Welcome to September! With the hectic pace of the first month more or less behind you, you can start getting into a routine and settling down. And while the most exciting part of all of this is the games you'll get to play with the people you've met, there still has to be some kind of organization beyond the RPG game. The meetings are the most common face-to-face contact you can have with the members, and it's where a lot of the group organization happens, so this month, we're going to discuss how to make the most of your member meetings.

I'm going to make a couple of assumptions here. First, I'm going to assume that your group wants to do more than just sit around and play games. Like I said in my first column, I don't think it takes all that much effort to just sit down and play games, so I'm assuming you want to continue to grow the gaming community and make the hobby more prominent in the eyes of non-gamers. Second, I assume that you're going to meet on a fairly regular basis--at least every other week.

The meetings are the most important place you have to organize events and move ideas forward. The people who show up to the meetings are the ones who are dedicated enough to make the time commitment, so they're also likely to be your volunteer base. There may be people willing to help out that can't make the meetings, but they're not as likely to be able to pitch in unless they've been active with the group before, so the meetings are your best way of talking to people who may care enough to help out.

There are three goals you have at each meeting:

1. Communicate news
2. Organize for upcoming events
3. Have fun

Ideally, these three points will blend into one seamless meeting. Realistically, you need to at least start with these points being separate, or else you can quickly lose the attention of your members and ruin the flow of information. So let's discuss how you can hold everything together long enough to have an effective meeting.

How to Hold A Meeting

There are as many different ways of holding a meeting as there are groups that meet, but I encourage you to use a fairly formal structure in order to hold yours. You may not need the structure right away, but if you stick to a structure, then people will be more likely to respect it when you might need it, such as during a contentious meeting or an election with lots of candidates.

Those of you who have been in student government or other big organizations might want to go to Robert's Rules of Order, the typical guidelines for meetings. Unless you plan on competing in parlimentary procedural competitions (Yes, they exist,) relying on the full structure of Robert's Rules will likely be too much of a hassle. But even if you don't use them all, most meetings will at least follow the basic structure outlined, and it's the go-to source for procedure when problems arise, so it's good to have a copy handy--either buy one used from a bookstore or go online and get them.

What should a meeting involve? As a new group, meetings might be short and informal, but you need to use this time to get people used to some of their responsibilities. For speakers, they need to learn to be somewhat organized by making sure they have their points written down and they speak clearly, and the listeners need to learn to pay attention and be polite to the speaker. You may think this is something you can just assume with your club members, but my experience is that RPG groups tend to foster an informal atmosphere, and while that's great for when you play games, it's much easier on everyone if you treat the first part of the meeting as business, and then get informal during the games. Because of this, setting a strong procedure in place for the first few meetings will help set the tone and pace for the rest of the year.

Who runs the meeting? In a smaller group, anyone can, really. Usually, it's the president or the highest-ranking officer. In a group that follows Robert's Rules more, it will likely be the vice-president or similar position. So long as it's established who the leader of the meeting is, you'll be in good shape. The important item to remember is that the person in charge is the one who calls the shots during the meeting, so that person should be fairly aware of the way a meeting should be run.

What has to happen? Generally, the meeting needs to work on the three points in order, but you'll often find that the first two tend to mix into each other. The announcements usually become springboards for larger discussion, so when you budget time for the announcements, plan for questions and answers as well; otherwise, you'll end up having to charge through ten announcements at once, and everyone will get bored sitting there and waiting for a chance to interact or ask you questions.

In addition to the announcements, there should be required reports from all of the standing committees. Even if the committee hasn't met yet, having them say "No report" is important to reminding people that these committees exist and that they should volunteer to help with them. It also gives the committee heads an official place to make announcements, which is important if they don't meet often and need to remind others to show up, or even just to ask for help with a project they're working on. It can help a lot if you take a tip from business culture and make an agenda for the members to view beforehand so they can see exactly what is going to be discussed when. This doesn't need to be printed up--it could easily be emailed to the group via the list a day or two before the meeting--but it should be displayed somehow at the meeting so walk-ins can follow along. If there's a whiteboard or overhead projector available where you meet, this could easily serve to inform people of what the meeting will have. In addition, it's important to make sure there's a record of the meeting for people who missed it or for future review; the secretary should be taking brief notes as to what happened and when.

General Problems

One problem that many groups have is one that I hope the above advice will help solve: disorderly meetings. This is pretty common, since everyone wants to have fun and everyone tends to be friends. However, random one-liners, inattentive members and disorganized officers can turn a five-minute meeting into a 15- or 20-minute one. The above steps are meant to help prevent this; the business part of the meeting might be the boring part, but it's also the important part, and if you can keep the meeting moving and keep everyone's attention, you can get a lot done quickly and move on to the games.

Try and make sure ahead of time that the officers or committee heads have something to say about their committee. If you have someone reporting that nothing happens in their committee for two months people will get the impression that the committee is unimportant. If you know that a committee won't be reporting for a while, you can leave them off of the agenda and make sure they get a chance to report closer to their first meeting. Otherwise, a committee that doesn't meet very often (say, once a month) can simply remind everyone of when the next meeting is and what will be discussed there.

