Facilitation needs to coordinate a schedule

[nhiggins]

Hi facilitators--

We have lost serious numbers, and interest, in people facilitating GAs. I think we need to coordinate and communicate clearly with each other on who can coordinate on what days, and to make a schedule, so that we are not scrambling at the last second to figure out who's doing what, and actually organizing an agenda, and that there is actually someone there who knows how to do it. There were an inadequate number today.

We need more people in this WG! But I know that's not news.

I would also like to add that I am in favor of cutting back on the number of GAs, to maybe 4 times per week, and then as needed for urgent matters. It would ease the burden on our WG and the occupation overall.

[colin]

I can generally be on facilitation teams Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. I usually cannot due Wednesdays, Thursdays or Sundays. I agree that it would be good to try to do a better job coordinating a schedule for facilitators.

I'm not opposed to reducing the number of GA's each week to four - especially if we can call additional GA's for urgent matters on short notice.

[dylan]

IU'd like to attend a facilitation training. I would also recommend posting facilitation trainings on facebook and twitter, both of which I can do.

[Emma]

I am strongly in favor of both coordinating a schedule and reducing the frequency of GAs at least on a trial basis. I suggest a schedule of Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday. The days when we can do it during daylight hours, plus two weekday evenings to keep business going during the week.

I have said before and will say again that I am available to be part of a facilitation team, but I am not always in the park hanging out (esp at that hour) so would need to be in touch with folks ahead of time about when I'm needed. Nobody has ever contacted me about this. Not blaming anyone, just pointing out a failure of our communication & coordination systems. We are still really working on creating these systems and hopefully this piece can get into place sooner than later.

Does someone want to volunteer to herd cats/coordinate the calendar for a facilitation team?

[rebecca]

Here is an online sign-up that should work better than whenisgood, in that it's asking for commitment rather than availability.

www.SignUpGenius.com/go/general40

It does not solve the problem of coordinating one system that works for the people who are mostly not on-site at Academy Park and also for the people who are there and mostly not on the Internet. Maybe if someone without Internet wants to sign up, they talk to someone in the WG before or after GA and someone can agree to get their info into the online sign-up? That's clunky but I haven't thought of anything better. Ideas?

Also it needs to be someone's job to check this for gaps and look for people to cover them, maybe by announcing the needs at GA a day or two in advance? Is there someone (or a couple people IF you can coordinate with each other!) willing to take that on?

Has anyone been announcing at GA the online poll for when to schedule facilitation trainings? No one has yet responded.

[rebecca]

The decision about having fewer GA's is an important one with complicated pro's and con's and people may have a lot to say about it. I'd suggest that we decide on a date to discuss as a working group what our proposal should be, and invite anyone at GA who is interested to join us for that meeting. We'll still have a discussion on our hands when we bring the proposal but we'll probably be better prepared for it that way.

[joshred]

A temperature check was taken on having less frequent GA's. It was met with near unanimous down-twinkles.

[rebecca]

Josh: Interesting. Of course the people who are present at GA are more likely to be the ones who are not having as much trouble making it fit into their regular schedules... I think if there is a group that feels strongly that we should do it less frequently they should still bring a proposal and be allowed to make their case. But in the meantime, I wonder if it might be a good idea to spell out, as part of asking people to get trained as facilitators, what (in my opinion) this means: if our WG doesn't have coverage for every meeting, we will make an effort to find people, but if no one is available, no one is available. Whoever is present for GA that day will have to figure out how to have a meeting. The more people in the group know how to facilitate, the less likely that is to become a mess.

[Emma]

Sounds like yet another question that there's becoming a divide on between full-timers and part-timers. Sigh. I hope we can get over this hurdle (not just about GA frequency but about the growing contentiousness around that divide).

We talked tonight at F&L meeting (first one I've been to in quite a while) about a suggestion that we take the pre-meeting agenda-setting more seriously (I can explain more but that'd be quite the tangent right here) and the issue was raised that we still don't have teams pre-set and that people have trouble getting there half an hour before the GA (aka 5pm) to start fielding agenda item requests.

I think we should use the tool Becca posted but it doesn't do any good unless we're all using it and folks who are on site are able to access it (to sign up and to find out who to expect). Is it mobile-friendly? Can we get consensus on using it? Do we need a volunteer to relay info between park folks and the board by phone?