Planning

⏱️ Timing: Select a time that works for you and the people you want to meet with. Some leads use https://www.when2meet.com/ to help find a common time. Please avoid selecting a time that conflicts with an existing program.

📅 Cadence: Choose an event cadence that you can keep up with. If planning to meet weekly or biweekly we recommend you plan events with low overhead and find ways to divvy responsibility among your group.

 🍽️ Platform: Check out the notes on Zoom vs Google Meet, or plan a chat with Madeline to discuss your group's needs and how they can best be supported.

 🎥 Recording: Recording an event can be a nice way to make materials available after the fact to those who could not attend the meeting and those who want to revisit key points.

The risk is that recording can change the tenure of a conversation and may mean that attendees feel less comfortable sharing or participating. Evaluate this potential risk against the goals of your group. 

Hosting

Hosting a recurring event or meeting will look different for each group. As you start to plan how you will host your events, be very clear on the goal of each meeting (eg. to learn, to connect, to brainstorm, etc.). With the goal in mind, plan techniques you could use to host your event. Here are some examples of ways you can support various goals as a host, but ultimately make this your own. Connect with Madeline during the leads' bi-weekly drop-in to chat through some more ideas.

📚 Goal: learning

• At the beginning of the event, let everyone know that at the end you'll ask everyone to share (on mic or chat) one thing they learned. Compile all the learnings in a Discord post.

• During the event, have a collaborative document and ask people to contribute notes throughout.

🤝 Goal: connecting

• Set the tone by playing music as people arrive.

• As people arrive, start a casual conversation (eg. where are you? How's the weather?)

• Warm people up with some low-pressure ice breakers (eg. silly poll).

• Have breakout rooms based on various themes and let people go to the room that suits what they want to talk about.

🧠 Goal: brainstorming

• Use a tool that allows sharing in various mediums (eg. words, pictures, charts)

• Be prepared to get the ball rolling by sharing some of your own ideas off the top

• Have a tool in place that allows for anonymous sharing.

Post-Event

⚱️ Event Artifacts: These can include slides, event recordings, or notes taken by an lead or attendee during the event that include any relevant links that were shared. We save these to our shared google drive and post them here, on the Resource Guide mini-site. You can then share a link to the mini-site on Discord in a post that highlights any key takeaways or learnings. *If a  recording was taken,  Brittawnya will upload it to our shared google drive and let you know when it's ready. It will be up to you to further share it.