This week’s discussion topic focused on meeting remotely and the most effective way to conduct a meeting. Our reading focused on management strategies that should be implemented and considered when structuring a meeting within a company or organization. Ironically this topic was prevalent within my past week here in London. In Tuesday morning’s class, we have a large social project ahead of us to complete this semester in which we gather in a team to organize a fundraising topic to implement social change on a certain topic we choose. This past week my two other team members and I finally chose to sit down together and discuss what exactly we planned on doing for the project. Looking back, I can see both positive and negative aspects that took place during this meeting and now after assessing this week’s reading, our team can implement these techniques into our future collaborations. When deciding upon a time to meet, it was not done efficiently. We continued to tell one another yes yes we will meet sometime this week and continued to brush it off without implementing an actual time and place. Rather, I finally put my foot down and called them one evening during the week and told them I would come over to their apartment to discuss the project. For our next meeting, it would be far more efficient to set a certain time and to choose a place, which will be more constructive for us to work and collaborate. An apartment creates a more relaxed environment with easy distractions whereas a coffee shop or library will create a more diligent atmosphere. With this stage in our lives, the meeting time is the most important aspect to consider when conducting a meeting. As each of us are traveling each weekend to different places and having different class schedules, finding the right time to meet with one another is key. As we experienced in class this week as well, we had a guest speaker Skype in to talk to us from Egypt. It was important to realize the time difference as she was hours ahead. We gave her great thanks for making her workday even longer and Skyping in to teach us at 9 p.m. her time. Scheduling is such an important aspect when coming together to work. As we finally sat down to work there was no one leader. We considered one another equals on the project and therefore we all were eager to participate and lend our own opinions. For the next meeting, it would be more efficient to assign each of us a certain aspect to focus on rather than spewing out random ideas and having no strong focus on who is doing what. The reading referred to the leader of a meeting as a facilitator. A facilitator is someone who can direct the conversation, keep the meeting on track and in a sense is a moderator for the entire gathering. Since the project is equal we cannot necessarily have one lead facilitator but in a situation like this, we can assign certain tasks for one another to complete the work efficiently. I could be in charge of keeping the meeting on track, Jamie could be in charge of researching the media related to the topic and so on. By mediating the tasks, we can have more quality research on each aspect of the topic. Overall, professor Robinson said the most important aspects of a meeting were to send an email prior to the gathering and both starting and finishing on time. I will incorporate both of these aspects for the next meeting and am sure to find a much more efficient time spent working.
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