Organisation at future RIPE meetings

[Anne Lord <Anne.Lord@localhost]

Dear All,

Below is my "plan" for improving the organisation of future 
RIPE meetings, which I hope will benefit everybody.  Please 
read !  

Thanks and best wishes,

Anne

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		  Proposal to simplify minute 
                  taking at future RIPE meetings

                         May 27th 1993

		         Anne Lord

Four years ago the first RIPE meeting was held.  At that meeting there
were 14 participants and 9 agenda items.  The meeting lasted one day. 
Since that meeting the size of RIPE meetings has continued to increase
at every meeting.  At the most recent meeting held at the end of April
1993, there were 65 participants and 18 agenda items (and one agenda item
comprised 8 reports from different RIPE working groups).  The meetings 
currently span 3 days.

Whilst the rate of growth of the meetings has slowed down, the overall 
numbers still continue to increase.  Clearly the task of maintaining 
the quality and timliness of the minutes as well as paying attention
to the amount of paper generated has concomitantly become more 
difficult.  My suggestions for improving the minutes follow below.

1. Presentations 

The presentations scheduled on the agenda generate the most paper.  
In previous versions of minutes, the full text of a presentation
has been incorporated into the minutes. For this reason, all those persons
scheduled on the agenda to give a presentation will be asked to submit,
in electronic form, a SUMMARY of their presentation.  The material 
submitted will be used directly in the minutes. The only editing carried 
out will be grammar and spelling checks.  

The deadline for submission will be the first day of the RIPE meeting.
After which if nothing is received then there will be no substantive
text incorporated into the minutes.

   Benefits:   

   o There are three obvious benefits from this.  Firstly the 
     presenters themselves can decide what is important and necessary 
     to be recorded in the minutes. 

   o Following from this, it is likely that less paper will be used to 
     summarise the presentation than was used for the actual presentation.  

   o Finally, the minutes taker of the RIPE meeting can concentrate on 
     noting the salient points of the question and answer sessions which 
     follow the presentation.

There is now a presentations directory in the RIPE document store (see 
Quarterly Report Doc id: ripe-87 for details).   All those who would like
to make their presentations publically available are invited to send them
to meeting@localhost to be stored.  This can also be done prior to the
meeting.

2. Working Group Meetings

On the second day of the meeting, each working group chairperson will 
receive an envelope containing a number of OHP slides, mark up pens, 
a reminder sheet and a working group attendee sign up sheet.  The 
reminder sheet will remind the chairperson to :

  o ensure that there is someone taking the minutes at the meeting of 
    their working group 

  o ensure that the scribe submits the minutes before the deadline to 
    the wg chairperson for them to edit and subsequently to mail 
    electronically to meeting@localhost.  

There will be a deadline date for the submission of the minutes from 
the working group of 1 week after the meeting.  The deadline 
will be tight and binding - if no report is received, then there will 
be no substantial text in the minutes covering the events of the wg 
meeting.

  Benefits:

  o the minute taker will relieve the load on those working group 
    chairpersons who currently chair AND take the minutes, contributing
    towards a more focussed meeting.

  o the chairperson will have the editorial final say on the content of 
    the working group minutes as the text received will only be checked
    for grammatical and spelling correctness and otherwise not edited 
    in any way. 

Conclusion

These are my draft plans for improving the timliness, quality and overall
quantity of paper generated as "minutes" at future meetings.  The ideas
were drawn from analysing the most time consuming activities in compiling
the minutes and how support to the working group chairs could be improved.
On the former, a significant amount of time is spent analysing my notes 
for their technical accuracy.  Having the summaries beforehand and the 
working group minutes mailed to me will shorten and simplify one of the 
most time consuming activities and will benefit everybody.