Meetings ​

The main functioning of the Board in deciding matters and for events and Clubs in the Collective is through the use of regular meetings. These meetings can differ in their structure based on their purpose with board meetings following a formal structure and Collective Club and event meetings deciding on their formality and structure as appropriate. We also really dislike meetings as they tend to only be useful for major decisions and can be a waste of time for minor decisions. As such we try to avoid meetings as much as possible and instead use other forms of communication to make decisions. This allows us to remain flexible and responsive to the needs of the club while still ensuring that we have a formal process for making decisions.

Board Meetings ​

Meetings should be organised in advance in order to give fair warning to board meetings in order to maximise attendance. VEC does not use set meeting dates and instead the Secretary gets the availabliliy of board members at least 2 weeks before the planned board meeting time, typically a tool such as when2meet is used to find a time that works for everyone. At least 7 days before the best time the Secretary should inform the board of the meeting time and book the room if the meeting can be run in person, accommodations should be made for remote access at all times.

Board meetings should be public and open to all members of the club, the minutes should also be publicly available in a read only format to all members.

Meeting Structure ​

All meetings must be chaired or led; this is usually done by the president but can also be done by the VP or Secretary when the president is not available. The chair’s role is to steer the meeting, stick to the agenda, and should act fairly and neutrally to all members.

Before the meeting ​

Before the meeting and preferably when the meeting time is announced and no less then 7 days before the meeting an agenda should be made available to all Board members to add items to. This agenda helps everyone prepare for the meeting and know what is going to be discussed. The agenda should follow these main points:

• The agenda items should reflect the overall purpose of the meeting
• Individual agenda items, put forward by exec members, should reflect what that individual member is trying to achieve
• Agenda items should always have a purpose and have a title and name attached
• No suprises should come up in the board meeting with extra info added to the agenda or sent our beforehand if needed

The agenda must be finalised at least 24 hours before the meeting and should be published to all members of the board by the Secretary. Any items that come up 24 hours before the meeting can be brought up at the end of the meeting but if needed can be delayed to the agenda of the next board meeting.

During the meeting ​

The meeting should be run in a fair and neutral manner, the chair should ensure that all members are given a chance to speak and that the meeting is not dominated by a single member. The chair should also ensure that the meeting is run in a timely manner and that any conversations which are not relevant to the meeting are had outside of the meeting. All members must remain respectful of each other and be open to new ideas. The meeting should follow the agenda and should not be derailed by members who wish to discuss other topics, if a member wishes to discuss a topic not on the agenda they should bring it up at the end of the meeting where it can be potentially delayed to the next board meeting if appropriate.

After the meeting ​

After the meeting the minutes should also be publicly available in a read only format to all members. The minutes must be published within 7 days of the meeting by the Secretary. Currently a publicly available Google Drive folder is used which is available on the VEC website but the specific link to the meeting should also be provided to the board.

Private Meetings ​

Occasionally a topic comes to the boards attention which should not be discussed in a public forum, typically this will be related to conduct or legal matters. In these cases the board will expel public attendees for that portion of the meeting and keep the minutes for that section of the meeting in the Private Meetings section of the Google Drive.

Other meetings ​

Other meetings are used in organising events or within the VEC Collective. These meetings can be either formal meetings with an agenda and minutes or more informal catchups. For meetings within the Collective or large events its recommended minutes are kept especially once decisions are made so that there is a record available. For smaller meetings minutes do not need to be kept.