Meetings are Easy!

[The Schedule Board]

It's true! The painful Great Circle and Coordinating Council meetings really are the outliers. Meetings aren't usually torture.

On Tuesday we had our weekly land meeting with 25 participants. Actually, we had three weeks worth of business to cover - over 30 topics. Some of them were discussions, some were project check-ins, policy clarifications, new ideas, and more. We set up other meetings throughout the rest of the week, signed up for chores, reached consensus on expenditures, and got through it all pretty painlessly. We listened to each other, made compromises, and ended the meeting all on the same page as to what we're doing this week.

The following day, the newly consensed Caretaker Crew had our first meeting. This one had over a dozen fairly detailed items on the agenda. We defined a format for the meeting, tackled some complex issues, and got ourselves on the same page in terms of the work that we need to do as leaders of the community. Again, it was efficient, respectful and productive.

Tonight we have another meeting that includes the folks who live off the land. I truly hope that we can all keep the same productive decorum throughout this meeting. It doesn't have a large or difficult agenda, so I think we can probably do it. If we can't, I think it's time to take a step back and figure out what needs to change.