© Science Admins

 

The (loosely accepted) team chat process is:

1. A member enters the chat room in advance, and posts a message proposing the date/time of the next chat. If it isn't a regularly scheduled chat, the member sends an email to the other members, letting them know.
2. At their leisure, members enter the chat room in advance to announce their availability for the chat at the proposed date/time, or to suggest a different one. There might be some back-and-forth before the date/time is firmly set.
3. Members can also post suggestions for topics to be discussed. Just remember that chats are for quick exchanges of ideas, not for posting essays, so keep the suggestions brief, and just post links to additional information where appropriate.
4. A few minutes before the scheduled chat, arriving members review the backlog of messages.
5. When the meeting date/time arrives, members announce their presence in the chat room.
6. Members should strive to make only one point per post. This will make it easier to sort out the chat later, grouping related comments together, to make the archives easier to read. If people make two or more points in the same post, whoever archives the chat has to split the comment into pieces that can then be grouped with related comments.
7. Chat continues until the members agree to adjourn.
8. After the chat, one of the members archives the chat.
   1. Cut-and-paste the entire contents of the chat into a document named after the date of the chat (e.g., 2014-05-18) in the Archives folder.
   2. Remove jabber that will not be meaningful to anybody later, and group related comments together.
   3. Optionally extract the salient points, and paste them into a document in the "Summaries" folder.
   4. Post a notice to the chat room to the effect that the condensation of the previous chat has been completed.
9. At their leisure, members review the condensation of the previous chat, and start making suggestions for the next one.
10. Members can mark comments in the chat archive for follow-up.
    1. Select the relevant text in the chat archive.
    2. Click the gear icon for the "Follow Up" folder.
    3. Select the "New: Inside" option.
    4. This will create a new document in the "Follow Up" folder, with a quote of the relevant text. Enter additional comments, and Submit.
    5. Items in the "Follow Up" folder can be moved to the "Closed Tasks" or "Open Tasks" folders as appropriate.

Some teams might prefer rules that are more formal. We're in the process of researching applications of the Rules of Order to online deliberative assemblies. (For example, see Robert's Rules of Order for e-mail meetings.) But we believe that teams should employ only the amount of structure that improves their productivity, without compromising their creativity.

 

So here is the standard banner for Science Improvement chats: