[Fg-general] Minutes Standardization

[Luke Closs]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 11:48 AM, afsmith <adventurecomplete at gmail.com> wrote:
> Following up on David's proposal for discussion on the topic of policy
> for taking minutes (which was skipped at the general meeting), does
> anyone have input on how we could standardize our meeting
> minute-taking process?

Thanks for putting some energy into this, Alex.

> Here are some ideas:
>
> -I think minutes should always be formatted for- and posted on the
> mailing list before anywhere else, in order to ensure proliferation of
> readable plaintext copies

I suggest we always post to wiki and copypasta into email at the same time.

> -We should encourage scribes to not wait to post their unchecked
> minutes if the checker is taking too long, as this seems to encourage
> long delays in minute-posting

I took this approach with the monthly minutes, and I'm going to
suggest that it becomes general practice.  I sent the minutes for
internal review to fg-staff@ and gave a 3-day window.  I said I'd
incorporate any feedback I received in that time.

> -Perhaps instead of a minutes checker, we could enlist more than one
> person as a scribe where number of participants permits, and/or
> advertise minutes-checking as a task open to all  of the meeting
> attendees.

I think taking notes while projected on a shared screen, like we did
this week is good - as we can spot misunderstandings right away.

> -We could and possibly summarize outcomes all together at the
> beginning/end of the minutes, particularly policy decisions, dates of
> meetings and other events, and topics for the meeting to follow
> (things that need to be extracted and referred-to outside of the
> minutes)

Good suggestion.  I tried to do that this week with the "How you can
Help FG" email.

> -Would be nice to have consistent formatting for finalized minutes

I always use the templates up on the wiki.  They are the "official" style guide.

Luke