Meeting best practices (including remote staff)

We are all remoties

= Before the meeting =


 * Figure out a consistently good time for all members of the team (ie, PT mornings to include Europeans)
 * Or if there is no consistently good time, try rotating times so everyone gets to share the pain of being on super-late or super-early
 * Attach a Google Hangout to all meetings regarldess of wether you know someone will be remote. You never know who will work from home
 * Link an etherpad that contains your agenda far in advance of the meeting

= During the meeting =


 * Join the hangout or IRC channel 5 minutes early to test A/V issues, and to socialize with other participants
 * Start the meeting on time
 * Take collaborative notes using the etherpad in the meeting invite
 * Stop the meeting on time (think about timezone).
 * Use the Google Hangout chat feature in case there are connectivity issues so that the room sees it. Use IRC as a fallback.
 * Stick to the agenda.
 * Start the discussion by prompting the remote staff first
 * Make a point of calling on remote people during the meeting, acknowledging that they're disadvantaged in ability to participate.
 * Make the video image as near life-size as possible
 * Remember that remote people are in the meeting. Pointing at something, if there's no visual link, and going "what I think about *point* that is..." does not communicate what you're discussing.
 * Try to keep the meeting in good order. If more than one person is speaking at once, most audio channels get fuzzed and the end result is the remote person can't hear a thing.
 * Last item in the agenda is dedicated to planning the next date/time.
 * Finally take a log of what has been decided for each item and who is in charge (kind of an action list). Send that log to participants and let them review it. After it has been reviewed, diffuse to other non-participants.
 * take account of speed of light/latency on whether you have an opportunity to comment

= After the meeting =


 * Review and correct notes
 * Send notes to the relevant mailing list for those not present to be able to know what happened

= Additional thoughts =


 * Remote people like the staff mailing list. It helps them keep connected to the life of the office, and it's easier for them to contribute using channels that are asynchronous.
 * Remote people like it when San Francisco people hang out on IRC. It helps them feel connected socially and casually
 * Be deliberately, explicitly nicer in text (e.g. smileys), because people will default to a non-nice reading of your text
 * If it's urgent, call your colleague on the phone. (And other items from this list.)
 * Meeting creator in charge of policing participants:
 * make sure people speak one after the other
 * agenda is respected
 * each item is allocated its amount of time
 * meeting end on time...
 * the shorter the meeting (less than 1 hour) the better. People start losing attention after 40 minutes or so

= Notes =
 * http://oduinn.com/images/we_are_all_remoties_latest.pdf (slides from an April 2015 talk at the WMF office)
 * Christopher Groskopf’s Tricks for Going to the Office without Going to the Office
 * See also Team_Practices_Group/How_to_run_a_good_meeting, which will be merged.