What the group was and which individuals were involved is irrelevant, so I won't mention them by name. What is important is the traps that they fell victim to are quite common. I've seen the same sort of thing happen over and over again in the past 40 odd years, and I thought that it might be useful to go over them in an Op Ed.
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The first thing I noticed was the drumming group. The first time I came across drumming was long ago at a Green Party conference. Some person thought that it was important to drum loudly and constantly at a convention where people were breaking off into little groups to do the networking and caucusing that is essential to doing the work of a large organization spread across an immense geographic area.
I don't know about you, dear reader, but I find it very hard indeed to think when someone is playing a very loud drum in an enclosed space. This is because drums are very loud. (This is why they have been used by tribal groups and the military to spread information over long distances---outside, where they belong.) Moreover, because they are rhythmic, they also catch the attention. That's why people play drums when dancing or marching---they take over our minds on a subconscious level and dominate our thinking. But that is also why they are enormously distracting in any sort of event where people are trying to talk about important issues.
It's important to understand that even before the event officially begins, there is still a lot of very important informal community building taking place. People join together in little knots, people talk together, and, get to know each other. Loud drumming---if not any type of music---keeps this from happening. That's why at the very least I would always ban drumming from any event where we are trying to build a political movement. (After the meeting is fine, but not during.)
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| I must not be the only person annoyed with drums if someone actually went to the effort of creating this sign. |
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During this event I bumped into a friend who reads this blog. He asked me how much money I'm making off this blog because he's thinking about subscribing. He was genuinely surprised that I'm making a grand total of about $70/month. He had assumed it was a lot more. Well, that is the way it is with local news bloggers in a world where everyone assumes that they should let "the other guy" pay for content on the Web. If you'd like to subscribe, even a buck a month is appreciated: you can use Patreon or PayPal.
Also, further down the page you will see an advertisement for the showing of a documentary about the Robo Call scandal. Remember, if you want to advertise an event, group, or, business the prices are very reasonable and I'm open to barter. Email me at thecloudwalkingowl@gmail.com for more info.
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The second thing I noticed was the time when the event started: 6:00 pm. This wasn't an issue to me, as I am retired (well, sort of) and I live by myself (at least when my wife isn't visiting). I'm not someone with a child or parent that I have to provide meals for. Nor am I someone who has to come home from work exhausted and then start the "second shift"---like a lot of young parents. But when I have organized meetings I've learned that if you start anything before 7:00 pm, you are placing a lot of people onto the horns of a dilemma---do I "skimp" on the home life stuff, or, do I just forget about the meeting?
What made the decision to start so early even worse, was that the organizers didn't force the meeting to start at 6:00 sharp. For anyone who rushed around "moving heaven and earth" to get the meal done early, etc, the fact that they ended up twiddling their thumbs anyway is irritating, if not infuriating.
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| Oh gee hon, time to go to that environmental group meeting! Image from Forbes magazine. Used under the "fair use" rule. |
Second rule of thumb: Choose times that work for as many people as possible!
Things just got worse from here on in.
There were a number of speakers. In fact there were far too many speakers. In fact, one fellow attendee said the thought that there had been a series of boxes that the organizers felt that needed "checking off" before they felt that they had any legitimacy. There was a student speaker, there was someone from Extinction Rebellion, there was a gay speaker, there was a farmer speaking, there was a First Nation's speaker---. (I don't know if there were any others, as after two hours of this torture I had to leave Dodge before I had a brain aneurysm.)
What made this even worse was that even though the speakers were supposed to limited to a specific set time, the time keeper totally lost control of the event and people just went on and on and on long past the time that they were allotted to speak.
Even worse still was the fact that while I have no doubt that the people chosen to talk are wonderful people, most of them were absolutely terrible speakers. With maybe one exception, none of them seemed to have put any effort into writing a speech or working on their presentation. Instead, what we got was a bunch of rambling, disjointed, "stream of consciousness" talk---some of which was accompanied with some power point slides.
Third rule of thumb: Get good speakers, not too many, and, force them to be brief!
This fits into a fourth issue. People who are engaged with the world tend to be people who are generally time poor. I saw a lot of people in the audience who were city Council members, people running in the Federal Election, or people who are involved in a great many important projects in the city. These people are really, really, really busy trying to make the world a better place. And they believed in the concept that this meeting was based upon. But I suspect that they won't come back again to anything this group ever does. That's simply because they will work out a calculus in their heads that says "where is the best place to put my time"---and it won't be going to another one of these meetings.
Over-arching rule of thumb: NEVER, EVER WASTE THE TIME OF PEOPLE WHO ATTEND YOUR EVENT---IT IS THE MOST PRECIOUS THING THAT THEY GIVE TO YOU!!!!
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| Interested in the Guelph Robo-Call scandal? Come to a special "pre-release" screening of the documentary that uncovers the truth behind voter suppression in Canada. 2:00 pm Saturday Sept 28, at the Bookshelf Cinema. Tickets at EventBrite.com, or, $20 at the door (but it might well sell out---). |
Finally, because of my long experience I think that I can identify the ultimate cause behind why all these mistakes were made at that meeting.
The people organizing the event thought that they could make things easy by foisting the organization onto university students. This looks like an "easy out" because students can get spaces on campus for free and they "have time". (Actually, from my experience a lot of students are just as harried as anyone else because many have to balance heavy course loads with part time jobs.)
There's also the idea that if students organize something on campus, that means a lot of students will show up. I'm a little annoyed about that---especially with regard to environmental issues. The fact of the matter is that students have precious little influence. They are young, don't have much money, and, aren't in control of much of anything. The people who are really screwing up the world around us are their parents and grand parents. And given the time frame of environmental issues the commonly held idea that "it's up to the young people to solve the problem" is simply a recipe for disaster. Indeed, it's always been not much more than just a prescription for "kicking the can down the road".
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| Ask Greta what she thinks about the idea that "it's up to the young people" to save the planet. From the Times of India, Fair Use copyright provision. |
On a practical level, the problem with this idea is that students are young and, by definition, they don't have a lot of experience. Organizing is a skill set just like any other, and you don't do anyone any favour by just throwing them in the deep end of the pool and expecting them to learn how to swim. We have a lot of people in this community with a wealth of knowledge about how to organize good events. I'm not saying that they need do all the work organizing, but there should be some effort to pair these people up with enthusiastic young people who don't know much about what to do. The work load gets shared around, the job gets done well, and, young people learn how to do the job right.
My final rule of thumb: Organizing is just as much a skill as any other---we need to teach young people how to do it well instead of just relying on them to figure it out through trial and error!
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Please note that the above is constructive criticism, it's not destructive. I'm not saying that I'm perfect or that anyone associated with this event is bad or even incompetent. Instead, I'm saying that it could have been done better. If anyone is at fault, it's the entire community that I suspect left people flailing who probably should have had more support. And I think we can all benefit from learning from the experience.
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