ADM Format Review

Positive things about current ADM

• Social aspect (6 people)
• Access to adminstrative issues (2 people)

Negative things about current ADM

• Time spent (6 people)
• Not development-focused (4 people)
• Redundant (3 people)

Things to change

• Presentations every week (14 people)
  • Technical or related to development (10 people)
  • Not specified (4 people)
• No round the table reporting (8 people)
• Quick administrative summary from project leaders (6 people)
• Keep things related to development (4 people)

Controversial: Separate Meetings

• Another staff (or developer) meeting (3 people)
• No new meetings (2 people)
• Less frequent meetings (2 people)

Other interesting ideas

• Request presentations
• Detailed people page for the MCIN site
• Presentations don't need to be formal
• Scientific/invited talks related to tools or development
• Social events outside the meeting (e.g. Friday beers)
• Meeting shouldn't be after lunch (too sleepy to focus?)

Proposed Meeting Format

• 0-15 minutes: Adminstrative updates from managers and project leads
  • Only report if they feel it's relevant to the group
• 0-20 minutes: Moderated open discussion
  • Anyone can openly discuss what they've been working on, if they choose to
  • Ask for help with problems
  • Request presentations
• 10-15 minutes: Presentation
  • Doesn't need to be formal
  • Should be related to software development, but not necessarily programming
  • Other potential topics could be sys admin, science, writing, design, etc.
  • Optional: anyone who isn't interested can leave at this point
• 5-10 minutes: Questions and discussion

What do you think?