Committee chairs | Managing volunteers | Treasurers | Newsletter editors | Program and education chairs | Home
|
|
|
Committee chairs | Managing volunteers | Treasurers | Newsletter editors | Program and education chairs | Home |
Written by Saul Carliner and reprinted with permission from the Society for Technical Communication, Arlington, VA, U.S.A.
In this Article |
Consider the typical person attending an educational meeting of a community or professional group. Most are scheduled in the early evening when members of the audience....
Your meeting needs to wake them up!
Merely choosing an interesting topic and speaker is insufficient, the format of the meeting also plays a significant role in determining how participants respond to a meeting.
Following are suggestions of ideal formats for meetings and formats to avoid.
| Suggested Meeting Format | Description |
| Roundtables (one organization I know calls these Progressions, another calls them Cracker Barrel) | A series of round tables, in which a room is filled with several roundtables. Each has a knowledgeable facilitator who is prepared to discuss a topic. The facilitator presents a brief summary of a subject in 5 to 10 minutes and guides an open discussion for the next 10 to 15 minutes. Then, participants move to another table to learn about another subject. |
| Panels | Using the "Donahue" style, in which panelists have
no more than 5 minutes (combined) of prepared comments and the panel primarily involves an
interaction between audiences. Panelists should be chosen for the divergence of their
views (the more the panelists differ from one another, the more lively the discussion). The ensuing debate raises many issues; it rarely provides answers. That’s OK, participants can think about the issues and arrive at their own conclusions later. One of the challenges in planning panels is that the speakers will want to speak longer than their allotted time and the facilitator must cut them off. The longer panelists speak, the more likely the audience will fall asleep. |
| Workshops | Skill-building sessions consisting of a brief lecture (no more than 20 minutes) and an exercise (at least 40 minutes or 2/3 of the time). |
Avoid these formats for meetings. They generally cause participants to physically or mentally drift away:
| Format to Avoid | Description |
| Lectures. | Despite their best efforts, participants are usually distracted in lectures because they are not actively involved. This limits the effectiveness of lectures. |
| Traditional panels | in which each panelist speaks for 5 to 15 minutes, then take questions from the audience. Because the prepared remarks are lecture style and usually exceed five minutes combined (usually, each panelist has five minutes to speak), the effect is the same as a lecture. Tired and full, participants are easily distracted and do not pay attention. The ensuing question and answer period lacks any sparks. |
Committee chairs | Managing volunteers | Treasurers | Newsletter editors | Program and education chairs | Home
(c) Copyright. Saul Carliner. 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002. All rights reserved.