Guide: How to Plan Web Meetings

• Select a topic for the meeting and outline a few items for the agenda
• Ask 2 or 3 people to prepare presentations on this topic
• Set up a poll to chose a date.
  • We use Doodle because it does not require an account to set up a meeting time poll:
  1. 1. Giving people 6-9 options is usually enough.
     2. The only time we can all meet is 11:00-13:30 UTC in summer and 11:30-14:00 UTC in winter. So only give one choice per day. And enable "Time Zone Support".
     3. Some people don’t like to get up early on Monday or stay late on Friday, so don’t bother with those options.
     4. Run the poll for a only few days - typically over a weekend, so you catch people who may be away one week.
        Running polls for longer means the info will be out of date before its over.
     5. Doodle automatically adjusts for the user’s time zone, if you enable "Time Zone Support", then you can just need to state yours.
        However, I always specify each option in UTC, just to be safe.
  • Click 'Schedule an Event', give it a title including "GSICS web meeting" and the topic.
  • Choose some possible dates. Typically aim for a Tuesday, but Wednesday and Thursday are also acceptable as options.
  • Select some times. We suggest 11:30-13:30 UTC in winter, 11:00-13:00 UTC in summer. (Doodle poll form allows coping the first row to save time.)
  • Choose 'Basic Poll' on the next page.
  • Then 'You send the invitation'.
  • Copy the 'Participation Link' into an email and send it with an outline agenda to
    gsics-dev@googlegroups.com, asking people to choose a date within 1 week.

• Select a date when the key participants are available.
• Send an email to TimHewison asking him to set up the web meeting.
• Create a topic page for the web meeting on the wiki using the form below ( available only to wiki users; all others contact either TimHewison or AleksandarJelenak):
  
  Web meeting's date:
  
  
• Link this topic page from MeetingsAndConferences ( available only to wiki users; all others contact either TimHewison or AleksandarJelenak).
• Ask presenters to upload their presentations to the wiki page 1 week before the scheduled date.

• Send a reminder to gsics-dev@googlegroups.com, again asking presenters to upload their presentations to the Wiki.

• Log into Webex.
• Select the meeting.
• Chair the meeting!

• Write a short summary of the meeting, highlighting any actions.
• Upload this to the meeting's wiki page.
• Send another email to gsics-dev@googlegroups.com with the link to the summary, checking the actions.
• Take pride in what you have achieved!