Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Fun at business meetings

[Rob Sandelin (Floriferous]

I teach a weekend workshop on how to make meetings work really well, including 
how to make them fun. I have an opening in July, and again in October. Also 
check out the group process section of the Intentional Communities Resource 
Pages at http://www.infoteam.com/nonprofit/nica/resource.html

Rob Sandelin

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From:   cohousing-l [at] freedom.mtn.org on behalf of Ed Herstein
Sent:   Tuesday, June 02, 1998 8:12 PM
Subject:        Fun at business meetings

The good news at Sunward Cohousing is that construction is nearing
completion and many of our 40 households have already moved onto the
site. The bad news is that to reach this point we've been having two and
a half hour business meetings twice a month for three years! At this
point the meetings are usually fairly efficient, but they're viewed by
all as an unpleasant necessity. We often leave feeling less like a
community than when we went in.

I'm wondering if other communities have had a similar experience and how
they've coped with it. Ideally, business meetings would be positive
community-building experiences that would include some real joy along
with the hard work. I'd appreciate any ideas about how to make that
happen!

Ed Herstein
Sunward Cohousing of Ann Arbor MI (where we'll have our first on-site
round-robin dinner this Friday)