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Tuesday, June 27, 2000
One year ago: Good and Bad
Two years ago: House Party
Three years ago: Ten Different Mirrors
Three years ago, I met up with Ceej at a Clarion West party, which led me to write about how being an INFJ affects this journal (and I think it still does). Two years ago, I was at a swing dance party. One year ago, Jack was recovering from a trip to Denver to deal with his older daughter. At least I have a bed now that both of us can sleep on at one time!
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Tonight they held a meeting for the members of the Savoy Swing club. Steve Holt, the president of the club, told us ahead of time that he was going to use the Open Space method to run the meeting, so I did a bit of reading up ahead of time. It looked interesting!
We were starting with a dessert potluck, so I stopped at the store and bought an assortment of Pepperidge Farms cookies. I knew they'd be popular, at least with me.
I got to the Russian Center in good time. Some folks were there already, with more arriving all the time. We mingled and munched on dessert. I talked to Jonathan G. about the class I'll be taking from him next September. He's good on the musicality and dance stuff.
Finally we gathered our chairs in a circle. Steve was in the center, with a table, markers, and large pieces of paper. He had a few handouts for us, and briefly ran down some numbers on the past few years of the club -- membership numbers, class student count and bank balances. We had a big drop at January, when a lot of folks didn't renew their memberships.
The next part of the meeting worked like this. Anyone who had a topic that they thought was important went up, wrote it on a piece of newsprint (in big letters), then taped the paper to the wall. Then we were all free to go to any one of these spots to discuss that topic. The guiding principle of this "Open Space" meeting thing is the Law of Two Feet: at any time you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing - use your two feet and move to some place more to your liking. So we discussed the various topics that people thought were important to talk about, moving between groups as we felt like it.
The group topics were certainly varied. Sean Finlay wanted to talk about Savoy Swing creating a "clubhouse." Bill Zude had questions about how the club's instructors and class schedules are arranged. Another man thought we should be teaching partnering concepts earlier. A lot of folks talked about ideas for promotion.
One of the most controversial topics was about the club having two performance groups. This surprised me! I think there is a lot of bad blood between the groups. One long-time club member told me that he didn't think one of the groups was even doing swing dancing, which seemed rather harsh.
I put the princple about Two Feet into practice a lot, and moved between most of these groups. I didn't commit myself to actually do anything. I'll be volunteering for Swing Out Northwest, so I don't want to spread myself too thin.
The meeting closed by each group "leader" summarizing what was talked about, with any commitments for future action noted. Then we passed the mic around, so that anyone who wanted to could say a few words. I said that I thought this particular meeting system was actually useful, which I'd been dubious about before. I think doing it a few times a year would be a good thing.
I walked home from the meeting. Of course the bus passed by just after I left the stop -- that always happens.
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