Doing stuff before meetings

Meetings can suck if everyone comes to them without preparation or forethought. You can feel overwhelmed by the discussion, not knowing the history and being embarrassed to ask. The discussion can be derailed by people explaining background or people expressing uninformed opinions.

Democracy only works among educated groups, so do your homework. But don't feel like you have to know everything - there is so much going on here that it would be a full-time position just to keep track of it all. Rather, make sure you find out how to keep advised of areas you are concerned about, and be willing to accept that you can't monitor everything and will have to find ways to trust the various subcommittees and work groups.

As a participant, what should you do before a meeting?

• Re-read the last meeting's minutes a week or so before the meeting. Meeting minutes are usually posted to the group's email list and to the minutes list. Our meeting minder helps remind us to do this for council and some other group meetings.
• Make sure you have done all the commitments you had made. If you can't complete them, try to have a plan for completing them.
• Pay attention to the meeting agenda as it develops (on the email list). Posting the agenda may well cause people to clarify their positions, and this will be useful background to have.
• If there is an item that you are interested in, make sure you have researched your opinion, possibly discussing it with someone you know to be close to the item.
• If someone puts an item on the agenda that you are unclear about, ask them for available background information. Ideally, this should be on the email list so that others can benefit from your question.
• If you add an agenda item, be sure to provide links to relevant previous discussions, have an introduction ready that summarizes the history of the topic (if any), and be ready to show which issues have already been considered and addressed. This may sound intimidating, but it's worth doing - and you can ask people in person or on the council list to help you.
• Don't post agenda items too late, or you prevent serious consideration of the issue by people who may not read email as often or attend the same meetings as you.

If you can't prepare for a meeting

This section needs work, because it's supposed to apply to all meetings. There should at least be a prescription for what to do w/r/t council.