In-Person: If, When, How?

Having made heroic efforts to master new technology quickly under pandemic-induced duress, many organizations are weighing a return from electronic to in-person meetings. And many are asking their parliamentarians for help and guidance.

This article is aimed at those parliamentarians, not at the organizations themselves. So let’s first review – what do parliamentarians mean when we talk about meetings?

For the purposes of this article, meetings are what RONR1 terms deliberative assemblies. Organizational meetings, committee meetings, conventions, etc., are deliberative assemblies; classes, staff meetings, and social gatherings generally aren’t. (See RONR 12th ed. 1:1 for more.)2

During the pandemic emergency, electronic tools provided a lifeline: without them, those organizations would not have been able to meet at all.

Participants experienced frustration as they learned the technology, but something funny happened on the way to the home office: some organizations enjoyed increases in participation and attendance. Travel costs decreased, travel time was eliminated, and a, shall we say, less casual dress code prevailed. (Feel free to pause here for your own humorous recollection.)

Post-shutdown, many organizations are considering a return to in-person meetings. They should consider their options carefully. Generally, I hear organizations talking as if they have just three options. I think it’s more complicated than this, but generally the choices fall into these three categories:

  1. They can continue to operate using virtual meetings.
  2. They can switch back to in-person meetings.
  3. They can attempt “hybrid” meetings, where people can attend in person or virtually as they see fit.3

Parliamentary organizations are faced with the same choices as our clients; but for us the consequences are different. We need to be ready to assist clients with all these options, and that requires practice. In the near century and a half since the publication of the first Robert’s Rules of Order, we have amassed much more experience helping clients manage in-person meetings than we have with electronic meetings.4 The pandemic shutdown gave parliamentarians a crash course in running electronic meetings, and some of us got good at them. What do we do now?

The meetings of our parliamentary organizations should, to the extent possible, model good procedure. If we expect to be acknowledged as the experts in this field, we need to be experts in all three of the options I’ve outlined. And we can’t do that if we plan all of our own meetings to be in the same procedural basket.

So what does that mean as we plan our organizations’ activities? It seems clear that we shouldn’t commit exclusively to any one solution.5 If we never hold electronic meetings ourselves, our ability to help clients will be limited; if we meet only electronically, we can expect to lose our “chops” to assist clients meeting in person. I suggest that we plan both, using various criteria to decide which is which.

Here are some examples for an organization I work with, barring another pandemic shutdown or other emergency.

  • E-meetings during the winter months will permit us to conduct our business and monthly trainings without concern for the notoriously fickle Northeastern Ohio travel conditions.
  • We hold a non-business annual workshop night in April (Parliamentary Law Month). We’ll gather in-person and livestream the presentations.
  • We can return to in-person business meetings in May, and we should be able to offer a “hybrid” arrangement that will permit virtual attendees to participate on an equal footing with in-person attendees. 6. The operative word here is “can.” Members may prefer to continue some e-meetings even in good weather; we’ll figure that out.]
  • Committee meetings generally work well as videoconferences, and some are small enough for telephone conference calls. (Sharing of documents needs to be provided for, though–working on a resolution or bylaw over the phone can be frustrating.)
  • We hold an annual dinner meeting in November. We’ve been holding it electronically. Breaking bread is powerful, but not so much in front of a screen! We’ll return to a physical meeting.

The point is that we don’t have to choose exclusively between in-person and electronic meetings. We can plan formats that match the content, season, and purpose of the meeting. And that way we can continue to enhance our skills using different meeting formats, and be ready to assist our clients and other organizations however they decide to meet.

–Bill

In recent years, the writer has participated – as presider, parliamentarian, or participant – in hundreds of “virtual” meetings of a dozen or more entities, varying in size from a handful to several hundred participants.

Notes:

  1. “RONR” is shorthand for Rules of Order Newly Revised, 12th ed., currently the world’s predominant parliamentary authority–commonly called “Robert’s Rules of Order.”
  2. It’s possible that some of these remarks will pertain to other kinds of meetings as well, but I make no such promises.
  3. Our expectations for hybrid meetings should be pretty high, and it’s not just a matter of pointing a webcam and allowing people to listen in. But that’s a topic for another post.
  4. Ironically, RONR is contemporaneous with the telephone. Only the past few editions have considered the possibilities of electronic meetings. Ironically, the current edition, with the most comprehensive coverage to date, was published a few months into the COVID-19 lockdown.
  5. This doesn’t apply to organizations that don’t hold physical meetings due to the geographic spread of their members.

And Now, Three Letters

I received notice recently that I had successfully completed the Professional Qualifying Course (PQC) for the Professional Registered Parliamentarian (PRP) credential.

Parliamentarians are hardly top-of-mind for most people, although legislative parliamentary rulings make news occasionally. (Google “Senate Parliamentarian” if you like.) I became a Registered Parliamentarian (RP) early in 2020, and I wrote about that at the time.

The new designation involves three letters instead of two. It includes the word “professional,” and there’s a bit of irony there, since unlike most people who pursue this credential, I don’t plan to begin a practice as a professional parliamentarian. (I’ve had two great careers already; I don’t plan to start a new one.) Earning my PRP was an opportunity to test the level of my knowledge and skill against the yardstick of people I work with and admire, and I’m glad to join them.

I have a page on the overall topic at https://lavezzi.us/point-of-order/.

Thanks go out to my study group colleagues (you know who you are); to our friend and mentor, Patricia Koch; and to Jim Connors, who helped me and others in OEA qualify for NAP membership several years ago.

And on a bittersweet note, let me express much respect and affection to my late friend, the parliamentarians’ parliamentarian Jim Williams, who encouraged me to pursue this goal back when I would have been happy to stay an RP.

Zoom to Success

Recently I had the honor of presenting a parliamentary workshop for the Miami Valley and Queen City Units of the National Association of Parliamentarians. The topic was Zoom for Parliamentarians. I’ve done parliamentary workshops about Zoom, but this one had a different focus.

Zoom has become an important tool for parliamentarians; even if you know your parliamentary procedure, if you’re bumbling around with your Zoom, people might infer that you don’t know your parliamentary procedure either. Parliamentarians are expected to project a certain authority, and if we don’t know how to use Zoom confidently and comfortably, it compromises that authority.

So this program was more about mastering Zoom than about parliamentary procedure. Some of it may be helpful even for Zooming civilians who never lift a gavel, advise a presider, or render a parliamentary opinion.

Those interested in seeing the presentation can contact me for a link. And if you’d rather read than watch, in October I offered some resources in a post I called “Okay, Zoomer.”

Comments always welcome.