The President's Executive Brief

Planning Meetings

Creating A Welcoming Environment

As the President, you represent what you feel to be the model member of Open Source Club. Frankly, this isn't too high of a bar; be kind, be a good listener, and most of all, be open-minded.

There are a few pieces of practical advice to provide when it comes to accomplishing this:

• "Yes And." This is actually an improv technique based on the idea of accepting what someone has said, and adding to it, rather than either accepting it and negating it, or not accepting it at all. When someone makes a comment, be encouraging in your response (e.g. "Great point!" or "Yeah, that's totally right," or "I hadn't thought of that!") and extend it with your own, ideally in such a way that returns the thought to the through line of a meeting. For example, you may be having a meeting on open source social media, and someone makes a seemingly unrelated comment about open source video games. You can respond by saying something like, "that's so interesting, and it really speaks to the community that open source can provide. When everyone's working towards a common collaborative goal, it makes patronzing the project so much more enjoyable. That precise sentiment is why something like open source social media is so important, too, since it provides a direct way to communicate with passionate developers with algorithms getting in the way. And hey, you can even find pockets of the Fediverse dedicated to (insert the project the member mentioned here)!"