Meetings

Meetings can be called either on-demand or regularly. To avoid any miscommunication and facilitate syncing between meeting participants, it is recommended to follow the following guidelines.

Calling for meetings

1. Define a goal

   Every meeting needs to have a goal. The goal should be clear in order to give direction to the discussion.
2. Define the agenda

   All meetings must have an agenda. The agenda helps participants focus and keep the meeting within its time constraints. The agenda should at least contain:

   1. The topic and subtopics to be discussed

   2. Possible preparation required by participants to be able to attend

3. Define participants

   The participants should be separated between:

   1. Mandatory participants

   2. Optional participants

4. Define time

   The meeting should take place within a specific time-frame. The time-frame should be such that all mandatory participants can attend. Try not to exceed 1h to avoid fatigue. Use free/busy information, if available, to minimizes chances of rescheduling. The meeting should be scheduled far enough into the future to let participants respond in time for their availability. Always add some extra time; meetings usually run overtime.
5. Define location

   The location, either physical or virtual, should be defined.
6. Set reminders

   Participants should be reminded in some way when a meeting is starting soon.
7. Make resources available

   Any resources needed to execute the meeting (documents, pages, links, etc.) should be available to the participants either directly or as links.

Calendar invitations

The most common way to call for meetings is through calendar event invitations. The recommended mapping between meeting properties and calendar invitations is:

Invitation	Meeting
Start time	Start time
End time	End time
Title	Agenda topic
Description	Agenda
Location	Location
Required attendees	Mandatory participants
Optional attendees	Optional participants
Reminders	Reminders (e.g. 15 mins before start)

Virtual meetings

Virtual meetings, preferably, take place on the Big Blue Button instance of Libre Space Foundation. The BBB service is integrated to Libre Space Foundation Cloud. Personal and shared meeting rooms can be managed through the BBB tab of the LSF Cloud. Access to created meeting rooms can be set to ‘Public’ or ‘Internal’, with various combinations for guest access (password, waiting room, etc.). When creating a new meeting room, set the appropriate access control settings, based on the privacy-sensitivity of the subject and the audience expected to be invited. To join meeting rooms set to be accessed internally, users are required to log-in using their LSF Cloud credentials. Avoid joining as a guest when you do have an LSF Cloud account and log-in instead so that your user’s avatar is properly displayed in the participants list. Always make sure that the audio setting are correct and the audio setup is functioning properly before joining a virtual meeting. A lot of frustration can be avoided by trying to briefly join with your devices (e.g. laptop, mobile phone) beforehand, in order to test that everything works and familiarize yourself with the platform. It is possible to join BBB virtual meetings using any modern web browser, including mobile web browsers; thus there is no need to install any specific mobile application.

Responding to invitations

Participants are expected to respond to invitation as soon as possible. Always check your calendar to avoid double booking and always account for possible time needed to prepare before responding to an invitation. It is acceptable for participants to completely deny attending or ask to reschedule a meeting. In any case, always reply with the reason.

Initiating meetings

To start a meeting, the following guidelines should be followed:

1. Small talk for 5 minutes, if possible

   This helps people to start talking and also allows time for everybody to gather.
2. Assign roles

   The following roles shall be assigned to people at the start of the meeting:

   1. Leader - The person who leads the discussion; usually the person who called the meeting

   2. Notekeeper - The person who keeps minutes of the meeting

   3. Kanban master - If the meeting involves a Kanban board review, the person who goes over the Kanban cards (e.g. GitLab issues)

   4. Timekeeper - The person who makes sure that the meeting runs on schedule

   5. Participant - Anyone who is invited and attends the meeting

Participating

To make meetings more efficient, the following guidelines should be followed after meeting starts:

1. Always try to stick to the agenda and the meeting goal, as defined by the organizer

2. Come up with clear action items which can be later documented as tasks for people undertake

3. Avoid overrunning the scheduled meeting time; people may have scheduled other tasks after the meeting

Post-meeting actions

After the end of the meeting, the meeting notes should be published by the Notekeeper and all action items should be filed as tasks to the task track system (e.g. GitLab issues) by all participants assigned to them.

Regular LSF meetings

Morning get-together

This meeting takes place every week from Tuesday to Friday, between 10:00am and 11:00am, Athens local time. It is open to any discussions and attendance is optional. No Leader is required. The meeting is also exempted from the rule to keep notes, thus a Notekeeper is not necessary.

Evaluation

The meeting is currently running an experimental period. The parameters of the morning get-together meeting shall be evaluated in two months, on 25th of November, 2022.