Don't forget your leadership skills at the meeting, especially Setting The Example. People expect you to be on your best behavior when you're at the new member meetings, but if you can set a good example for the others at the regular meetings by coming prepared and being respectful, the other members will pick up on that and probably do the same. If everyone decides to wear ratty t-shirts, slouch in their chair as they're giving a report, and says "um" or "like" every third word, you'll end up with an unfocused meeting where no one is really paying attention.

Most problems can be fixed with good planning, but unfortunately, the other problems that show up tend to be more deliberate and antagonistic. These are the issues that appear because one person is angry or hurt by another person, and they want to drag the grudge into a public venue. One such example is when one person tries to use the meeting as a way to embarrass or garner hostility against another person. This may happen by surprise, such as by a snide comment in a Q&A session, but it can also happen if the person gets on the agenda with a vague or important-sounding topic, then pulls a bait-and-switch by airing concerns that they shouldn't in public. These are usually either passive-aggressive attempts to lash out at someone, or deliberate antisocial behavior. In either case, the person in charge of the meeting needs to shut down the discussion clearly and firmly: tell people that if they have concerns about a person's behavior as it relates to the club, then they need to speak to you in private, but a public meeting with no warning for any other party is inappropriate. You should also make sure to tell the person instigating the problem, in person and in private, that such activity will not be tolerated again. Don't wait to have this conversation; you need to stop antisocial behavior before it gets a chance to start.

The other big problem with meetings may not even be noticed by you until it's too late: members feeling marginalized. Sometimes, leaders of a group will use control over the agenda to prevent certain topics or ideas from reaching the ears of the group. Don't forget that the meeting is meant to be a two-way street, and that the club members should be able to use it as a way to communicate amongst themselves as well. If you really feel threatened by a particular idea or suggestion, bring it up privately at first. If the suggestion is one you don't like but it isn't clearly vindictive, then put it on the agenda and let people talk about it. If you've done your job as a leader, you shouldn't have anything to fear from alternative points of view. If the group members like the other idea better, do your best to make it work; at the very least, you can appoint the idea person as the one in charge of the project. If you were against it, and everyone else is for it, try to figure out what the disconnect is and how that might be fixed.

Teaching Old Dogs New Parliamentary Procedures

For rebuilding groups, changes to the meeting structure may encounter additional resistance from older members used to more informal meetings. Normally, this isn't too much of a problem; if they don't like it, they can show up after the discussion part of the meeting and just play games. However, make sure they know that if there will be a vote, their voice won't count if they don't show. Making sure the meeting ends at a certain time and follows the schedule also helps, since then they know they only need to sit still for a certain length of time before playing games.

Those cases are pretty easily handled. The harder cases are when older members, upset at the group, try to use the procedure to change the club to how it was before. If this is clearly antagonistic towards certain people in particular, then it should be handled as you would handle a grudge incident. Be firm on this; if someone wants to introduce sweeping changes to the Constitution or articles of impeachment against the president or whatever antagonistic act they think up, they should notify the person in charge of the meeting ahead of time. If you need to, table the motion for discussion until the next meeting, then figure out what's going on. If they refuse to talk to you and work out why they did something like this, you have bigger issues than just meeting problems--call the student organization office and get a mediator in quickly to work out what the problem is.

The key items to remember about running meetings are interaction, focus, and trust. The group members need to be able to get the informaton they need, so there needs to be some interaction on the part of the speaker: a Q&A period, slides, a short demonstration, or whatever. The speaker needs to make sure the group is focused on what he or she has to say so the information can get across. And both sides need to trust each other to respect the rules and give a good faith effort to communicate. If these principles can be followed, you'll find that your meetings get more streamlined, your work at the meetings gets done faster, and everyone has more time to play games.

September Checklist

--Make sure everyone knows who is in charge of the meetings. Keep that person firmly in control.

--One week before the first meeting you try a new procedure, make sure you notify everyone, preferably at the meeting before the change and via email.

--A few days before the meeting, have the secretary send out an agenda over the listserv. Make some hard copies for people to take at the meeting itself. Also make sure your committee heads understand that they will be expected to give a report, and if they have anything of importance to say, they should try to prepare it ahead of time.

--At the meeting, have the person in charge stick to the agenda. Try to keep the meeting on task and on time; if you can do this reliably, people will

--The day after, talk to your officers and members quickly to get a sense of what worked and what didn't.

October's column will address dealing with odd gamers. Gamers have lots of stories about the crazy people that tend to join our groups, and if they don't work out, they can be forced to leave. But what do you do if that person has paid for a membership? At what point does "odd" become too much? We'll discuss how to deal with such gamers in a positive manner next month. If you have ideas for future columns, please PM me (my handle is Kid Twist), or email me at uberfunk at hotmail dot com.

See you next month!

Alec "Kid Twist" Fleschner