Cohousing-L Mailing List: Various Meeting Formats

[Gretchen Westlight (gren]

Greetings -

This is my first post to this list (and yes, I searched the archive
first).  I am a member of Cascadia Commons Cohousing in Portland, Oregon. 

During one of our recent setbacks, a number of members asked repeatedly
for "process time."  Since we as a group had never defined what this
meant, I noticed that no one was very satisfied with the outcome when we
said that's what we were doing.  I'm a fan of using different meeting
formats, but realized that we have not been doing much outside of large
group discussions and reports during the eternity of our development
process.  As a result, many of our members are not well-versed in the
variety of formats available.

I decided to make a list with a brief description of all (ha!) the meeting
formats that might come in handy.  Thus, when someone asks for "process
time" again, I can suggest a "listening meeting" (aka "sharing meeting")
or have them select what feels right to them. 

So I am writing to you today to ask for your help in completing my list.
If you have a favorite meeting format that isn't listed below, please let
me know about it!  Or if there are resources for this kind of thing
(websites, books, people, etc.), I would be delighted to know where else
to go for information.

I do want to make a distinction that I am *not* looking for tools for
facilitators when we are stuck or uninspired or conflicted -- we do have
some books with handy information on those particular tricks of the trade.
(I trust you all have attended enough meetings to know some of them, too.
;-)  This is really about choosing a format for all or part of a meeting. 

Here is my list of formats so far (some of them may seem over-obvious, but
I figured it was better to be thorough and consistent): 

        Brainstorming
        Council Process
        Decision-Making (Regular Business Format)
        Extended Check-In
        Listening Meeting (aka Sharing Meeting)
        Open Space
        Report
        Make up Your Own!

And here is the information I'm collecting about each of them:

        Purpose         why would we do this
        Qualities       what distinguishes it, what characteristics evoked
        Form            how do we do it (facilitators, other roles, etc.)
        Guidelines      confidentiality, info re decisions + future biz &c

I do hope to keep the handout brief, mainly to be used as a reminder.

Please reply to me directly, and I will post again with either a summary
or the completed form if folks would be interested.  Thanks so much for
any help.

- Gretchen

--
gren [at] agora.rdrop.com                       http://www.ogi.edu/~gren/