Ecologic Meeting Format

From Ecologic

For 2008, we're trying out a new meeting format. Instead of the president leading every meeting, we're switching to a new approach where someone different volunteers each week to lead.

Leaders should do their best to follow the below time schedule and diplomatically keep the group on-task and on-time. The group leader is responsible for coming up with an icebreaker question, and also a 15 minute lesson/activity/guest speaker/whatever you think would be cool.

• Icebreaker (5 mins): Leader asks people to go around in a circle and say their name and an icebreaker question. This could be something basic like “what's your major?” or something random and funny, but we usually try to keep it within some eco theme.

• Updates (5 mins): Go around the room and anyone who has some news to announce to the club can briefly make announcements. These announcements could be new progress made on EcoLogic projects/events, or new relevant news from RPI, the community or the world.

• Lesson/Activity (15 mins): Leader prepares some sort of short educational activity. This could mean bringing in an insightful guest speaker, personally teaching the club something you are passionate about, organizing some sort of interactive fun lesson, or just bring a link to a cool and relevant youtube video.

• Breakout (25 mins): Club breaks up into several task forces to work on club projects and priorities. These groups could include: events, energy, waste, etc. New groups can be formed as needed. If the task forces need more than the allotted 25 minutes, they can pick a mutually agreeable meeting time later in the week (or right after the end of the hour meeting).

• Recap (10 mins): Task forces come back together. A member from each task force briefly tells the club what they decided, what they are doing, and what help they need. Any upcoming EcoLogic or related events are announced by whoever knows about them. A group leader for the next week is picked. Hopefully people will volunteer, but people who regularly attend meetings and have never lead will be lightly peer pressured.

It's important that meetings end after 1 hour so that people can plan their evenings and homework schedules. However, if subgroups or project task forces want to continue to meet after the official end of the meeting, that's great.