About organizing meetings

Without mentioning anything specific about last night's SOWR meeting (see previous post), to avoid giving away any tactical or strategic details, here are some thoughts about organizing meetings for maximum attendance and effectiveness. I'm no expert, but I have done a lot of meeting organizing, and here is some of what I have learned.

1. Choose a day, time, and place that's convenient for as many interested people as possible. Try to have meetings at consistent intervals (weekly, every other week, second Tuesday, etc.) so people can get used to going to meetings regularly. If you have lots of people with complicated schedules, there are online tools like Doodle.com that can help with scheduling and other decision making.

2. I learned about the SOWR meeting from an article in the Daily Record, and I made a mental note of the meeting date when I read the article. But yesterday when I tried to find the article to get details of time and place, I couldn't find it. Meanwhile, the meeting wasn't listed in the Daily Record's printed calendar. (I'm not a subscriber to the Northern Kittitas County Tribune, but I should be; meanwhile, I try to read it at the library.) I finally found the details through an Internet search, which led me to the NKC Tribune's calendar -- I should have looked there first.

So: when planning a meeting, realize that some people who want to come will be like me. Send a press release to newspapers a week or two in advance. (Don't be bothered if they don't print it, it's nothing personal.) Be sure the event is listed in the newspapers' online and printed calendars, so people can find information on the day of the event. Consider listing the meeting on Chamber of Commerce calendars, too, if it's relevant.

3. Develop an e-mail list of people who come to meetings and others who might be interested. All leaders in the organization should have the technology and the know-how to at least send and receive e-mails. Consider using opt-out ("Please let us know if you'd like to be removed from this list") and/or opt-in ("If we don't hear from you, we won't be sending you any more e-mails) language from time to time, to make sure the right people are getting your e-mails.

4. Some of your most important people may be so busy that they need to be called with reminders about the meeting.

5. Meeting attendance will go up and down, because people are busy and not everyone will be able to come to every meeting. Don't worry if your group slowly declines in number until only the most active and committed people come to meetings. You're interested in quality of meeting progress, not quantity of people. Of course, you do need enough people to have, share, develop, and act on good ideas, and enough people to do what needs to get done.

6. The leader of the group can expect to have a significant workload, even though everyone who comes to meetings should be expected to help by volunteering for or accepting assignments.

7. Everyone should have contact information for everyone else.

8. If you volunteer for or accept an assignment, be sure to do it, or tell the leader if you can't. Just do your best.