Decide where to host meeting reports, Hub or Slack

As we make the Hub more robust and as we distinguish the Hub from Slack, I’m thinking our Meeting Reports should actually be posted to the Hub because Meeting Reports are things we want to keep for prosterity!

Some things that would need to change in order for this to happen

Update Meeting Notes Template to copy and paste well into the Hub which uses Markdown. We may need to add some tips about how to use Markdown (like adding Checklists if someone wants to!)

Update where consent is given. Is consent given in Slack, still? Or is it given on the Meeting Report in the Hub? I’m thinking Meeting Report in the Hub since you have to read the full Meeting Report in order to consent.

Update where the Meeting Report is posted and how it syncs between the Hub and Slack.

  • Meeting Report Category Option
    • Set user preferences for the category to Regular
    • Auto-post to the #_meeting-report Slack channel via chat integration
    • Secretaries copy and paste the Meeting Report they just created and drop it into the team-specific Slack channel. This would mean that on the Hub, meeting reports wouldn’t be in each team specific Hub category but perhaps that’s enough
  • Circle Specific Hub Category Option
    • Add #meeting-report tag, auto-post any topic with that tag to #_meeting-reports Slack channel, and auto-post any topic in the circle specific Hub category to the circle specific Slack channel
    • Figure out some way for the meeting reports being discoverable on Hub even if the circle-specific channel is muted

Help people adjust their notifications

  • If they will follow meeting reports on the Hub
    • Mute #_meeting-reports in Slack
  • If they will follow meeting reports on Slack
  • If they will follow meeting reports via Email
    • Regular notifications to see some meeting reports flow into the Summary emails or watch first post to read all meeting reports
    • Email when mentioned to read reports they attended
    • Will need to add a section like Not in Attendance so people also get notified of meetings they missed

But then again, maybe not! Meeting Reports are already stored long term in our Google Docs, and the consent to a meeting report process lives generally for only one week. We also don’t need to keep track of the consent votes so much because we always catch that at the next meeting. And, would meeting notes be too much for everyone else to follow?

What about accessibility, though? What’s the most accessible way to share information here? Should we design for a world in which people can be fully participatory in YPC without being on Slack and instead interacting only through email? There’s also discoverability. Meeting Reports are meant to be viewable by anyone, even if they’re not members of YPC, so the way to have that update is if it’s on the Hub, not if it’s in Slack (which is private only to YPC team members and partner delegates).

Questions, questions…

Next Steps

Ask people with accessibility experience for their input (they’d be the most impacted)!
Ask existing team members for their input on a Not in Attendance section of the Meeting Report

I’m continuing to really struggle with where meeting reports go - Slack or Hub. I’m leaning Slack.

Time sensitivity: Slack because meeting reports need to be consented to within the week. Posting in Slack means people are notified in a timely fashion whereas posting in Hub means it goes into someone’s email and lots of people deprioritize their email. :slightly_smiling_face:

Transparency: Hub is more transparent and in line with our confidentiality practices since notes default to public to everyone, anyway. However, are there times where we’ll want to keep meeting reports internal, too? And if so, where would those go?

Storage: Google Docs because there’s so much commenting, formatting, co-writing related to meeting agendas and notes. I’m wondering if putting meeting reports in the Hub would make it really difficult to search for things, like, if I searched for c-advocacy I may not want to see every meeting report associated with c-advocacy and instead was looking for more specific things like their partners and their documentation.

Accessibility: We commit to making it possible for everyone to access our collaboration platforms via email. If we go Slack, we’ll need to make sure people are specifically tagged in.

Argh!!

Okay. My final good enough proposal for now is that we do meeting reports via Slack with the following changes to policy.

  1. Add a “not in the attendance section” to the meeting report template so those who miss the meeting are still notified when the notes are posted, especially those who engage only via email. The benefit of this is also having accountability and data around when it might make sense for a person to transition out of a circle.

  2. Add a “tag people in the attendance section so they are notified when meeting reports are posted” to directions on our notes template.

I’m moving this proposal to done but will link to this topic from the documentation about how to take meeting notes so that we can re-evaluate when we revise the meeting notes policy!