[ST] [SA] Debrief Meeting Agenda

[The Marvelous MERV]

At Monday, 29-01-07 03:10 PM, Phi wrote:
>David D'Antonio wrote:
>
> > At this year's Gripe, it was made
> > very clear that this wasn't the place for staff to air their
> > concerns; that would occur at the debrief.
>
>What I was trying to say at the beginning of the Gripe Session was that
>staff who were going to be around that evening should please find Ben or
>Tem or Joel or their div head at the *Dead Dog* and gripe personally.
>And then I proceeded to take questions from staffers as well as the
>general public.  Did I really communicate that poorly?  I know I
>misspoke once, but I thought I corrected myself quickly.

Phi:  I think this idea is flawed.  Trust me, trust yourself, Dead Dog is 
NOT the place to bring gripes.  I saw Ben there for an hour or so, Rick 
showed up after load-out, I think I saw Tem for about 10-15 minutes, and I 
don't know who the rest of the assistant conchairs were.  I think they all 
went to Joelll's pajama party with all the other cool people instead of the 
Dead Dog.  I could be mistaken; it was late, and I may not be remembering 
the evening perfectly.  But I don't think upper echelon folks were there to 
take constructive conversation, I don't think they'd be up to it or could 
remember it in hour 52 of the convention if they were.  Furthermore, 
griping to Joelll does little good; gripes are supposed to help the next 
year's conchair figure out how to do the next year better.

The Dead Dog also doesn't have the degree of input a debrief would have.  I 
have no comment on the rest of this paragraph; I didn't make it to gripe.

>I certainly agree that we need a way for staff to gripe.  I don't think
>we need scores of people sitting around watching them do it.

Scores of standard convention members?  No, not at all.  We should keep our 
dirty laundry in house, and show a nice, tidy, united front to the "public."

>And while we're on the topic of miscommunication, I thought Chris
>Amshey's description of a debrief was quite clear and level-headed.  Of
>course we want staff to be able to air their concerns.  If the debrief
>consisted only of people presenting reports there would be no value to
>doing it in person instead of by email.  What we do not have time for is
>figuring out *at the debrief* how to fix those concerns.  We have a
>whole year to do that.  It's not reasonable to expect the convention
>committee to do their entire job in only four hours.
>
>                                         -/phi

Final solutions development does not belong at the debrief.  I believe that 
brainstorming and idea gathering SHOULD happen at the debrief.  We should 
not spend hours over minutae; I think we should allow folks to speak their 
minds on a particular topic that come up at the debrief.

In Service,

Merv

Tom Murphy
The Marvelous MERV
			
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