item for meeting

[Scott Kovaleski]

I can't be at tonight's meeting, but I have an item for discussion.

The bottom line is weeknight meetings suck for me. Weekend afternoons would be much better.

I bring this up because I figure I am not the only one, and there is a suggestion on the table to increase meeting frequency to 1/week, all on Thursday night. I understand the rationale of "pick a meeting time and stick to it, some people won't be able to make it, but that's ok." However, with so many meeting times, it seems like some variable timing on regular meetings would be a good thing, and not a problem to accommodate, especially with meetup. Also, there should be some distinction between Business Meetings (with agenda items and notice of agenda and votes) and Hack Night (with little to no business discussed).

Additionally, I have seen my wife's participation in Roller Derby go to zero, because the practice timing was all geared to single twenty somethings (Monday night 10PM to midnight) and not 40-year-old people with school kids (I don't even know what 11PM looks like any more).

I think there is a danger of the same thing with CGW if we don't guard against it. One of the reasons I like the idea of having a space is that my weeknight participation can dwindle to near zero. But I would also like to think I will occasionally be joined you all (or some of you all), and able to participate in group decision making, etc.

Anyway, there is a log for the fire.

[Nathan Odle]

Seconded

[Dan Goldstein]

Yeah, I'm good with some weekend meeting times.
Generally weekends are a bit easier in the winter, and weeknights are a bit easier in the summer. 

It is a good idea to rotate...

Third-ed...

Dan

--
"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory   out there - good for you.
 
But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of the police forces and the fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory...
 
Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and you pay forward for the next kid who comes along."
- Elizabeth Warren (Sept. 2011)

[Ben Datema]

I also can't make tonight's meeting and also would find weekend meetings to be much easier, generally. Since I work in Student Affairs on a college campus, I constantly have to stay late for student organization meetings/special events/meetings with individual students. My schedule is all over the place when classes are in session, but generally I can keep my weekends free.

I second Scott's notion that we pick a meeting and it works for some and not for others and that's fine, but I thought I would throw in my informal vote for whatever fraction of the decision it's worth. 

[Zach Zeman]

I should clarify that the Thursday night meetings are intended to be operational meetings. I tentatively put the name Hack Night on the timeline because A.) that's the only thing we've called our regular meetings and B.) anytime we get together we end up talking about and screwing around with projects anyway. I agree that we should have some separation, and that's part of the beauty of having a space that is always there. Hacking time can be whenever you want.

I will argue against having business meetings on the weekend. Weekends often seem like they would be more open, but that's because they're always the wildcard. There's a reason that it's called the the Tuesday Pattern, making no mention of weekends, and why so many other organizations have their meetings on weeknights. It's because building a rhythm on weekends is very difficult, and having that rhythm in the organization is important. This is the same reason that I would argue against having variable timing on our regular meetings. Telling a potential member that Thursday night is CGW night is much easier than sending them off to look at a calendar to figure out when the next meeting is. Anyway, I don't want to hammer to much on this, but we will talk about it more tonight.

Would anyone be interested in a G+ hangout? Please let me know before the meeting if you would, because I'd rather not go through the setup if no one is going to join in on it.

Thanks.

-Zach

[Scott Kovaleski]

I couldn't disagree with you more, Zach.  

I hope we all get the chance to get together and discuss this and vote on an all weeknight schedule, as well as other items of policy.

Incidentally even the presentation establishing the Tuesday pattern states that your mileage may vary.

Scott Kovaleski

scott.k...@gmail.com

[Matthew Little]

I think this topic definitely warrants more discussion, and I'd hate to see a dichotomy form here over the schedule. I believe the idea, as we discussed a bit at last night's meeting, was that it's important to have a fixed and consistent time for meetings - having to look up the next meeting time every week would make it more difficult to have regular attendance. The believe the hesitation to moving regularly scheduled meetings to weekends is that weekends tend to be more volatile for personal scheduling, as that's typically time that most people end up doing things with family, going out of town, etc.

That being said, having a separation of business/operational meetings and meetings focused solely on hacking stuff is probably the best way to ensure stuff gets done at the business meetings.

Personally I don't have a problem with a bi-weekly operational meeting on Thursday evenings, and a hacking meeting every week on Saturday or Sunday afternoon - as long as the meeting time is fixed so it's easy to plan weekends around. If something comes up at a hack meeting that needs to be addressed at an operational meeting, it's easy enough to get scheduled for discussion then, and we can have the agenda available beforehand so anyone who can't make the operational meeting can weigh in via email and have their voice heard (though having an operational meeting with a bunch of emails and no people kind of inhibits any discussion about it at the time).

As far as getting decisions with the scheduling ironed out, these can really take a backseat to getting the space ready - no sense in arguing over when to meet in an empty room at this point.

[Scott Kovaleski]

I am more than happy to table the discussion, as long as it happens. Also, there is nothing wrong with friendly disagreements (which this is for my part in it), as long as we have ways to resolve them (e.g. bylaws and properly advertised votes).

I can't believe we need a business meeting (with an agenda and votes) more frequently than monthly. Maybe even quarterly. Its OK with me if this is a weeknight. That will be pretty much the only weeknight meeting I will attend. (exception: something awesome is going on)

Without a discussion with all interested parties you can't say things like, "...weekends tend to be more volatile for personal scheduling, as that's typically time that most people end up doing things with family, going out of town, etc." My original post had three members counting me stating the exact opposite, and one member saying "it depends". That is more than one third of membership (if I have the count right). It's not a majority but it isn't an insignificant amount either.

I get that some people like weeknights, and some like weekends. I'm not suggesting we meet EXCLUSIVELY on weekends, just that say half of regular meetings are on weekends. Since business meetings wouldn't be frequent, these would just be advertised times when you can reliably expect other people in the space. I believe any regular CGW schedule should be inclusive of all schedules, rather than exclusive of some. I plan to vote that way.

I support a regular schedule of some sort. I think a weekly schedule for business is overkill, as I said before. Hopefully small groups of people will be getting together in the space to work projects all the time (more than once weekly).