Back to the Retreat Planning page

We're trying to nail down retreat dates - the retreat planning group didn't come to consensus on the format. Rather then hash out this rather major point by ourselves, we figured that we should ask the collective.

The Question

Would you rather have the retreat in one weekend (we'll call that option "one" in the table below), or spread out on two days on separate weekends(option "two" below)?

 * clarification about option two (from Jessica) - the "two weekend" option would mean one day each weekend, not all weekend for two weekends.  Also, they have to be pretty close to each other, otherwise we lose focus.  So one proposal was feb 2 or 3, then feb 16 or 17 (there's a general meeting feb 10th).  Or feb 16/17 plus feb 23/24, or march 1/2.  Those are the weekends, we can mix and match as necessary.

Morgan says: first off, I put myself on there first just cus I made the page and having an example keeps things neat, not cus I'm better then you. That Little process point aside, I strongly feel like doing things all at once on one weekend is the way to get somewhere, and further, I don't want to commit every weekend in February to Free Ride Meetings - I'm not doing epic travels this year, but I'd like to go somewhere next month.

Jessica says:  Here's the reasoning for the one-day-meetings-on-two-separate-weekends proposal. 

• I like Stuart's idea that last year's retreat raised a lot of questions which we spent a year trying to answer (some still not finished), and it would be great if this year's retreat could answer the questions instead of just asking them.  I started out by thinking, "what do we need to do before the retreat so we could be at a point where that could happen during the retreat?" and this proposal grew out of that question.
• I think it would be easier on some peoples' schedules to commit one day out of two separate weekends than to clear out a whole weekend.  And at this point more likely to get people to commit to feb 2/3 (and get an outside facilitator to do the same) if it's just one day. 
• We will be talking about fundamental changes to our structure.  I think if people hear new ideas for how to structure free ride on one day, they are not going to be ready to commit to them and figure out how to implement them the very next day.  It takes a bit of time to think about how these things would play out and get used to them. 
• Here's what I'm envisioning this two-separate-day process could give us: day one - broad discussion of everyone's different ideas for our problems ("become a co-op", "concentrate less on open shop and more on structured programs", "pay volunteers to do fill-in-the-blank", "really improve volunteer experience & recruiting," "take the pressure off by starting new locations around the city," "reduce what we do because we don't have enough volunteers" etc. etc. etc.).  Everyone gets familiar with each others' ideas, discusses how they would work, gets feedback from the group about concerns and suggestions.  Then we have a week or two off, during we can work out more concrete proposals to bring back to the group.   So during day two, we can start with pretty concrete proposals and work them through to the extent that they can be implemented.  Example: the process we tried to use to come up with a new system for staffing open shop - a good discussion with the group to get a general idea of what peoples' concerns are, then a smaller group takes that and comes up with concrete proposal, then at the next meeting the larger group reacts to the proposal and tweaks it so it can be approved. 
• I think discussion will go a lot more smoothly.  I think a large part of why discussions get very contentious at meetings is because we attempt to introduce subjects and conclude them on the same day.  People don't have the background to really understand others' ideas, because they just heard them, and everyone feels a lot of time pressure.  If we have two days - we have one day for idea exploration, no pressure to resolve.  Then people have some time off - during which there will be some work, potentially in groups, on proposals.  People can take the initiative to get together with others whose ideas they don't understand or have concerns about, and have low-pressure, individual discussions if they need to.  So by the time day two rolls around, most of the big issues have already been worked out, we are mostly the way towards agreement, we can focus on getting solid plans laid. 
• What I have just described is a fair amount of work.  It will not suceed unless people are pretty committed to it and willing to do additional work outside of meetings.  But, I think there is no way around this work if we want this project to succeed.  We are a consensus-based project with a long history of interpersonal contention and a lot on our plate.  There is no getting around the work it's going to take to deal with that.  And it's better to bite the bullet and do it in the coming weeks, rather than have it drag into the busy season.  This is the best suggestion I can come up with for a procedure that will have a realistic chance of seeing things through to the point we can operate.   I think if we have a weekend-long retreat we won't actually be able to bring things to a resolution, and everyone will be exhausted and not want to work on anything for a while afterwards.  But there will need to be follow up.  It's so difficult to move anything forward through monthly meetings, because there is so much time in between them and so many things on the agendas.  It takes forever, and we're really bad at seeing things through (just consider implementing collective council membership, commission system, guidelines for committee autonomy, open-shop staffing system, fiscal sponsorship agreement, etc).  We can't seem to manage to discuss an item two months in a row at meetings and actually move it forward that way.   So, I'm rather concerned that we figure out some way to commit some intensive work towards seeing changes through to the point people can really operate.   If people don't like this procedure, are there other ideas about how to meet these concerns?