s): the scribes are in charge of taking notes on what was discussed in the meeting including noting any action items or follow up questions.
The main agenda for the meeting must be made publicly available within the HackMD agenda document at least 2 days before the meeting. All Council members may comment on, revise, add to or otherwise collaborate on ensuring the agenda is in the right shape.
The agenda should contain the following for each agenda item:
- A short description of the contents of the item
- The champion of this agenda item
- Usually this is the person who has suggested the agenda item and has the most context on what needs to be discussed.
- An estimated time span for the item
- A short description of the goal(s) of the item
- An optional proposal (something that requires review and approval through the decision making process)
- Note: proposals require another Council member to second the proposal before it can be brought forward.
- Links to previous discussion to facilitate getting up to speed with the current state of discussion around the item.
- An optional list of existing concerns that can be used to identify stakeholders and bring concerns to the attention of everyone before the meeting.
The agenda is laid out in temporal order which is determined largely by the urgency of each topic (most urgent comes first). However, this is not a hard rule as, for example, it might make sense to keep one large discussion (even if it is the most urgent) for last in the meeting so that it can simply fill the entire remainder of the meeting time.
In addition to the main agenda items, every meeting has the following structure:
- Check-in
- The check-in is a chance for Council members to connect on a human level and share how they're doing outside of the context of the meeting. Examples of things shared in the check-in include: "I'm not feeling well because of my allergies, and so I'm not in a good headspace", "My partner and I just adopted a cat so I'm doing great!", and "I'm doing fine - nothing to report".
- Assigning roles
- The Council members decide by consensus who will fill the roles of facilitator and note taker.
- Consent to the agenda
- This is a chance for last minute changes to the agenda to be made through consensus and to ensure everyone is on the same page as far as what will be discussed. Items may be added or struck from the agenda through consensus though it is advised that additions to the agenda be small in scope (to ensure that everyone involved has had enough time to prepare for whatever will be discussed) and that additions only be accepted if consent can be reached quickly (to ensure the meeting starts in a timely manner).
- Main agenda
- The main topics of the meeting which have just been consented to
- Clarifications
- A call is made for any last minute clarifications, questions, requests for additional action.
- Check-out
- This is a chance for Council members to express how they felt the meeting went including areas for improvement, particular highlights and kudos, or any other relevant meta aspects of the meeting.
A template for this meeting structure that can be used to boostrap the agenda making process can be found here.
The following are the social expectations that are expected of meeting participants:
- Usage of "hands": all participants are expected to use the "raise hands" feature of the video meeting software to put themselves into a queue to be called on by the facilitator. There are a few exceptions to this however: the facilitator when performing the duties of that role and the scribe when asking clarifying questions.
- Points of order: every participant is encouraged to raise "points of order" which are meta commentary on some aspect of the meeting that needs clarification or discussion. If a point of order is considered urgent, it may be called out verbally - bypassing the usual queuing mechanism - or if not urgent, it may also be made in chat. Such interjections should be as brief as possible, to limit talking over one another. For example, "Point of Order - we are out of our allotted time today", might be a suitable interjection.
- Staying on topic: while the facilitator is ultimately in charge of keeping the meeting on topic, every participant is encouraged to bring to the facilitator's attention when the conversation seems to have veered off course (either by getting off topic or by becoming too concerned with specific details). A member may wish to raise a Point of Order to highlight this.
- No side conversations in chat: The chat functionality is only used to raise non-urgent points of order and to ask non-urgent clarification questions which can then be verbally surfaced either by the facilitator or whoever has the floor. Side conversations that diverge from the main conversation of the meeting should be avoided.