I think the issue we agreed that is our weekly meeting is lack of engagement and vitality from LXDAO community.
TL;DR
In this post I shared my thoughts on how to improve our meeting, and, in a more broad way how to better connect LXDAO community. I think we should create more conditions to build informal relationship and to form dialogue/converstaion among the community or between the community and the people that are interested in LXDAO.
Some good experiments
I think last week’s weekly meeting is a good experiment since some people open their camera, and I felt the vibe was relaxed, what do you think of that?
For me, it’s not formal and structural report and introduction, it’s informal communication. It’s not necessary to be video meeting, it can be a song (like what Marcus did) and any other things that we feel relaxed.
The current meeting form
The most part of the current meeting process is about updates on working groups and projects, which is highly structural and concise, in a report form. But the problem is that may be (may not) only small portion of people will be interested in it - those who are involved most heavily in LXDAO. It’s important, but if they are the major part of the meeting, then this meeting will only attracts a small portion of people. I think we may make the process more flexible and open for outsiders or potential partners to join and ask questions.
My thoughts: an idea or approach
Dialogue: We should have a default mode that provides stability, framework, and a smooth landing, but our aim is the sky not the framework itself.
The projects update and working groups update can be more flexible:
We can have a time limit and framework on the things that need to be discussed, but for the regular reports which will be written down, we can skip or let the community decide. For example, in the projects update section, we have some default questions like the PMs report every week, but it’s not necessary. Since it’s community meeting anyone participate in the meeting can ask any questions (stupid or not) to the PM or member of regarding group. if no questions, they we can ask those default questions, or if we care about the default questions, we can take them as priority.
To let the community decide, it means the update process should be more like sharing and dialogue in a clear time framework and may need someone to act like a manager. It should welcome to any questions not matter whether it’s stupid or not, or a pure waste of time for someone, We may think this is default - anyone can raise questions, but if we don’t have the habit or there isn’t anyone not in the core of LXDAO to raise questions and join us, it means it’s just on the paper.
An example
So for example, we gave each PM 5 mins to talk with the community, only 5 mins, what will he/she do? Maybe she/he ask the community a question: What do you want to know about this project? Maybe she will say, I want to share with you something interesting in my project, or I want to introduce to you my project.
We may give it a time limit, such as that, if there is no voice in 2 min, they it means that everyone is OK with that projects. The time is a little bit long I think, but it also forces us to break our routine, may be someone will raise questions to end this kind of discomfort, may be the PM self will share something funny or headaching.
It may be funny, may be not, but if we are in a conversation, it will be moving and lively. And the time limit is not that long, 2 min.
My basic idea is that, make some clear rules or time and high level topics we agree and want to focus, but don’t limit the actual content of the meeting. Most importantly we need to create a space for dialogue, at the beginning, it may be a little bit “forced” dialogue, but if we all agree, then maybe it’s fine to make us a little bit uncomfortable.