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[ Knowledge Base : Meetings 101 ]

Created by [ Rowan Dempster], last modified by [ Rowan Dempster] on Feb 24, 2020

Weekly meetings are recommended (see more information below), the WATO Board recommends using our template: WATO Board W20 Meeting Minutes
WATonomous has two dedicated spaces to host meetings in:

  1. "The Bay", which in located in the SDC (Sedra Design Center) on the ground floor of E5. Look for Bolty (our car). Access is granted by a keycode that will be shared in the #subteams Discord channel.
  2. "The Garage", not actually a garage. Located at E7-5344. Access is granted via FOB that is kept in the locked closet in the The Bay. See the #subteams Discord channel to get access to the FOB.

Besides those dedicated spaces there are more options

  1. Booking one of the shared (with other design teams) rooms in E5. Contact Donna Schell (dschell@uwaterloo.ca) to arrange a booking.
  2. Find an empty classroom somewhere on campus! There are lots of empty ones after 6PM...

We have a WATO wide Google Calendar that we track meetings on. Be sure to add all meetings (with their location and a Hangouts link to call in on) by following the GSuite Google Calendar User Guide
Note that you will need to be given permission to edit before you can add meetings. Please post in #onboarding to request access.

Core Member Success

However, tasks and mentorship are only part of what Core Members need to succeed on WATonomous. The majority of WATonomous is made up of Core Members, but it is common for them to not understand what the objectives of WATonomous are, and how the work they are doing fits into that larger picture. It is essential to expose Core Members to the WATonomous team as a whole, here are some suggestions on how to do so (ordered by priority, IMO):

  1. Encourage Core Members to read everything on Discord. Since we don't all work in an office together, most information is exchanged over Discord, which means anyone has access to that information at anytime. And the best part is, you can insert yourself into any exchange, and friendly people will reply with the information you want!
  2. Encourage Core Members to attend a wide variety of meetings. Weekly team meetings are not only for the members of that team, other people are welcome to attend. In fact, cross functional attendance improves the quality of meetings, because of the more diverse body of knowledge it introduces. #Encourage Core Members to browse other parts of the Phabricator wiki, i.e. other than their own groups' section. There is a lot of great stuff to learn on here.
  3. Encourage Core Members to participate in the group as if they were all leaders of it. Everyone should feel responsible for the weekly success of the group, not just the lead. Every member should be worried about if their modules' interfaces are well designed for integration and testing. Etc...

Work Sessions

There should be two group-wide work sessions per week, along with a weekly WATO-wide test track visit / work session. Work sessions should have the following format

One-on-one Meetings

All leaders should have a regularly scheduled one-on-one meeting with all their direct reports and manager biweekly. These meetings should be seen as flexible, where either person can reschedule or cancel the meeting if it's inconvenient for them for any reason (eg. exams). One-on-one meetings should be seen as informal with no planned agenda or minutes. Instead these meetings should cover

Additionally, leaders should also try to schedule a skip-level one-on-one monthly or bi-monthly, if applicable, although it may not be possible to do this for all leaders. The purpose of this is to

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