WeeklyUpdates/Guidance

The Monday meeting is a key project-wide communications mechanism. For it to do its job well, it is important that the meeting be compelling viewing. This page guides people wanting to produce a compelling and useful Monday meeting update.

The Guidance

• Don't feel you have to say anything. We all promise to still believe your team is working hard. Speak when what you want to say fits the criteria below. Your group should plan to say something on average at most every two weeks.
• The wiki page is important. Lots of people read it who can't make the meeting. Put your stuff into it by the deadline. Add the required info. Make it self-explanatory. Provide links and info which enhance and support what you say.
• Plan what you are going to say. Even rehearse it once. This stops you rambling. Be compelling and interesting. Don't just read the wiki page.
• Balance your time correctly. Focus on the needs of the audience. Use the following proportions as a guide:
  • Past Accomplishments: 10%
  • Problems Encountered You Can Learn From: 20%
  • Interesting Upcoming Events: 20%
  • We Need Help With, and Here's How You Can: 50%
• Get ready in good time. Line up (if you are in Mountain View) or unmute yourself before you are called. (The wiki gives the order.) Keep the pace up.
• Be appropriately interactive. Don't take verbal questions during the meeting, but be sure to address questions which people have posed beforehand on the wiki or in IRC.

Meeting Goals

The Monday meeting has 3 primary goals:

1. Showcase the breadth of what happens in the project
2. Focus community attention on specific things which need feedback or help
3. Answer questions raised by the community

Secondarily, we also hope to:

1. Increase community cohesion and cross-project awareness
2. Ensuring openness and transparency
3. Hand out whuffie

Meeting 2.0 Beta

Proposed Changes to the Monday Meeting

We'd like to start implementing these changes at next week's meeting (January 11). Please read them. Any feedback on these proposals can be sent to jono@mozilla.com.

The proposed changes can be summed up as "Fewer people speaking each week, but speaking about higher value topics and giving more context."

The details are:

1. There is no need to come up to the front and speak for routine updates. These routine updates should still be listed on the wiki, but there is no need to come up and read them aloud.
2. The moderator will not call you up to speak unless you have specifically requested a speaking slot. To request a speaking slot, simply edit your section of the wiki page to say "We have an item to present" or something similar. (Note that this means you'll need to add your update to the wiki before the meeting starts in order to get called on... hint, hint!)
3. Don't feel like you have to present every time. It should be normal for a team to give a spoken presentation only once every 2-3 weeks.
4. Everyone should make a habit of reading the wiki, and speakers should assume that the audience is reading it. I.e. don't give an update just to say "Read the wiki".
5. Because fewer people will be speaking, we should have more time to go into a little more depth and present a little more context, without making the meeting run any longer than 20-25 minutes, about the length that it does now. Think of your spoken update as a micro-presentation. If you're presenting about a project that some people may not be familiar with, you can briefly summarize what your project is about and why it's important. This should make the meeting easier to follow especially for people who are tuning in for the first time.
6. The contents of a presentation should focus on what is highest value to the people who are taking time out of their day to attend. It's fine to mention your team's recent accomplishments, but in general, information about what's happening now is higher-value than information about things that finished last week. The highest-value information to present might include:
   1. Information that gives context to the decisions that people make in their work, especially information that they might not know otherwise. For instance: The results of research about the habits, opinions, or demographics of our users might be in this category.
   2. Calls to action: For example, a product nearing release that your team needs help stress-testing, or a marketing/PR initiative that you are looking to get people to participate in.
7. We should have time for a handful of lightning talks (2-3 minutes each) each week, so think about whether your presentation would benefit from showing a couple of slides or a very short demo; please let the moderators know about it ahead of time so that we can prepare the A/V equipment.