Consensus Mini Lessons
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Around the middle of 2006, the Council decided to begin each meeting with a 10-minute mini-lesson on the consensus process. The mini-lesson outlines may be recorded below. They're most likely based on the documentation we already have.
Lesson 1
- Here's where the documentation lives Meeting Tips Scribe
- If you think you know it already, add to it
- It's helpful for everyone to know something about facilitation, because it eases the decision-making process.
Why do we use consensus?
See some documentation.
Roles
- Facilitation
- making the conversation go towards a conclusion, not just giving everyone a chance to speak
- While it's important to air as many viewpoints as possible making decisions isn't always just about letting absolutely everyone speak/make things feel fair
- There are tools for making this happen: queue/stack, summarizing the conversation, asking pointed questions, cutting people off
- At Free Geek, many in the group often know how to facilitate, and they can help the current facilitator move things along
- Presenter
- Catches the group up on the topic, and often presents a path to take to move forward
- Scribe
- records the decisions so they may be referred to later
- The scribe writes our history, so it's important that decisions are recorded correctly. Facilitators need to have the scribe read back proposals before final consensus is reached.
- minutes checker
- since it can be hard to capture the bent of a complex conversation and type simultaneously sometimes, we like to have someone check over the minutes for errors or misinterpretations before they're sent out.
Other Ideas
- Decision-making structure (proposal, clarifying questions, etc.): role play
- Meeting elements
- Job of facilitator: before, during, after meeting
- Define assent, stand aside, block
- Impediments to consensus