How to run a DEDN meeting
On Friday, Janis and Angelika hosted the first Digital Eocnomy Diversity Network meeting, so now it’s time for a little bit of reflection on the event, as well as a little bit of ‘how to’ for running your own.
The event was the first of a series of working meetings to develop a more connected, diverse, and friendly Digital Economy Network. To organise such a day, there are a few things that you need to do.
- Logistics
- Provide a tour or information session about the host CDT
- Plan the Day
- Plan the follow-up of the day
Logistics: book a room and some catering. Find out who you need to contact in your university to book a room, and where you can get some catering. We’d recommend putting your feelers out for some social enterprise caterers in the area, but if you can’t find anything university catering will also do!
CDT tour: As part of the DEDN, we want to have travelling meetings; so each meeting is hosted by a different CDT. As part of this, it’s nice to be able to network a little with other CDT students and staff. Let us know what your CDT specialises in, why is it great to be there? Are there any connections between attendants and your CDT students? If possible, try to get your CDT manager or director to do the tour!
Plan the day: This is perhaps the biggest part.
– Decide on a day and topic (the topic should really be decided on at the previous meeting, but feel free to name it whatever you feel is most appropriate)
– Decide on a ‘welcome’ activity to help people get to know each other a little better.
– Schedule the day (don’t forget tea, coffee, and cake breaks!)
– Make a sign-up sheet similar to this one (or contact Angelika a.strohmayer@ncl.ac.uk to get access to the original Google Form so you can just re-use it!)
– Send out an invitation e-mail a month before the event (via the DEDN mailing list and Felicia’s DEN mailing lists) that has all the important information in it to all DEN students (location, date, time, lunch provided, contact details of organisers, topic of discussion, schedule)
– Send out 2 (or so) reminder e-mails in the run-up to the event
– In the week running up to the event, prepare all the materials you will need and double-check the room booking and catering! Have a fabulous day of discussion on diversity related issues, and get to know a group of fabulously talented and passionate people!
On the day: Try to stick to the schedule, but feel free to deviate from it if necessary. Try to take notes, and maybe even allocate a person who is in charge of the @DEN_Diversity Twitter account to keep everyone else in the loop of what’s happening at the meeting.
Plan the follow-up: Make sure you have some free time to collate all the meeting notes you took and then add them to the Google Drive [link]. Please also write a blog post about the meeting for the website, and share any relevant materials via the mailing list.
