Committee reports and meeting length

[R.W.]

I am preparing the agenda for my church's upcoming Annual Congregational Meeting.  Our bylaws state that the meeting's purpose includes:
 

Quote

receiving the annual reports from the Council, Ministries (standing committees), and other groups in the Congregation;

We are supposed to have an Annual Report document (web and hopefully print) with highlights from the year.  I would like each committee to present at the meeting.  Some leaders are pushing back, claiming if they have submitted to the annual report, there is no need to make a presentation.  or just to say "You have my report in the Annual Report document, if you have questions let me know."  what IS the correct procedure to follow?

Using the RR agenda format, and notes from last year's chairperson, and plugging in all the elements, I'm already at 3.5 hours (including a 15 minute break) and some time estimates are still to be calculated.  If I allot each committee 5 minutes, that's over an hour.  [I've been asked to shorten this to 2-3 minutes.]  To elect 22 positions, I've allotted 30 minutes; for the financials I've allotted 30 minutes which was last year's estimate.  And I wanted to open the floor for general Q&A, motions from the floor, and votes of thanks -- no time estimate yet.

For comparison:  in 2020 and 2021, there were no committee reports presented at all -- or at least they were not mentioned in the minutes.  (But the Excuse for Everything sent some things sideways.)  I acknowledge that some committees were less active than others, so some reports might be "We did a bunch of nothing because the building was closed part of the year."

I want an interesting meeting, and to cover all the elements without rushing.  I am not keen on removing agenda items just to shorten the proceedings.  Folks need their chance to ask questions right?

I look forward to your informative feedback on this matter.

Edited February 6, 2022 at 06:16 AM by R.W.
additional info

[Dan Honemann]

Take a look at RONR, 12th ed., 59:55(6) to see if what is said there is of any help.

[R.W.]

When I read that, as well as Bourinot #49, I understand that the report is presented in person.

When I was planning a special meeting held in December, and offered to write up an instruction sheet for folks to install voting software in Zoom, it was noted that reading literacy (as well as tech literacy) was a challenge for a number of parishioners, and we went with Raise Hands instead which was already part of Zoom.  Now I'm getting the opposite message, that folks are expected to read the annual report for the various group updates.

people are soooo confusing 🤪

[Atul Kapur]

You mention Bourinot's, which makes me suspect you'rea fellow Canadian. Is Bourinot's specified as the parliamentary authority in your governing documents? It has many differences from RONR, so it is important to know which one you are supposed to be following, because mixing the two causes problems.

[Shmuel Gerber]

On 2/6/2022 at 10:00 AM, R.W. said:

When I was planning a special meeting held in December, and offered to write up an instruction sheet for folks to install voting software in Zoom, it was noted that reading literacy (as well as tech literacy) was a challenge for a number of parishioners, and we went with Raise Hands instead which was already part of Zoom.

I'm curious as to what voting software you had in mind.

[Shmuel Gerber]

On 2/6/2022 at 10:07 AM, Atul Kapur said:

You mention Bourinot's, which makes me suspect you'rea fellow Canadian.

In think that would have been a pretty safe bet regardless, seeing as how R.W's profile location is given as Montreal. 🙂

[R.W.]

On 2/6/2022 at 1:20 PM, Shmuel Gerber said:

I'm curious as to what voting software you had in mind.

I had looked at Polly, to be installed as a Zoom App. 

Context:  The 2021 meeting was completely online, chaired by my predecessor.  The mechanics of online voting were poorly explained.  Some people were using Raise Hands, some were clicking emojis that showed hands (e.g. clapping, thumbs up), some were holding up their hands to the camera.  Counting was a mess, especially for households with more than one member per connection, and a large chunk weren't voting at all. 

However my efforts to adopt Polly got shot down in flames.  The main reason it got a thumbs down was  not because of the technology itself, but because  church members don't have the technological literacy to install and work with it. Apparently most members also do not log in, and Polly (any app actually) requires a Zoom login.  Polly also wouldn't work for the telephone-only parishioners.  [We'll set aside for now the public gaslighting I endured from the main Zoom techie.]

For the special meeting in December [hybrid], we used Raise Hands in Zoom.  I wrote an instruction sheet that went out with the formal notice.  I insisted on one connection, one vote.  I held a practice vote before the first official vote.  We had ~26 people attend (combo of in person and online) and it worked very well except for one married couple who insisted on voting twice each time.

Today there is suggestion for this upcoming meeting  to put folks in breakout rooms to vote, a Yes room and a No room.  Two people  have decided Raise Hands is  not acceptable -- one did not attend in December, one only came briefly  in person.  During the breakout demo (conducted by Mr. Gaslight, who is also in favor of eliminating Raise Hands), I not only couldn't see the tally but didn't even get an invite to a room, to see how it worked.  SMH

 

Edited February 7, 2022 at 06:57 AM by R.W.
additional info

[R.W.]

An update following a planning meeting with the church board:

Committees will submit their reports for the written annual report.
At the ACM each committee will choose one highlight or challenge of their year and present for maximum 3 minutes.  [The leader can delegate the presentation to any member of his/her team.]
Suggestion was made to pre-record the presentations and show them during lunch [before the meeting].  I would prefer not to do that. 

While the shortening trimmed 24 minutes off the total, more items were added so I'm now at 183 minutes (3 hours 3 minutes) -- including one break, not including open floor time.
 

[Shmuel Gerber]

On 2/7/2022 at 1:42 AM, R.W. said:

I had looked at Polly, to be installed as a Zoom App. 

Thank you. Regarding its use for voting, what advantages would you expect for Polly over using Zoom's built-in polling feature?

[Atul Kapur]

On 2/7/2022 at 1:54 AM, R.W. said:

Suggestion was made to pre-record the presentations and show them during lunch [before the meeting].  I would prefer not to do that.

Why not?

- Ensures that no one goes over the time limit

- Preparing it ahead of time allows for resolution of tech issues without taking up meeting time and minimizes time to transition between one to next

[R.W.]

On 2/7/2022 at 8:13 AM, Shmuel Gerber said:

Thank you. Regarding its use for voting, what advantages would you expect for Polly over using Zoom's built-in polling feature?

In no particular order:  [Note these are as of summer 2021]

-- The questions and voting would be confined to the Polly app and not lost among general chat messages.
-- Question set could be set up in advance.  [this was a feature coming shortly]
-- There would be only one way to interact with the voting buttons -- no thumbs up, no waving, no clapping, no raise/lower, etc.
-- Tallies are available immediately.  No need to scroll through constantly-moving screens to count how many people lifted their hands to the camera. No need for comments in chat that this one voted for Joe Blow and his wife voted for Susie Smith.
-- Voting results would be available after Zoom closed down, to assist with the minutes transcription.

The one thing I was trying to solve was to get an accurate tally and FAST.

 

[Shmuel Gerber]

On 2/13/2022 at 5:27 PM, R.W. said:

In no particular order:  [Note these are as of summer 2021]

-- The questions and voting would be confined to the Polly app and not lost among general chat messages.
-- Question set could be set up in advance.  [this was a feature coming shortly]
-- There would be only one way to interact with the voting buttons -- no thumbs up, no waving, no clapping, no raise/lower, etc.
-- Tallies are available immediately.  No need to scroll through constantly-moving screens to count how many people lifted their hands to the camera. No need for comments in chat that this one voted for Joe Blow and his wife voted for Susie Smith.
-- Voting results would be available after Zoom closed down, to assist with the minutes transcription.

The one thing I was trying to solve was to get an accurate tally and FAST.

 

Zoom has had built-in polling capability for meetings for quite some time.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/213756303-Polling-for-meetings