Protocol Writers Meeting (part2)

Business only Meeting April 06 2019

In attendance were: Andrea, Barbara, Erica, Jim, Max, Ellen, Sarah D.

Minute takers: Andrea and Sarah D.

Results of our brain-stroming session:

Special characteristics of the group:

• • Writing in English in Germany 
  • Dynamic group of individuals that all have their own agenda

Goals:

• Critiques
• Prompts
• Public Readings
• Writing Workshops
• Discuss ideas
• discuss writing
• Writing
• Support each other
• Meet other writers
• This is my happy place – stay that way
• The group has to be greater than the individual
• Continue to grow
  • as writers
  • as a group

Pros (This has worked well):

• • Creating an international, inter-cultural, unique space
  • We have an impact on the community that we built from the bottom
  • dynamic, capable of growth, not stagnant
  • (the group helped/helps us to) improve our writing
  • Critiques for short texts has worked very well (poems, short stories)

Public readings

• • share our work with the public
  • Also good for the public
  • promotion of the Enlgish language
  • We (as a group) share the stage
  • Mc Jadi
  • Mc Micheal Hilton

Feedback

• • by the group
  • by the public

Prompts

Writing Workshops

• • About 1 Workshop a year
  • Staycation (Writing retreat April 2019) is a great idea
  • Structured meetings (we want them and most of the time that works)

Motivation

• • it makes me write
  • it give me motivation
  • not judgemental
  • not mean-spirited
  • no pressure

Social aspect: Tight knit group

• • We’re open to each other
  • Allows people to get in slowly / find out how you fit in
  • We laugh together
  • confidence
  • work hard together

Tasks that have been done well

• • Cindy has managed the treasury well
  • Picking up the key worked well

Cons (This didn’t work so well yet):

Public readings:

• • Amplification was missing
  • Problems with Mic

Critiques:

• • Not much room to discuss longer texts
  • Trade-off: Between readings and none-reading related pieces

 Crazy E-Mail-thread

 (Current) Management structure is chaotic

 Differences in commitment level

• • Those who don’t come that often don’t take on jobs

 Non-commitmemnt

• • of some members
  • people only egoistically coming only to get their critique and then leave early
  • late arrivals (→ time issue has been discussed in previous meeting) 

 Individuals feeling too much pressure on them

• • to attend regularly
  • to take on responsibilities
  • people feeling their needs aren’t met by the group
  • Difficult for newbies to join
  • The technical things / business stuff is tedious
  • It (coming to the group) shouldn’t feel like a chore

Leadership

• •  to much work on the president
  • drained by the group
  • We’ve never written up our rules (→ We should do that in the future)
  • The group is hard to lead (herding cats)
  • Should there be a financial reward? (Symbolic, no fees for the management team?)

 Other Ideas:

• •  Buy one movable mic for WiS
  • Delegate if you can’t make it

Seeing that some of the major issues with the group is the difference in commitment level aka unequal distribution of tasks, we moved on to collect and categorize the tasks, so that we can see how they could be distributed in a better way.

The main idea we went with there was to have groups with certain responsibilities, including a leadership group. We also tried to draw away as many tasks as possible from the leadership group.

We hope this will:

• • help to redistribute tasks in a way that works better for everyone
  • take away pressure from the president, therefore making it easier to lead the group
  • work more organically for a group of strong individuals, as the cats will partly herd themselves

Next steps:

About the group / leadership

• • Is there anything you’d like to add to the current ideas?
  • Please check the list of tasks
  • Are any tasks missing?
  • Which tasks are you already taking on?
  • Which additional tasks would you feel comfortable with?

Please especially have a look at the leadership tasks. Maybe you do not want to lead the whole group, but are comfortable with taking on one of the leadership tasks?

Where do you need help?

Andrea will chair the next meeting. We’ll try to formulate a more elaborate idea on the future leadership of the group at that meeting. Your feedback on the tasks will help us with that.