Chair responsibilities and guidelines

The chair of the Carpentries Club board is primarily responsible for organizing and facilitating the bi-weekly board meetings. Responsibilities include:

• Ensuring that the meeting room (usually the UFII conference room) is available and reserved.
• Managing videoconferencing technology for the meeting.
• Preparing the meeting agenda.
• Announcing the meeting date, time, location, and agenda.
• Managing the board meeting.

More detailed information for each of these items follows.

Meeting room reservations

Meetings are usually held in the UFII conference room. To reserve the room, contact Flora Marynak ([email protected]). She can set up a recurring reservation for an entire semester. Our current reservation is for all Tuesday evenings, from 3:30pm to 5pm, booked through to the end of the calendar year in December 2019.

Videoconferencing

Unfortunately, the UFII conference room does not currently have a camera or microphones for videoconferencing, but it does have a nice wall-mounted TV. Thus, you will need to provide a computer, camera, mic, and speakers for videoconferencing.

UFII/UFBI has at least one USB web cam available. It seems to move around, but is usually stored in the cabinet at the front of the lecture/classroom.

You have multiple options for videoconferencing technology (e.g., Skype, Google Hangouts, Adobe Connect), but I recommend Zoom, which is available through UF and which works well on all major operating systems (Linux, Windows, MacOS). Zoom allows you to create a scheduled meeting, which will generate a URL you can distribute to potential participants.

Preparing the meeting agenda

Approximately 1 week before the next meeting, prepare a draft agenda and send an email to all board members asking for additional agenda items or other agenda changes. A handy way to do this is by opening an issue in the Coordination repository (i.e., this repository) (see for example #76 or #78).

As a general rule, the first agenda item for each meeting should be to approve (or not) the minutes from the previous meeting.

Announcing the meeting

Approximately 2-4 days before the next meeting, send an email to the "informatics teaching" list announcing the meeting date, time, location, and agenda, as in the following example (feel free to copy and paste).

Hello,

The next UF Carpentries Club board meeting will be on Tuesday, October 23,
at 3:45 PM in the UFII conference room.  Anyone who is interested is welcome
to attend.  If you would like to join remotely, we will be using Zoom:
[ZOOM_URL]


Agenda:

* Agenda item 1
* Agenda item 2
* Agenda item 3


Meeting minutes will be posted at https://www.uf-carpentry.org/minutes/
 
Thanks,
[NAME]

Managing the board meeting

At the beginning, check if there are any new attendees, and if so, allow some time for introductions.

An important overall goal for running a board meeting is to keep the meeting on time. Try to ensure that the meeting takes no more than one hour. Here are three suggestions to help you meet this goal:

• Prioritize the agenda to make sure the most important items are covered first. Less critical items at the end of the agenda can be tabled until the next meeting, if needed.
• Before the meeting, think about how much time you'd like to allocate to each agenda item and try to follow that schedule.
• Make sure the meeting actually follows the agenda. If you notice discussion starting to veer too far from the current agenda item, tactfully steer it back on course.