Community Council/Meeting Guidelines

Introduction

This wiki page summarizes the meeting guidelines for the regular Community Council meetings. More precisely, it describes how to prepare the agenda, document the working status of individual action items, and provide minutes to the OpenOffice.org community. These guidelines and the template have been accepted in the Council Meeting 2010-03-18. The development and - still - open points are available at Meeting Guidelines Development.

Related pages:

• Community Council Agenda and Work Status
• Community Council Minutes
  

Procedure

During the Meeting

1. A wiki page (Agenda and Work Status) serves both as the agenda for the next Community Council meeting and the current working status of "Accepted" action items. Besides that, the wiki page is intended to collect new topics which might be relevant for the Community Council. These topics might be raised by any community member – like today - with the status being set to "New".
   
2. A few days before a regular Community Council meeting …
   1. The Community Council Coordinator (or anybody who thinks it might be high time) asks the Community Council members on [council-discuss] to update the status of the action items and status.
   2. Each Community Council member updates his/her action items and outlines intermediate or final results. The description should match the complexity of the action item and should be – hopefully – understandable without any further explanation. The "Status" won't be changed by the action item owner - this has to be done in the meeting with the other Community Council members.
      
3. During the Community Council Meeting …
   1. One Community Council member agrees to work on the minutes of the meeting. The already introduced wiki page serves as a basis for that.
   2. The Community Council members accept or reject newly proposed topics. If not yet done (e.g. via mail), a responsible person is selected, the next few steps are quickly outlined and a due date is chosen. The "Status" of accepted topics is set to "Accepted". The rejected ones will be marked "Rejected" - and a short reason is provided.
      
4. The Community Council now continues with “Current Topics”:
   1. For each topic, the action item owners present results (intermediate or final).
   2. If there are open questions concerning this topic, then there might be a short discussion. If the topic requires some more attention, then the discussion should be continued off-line (e.g. after the Community Council meeting).
      
   3. If it is agreed that a topic has been finished, then the keeper of the minutes will change the status from "Accepted" to “Finalized”.
5. Directly / shortly after the Community Council Meeting …
   1. The keeper of the minutes will copy the entire agenda / working status page (worked on) to the one that lists the meeting minutes – like today (Minutes). The IRC log is added there, too.
      
   2. The keeper of the minutes will clean up the current wiki page and remove “Finalized” and "Rejected" action items. Thus - directly after a meeting - the wiki page represents a "clean" agenda of open action items.
      
   3. The keeper of the minutes informs the public about the meeting: a short mail to the council-discuss mailing list and to the responsible for the OpenOffice.org newsletter (Meeting Announcement Mail).

Comments:

• Describing action items: If the description is missing any important information, the keeper of the minutes adds it during/after the meeting.
  
• Status indication: The status of an action item is one of the following - New, Accepted, Rejected or Finalized.
  
• The agenda / work status table is sortable (see below).

Before the Meeting

Adding "New" action items:

• If possible, a rather formal description of the request stated by any Community Member.
• Questions like “What?”, “Why?”, or “Urgency?” should already been answered and an appropriate action item ID should be chosen (format: YYYY-MM-DD#N, e.g. 2010-02-03#2). The action item will be added at the bottom of the action items table.
• Since only few community members will consider to post this information directly, the Community Council members serve as proxies to add this information and to inform the other members in advance.
  

Templates

Agenda and Work Status

The following example outlines the wiki page structure for the Agenda and Work Status page.

• Upcoming Meeting: date and location
• Agenda and Work Status: The section current topics lists all current action items with the following information... Here is an example.
  

ID	Topic	Status	Responsible	Last Update	Details
2010-02-04#1	Proposal for both a new Community Council meeting minutes template and general improvements	Accepted	Christoph	2010-03-02	In the face-to-face meeting it has been decided to improve the meeting minutes template and other things. The current issues have been outlined and a proposal has been worked out and is available here (link). Next steps: The proposal will be presented to the Community Council that may accept it. If the procedure and the template are accepted, a more detailed documentation will be worked out. A final decision for becoming official will be requested by the Community Council.
...	...	...	...	...	...

Minutes Announcement Mail

The following proposal can be used to announce the meeting meetings to the public.

Recipients

discuss@council.openoffice.org, dev@marketing.openoffice.org

Subject

Community Council Meeting: Minutes <date, e.g. 2010-04-01>

Body

Hi everyone, 

the regular Community Meeting did take place. Here is some more information...
  

The meeting minutes:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council/Minutes#<date> 

The meeting log:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council_Log_<date> 

The agenda for the next meeting:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council/Agenda#Agenda_and_Work_Status 


Bye, 
<name>