New guidelines for Danish IRC meetings

The Danish Team has seen a substantial rise in new active participants in 2008, which has resulted positively in three things:

For one we have more activities now which require debate or decisions made by our monthly IRC meeting. Two, we have expanded our monthly meeting to two monthly meetings, and three, there are a lot more attending the meeting than before.

With the increase in both agenda items and members that want to discuss them, it was necessary to make come up with some guidelines and make the meetings more structured.

So, at the todays IRC meeting, the first one in the new year, we decided on some guidelines which previously had been proposed to our main mailing list. If you are Danish, or can read Danish, you can take a look at the guidelines here.

If not, here’s a summary:

(Preliminary note: The Danish team decides most thing on our IRC meetings, sometimes after a discussion on our mailinglist – sometimes not.)

1. All agenda items which needs a decision MUST be sent to the mailinglist at least one week before the meeting. If not, the items are not valid.

2. Items which do not need a decision can be added the agenda at any time, marking it with a  [debate] tag. A limited amount of time is set on the debate items.

3. Agenda items which are for decisions must be dealt with before debate items

4. The agenda is checked the day before the meeting. If there isn’t any items on the agenda by then, the meeting is called of.

5. The meeting starts EXACTLY on time, so don’t be late.

6. Only the meeting-moderator is speaking. If anyone wants to say something, they do that by marking with a ! (exlamation mark). You are then given the word when your turn is up.

7. At referendums the questions is answered with +1 for yes, 0 for blank vote and -1 for no. If the questions are an yes/no question of course.

8. After the meeting, the meeting-moderator set up a new agenda on the wiki, and the minute taker posts the resumé on the wiki and mailinglist.

There are additional things in our guidelines, but they are intended at reminding us what needs to be done before and after each meeting, and who does it. This way new people can get a quick overview on how we things around here, and nobody are ever in doubt about anything surrounding the meetings.

These guidelines are just that: Guidelines. If a situation arises where we need another approach, or we want the meeting to be less formal, we can just decide that.

I’m curious: Does YOUR LoCo team has a similar structural IRC meetings? Or how does it work in your team?