Fun Meetings

I avoid coordination meetings. You get a bunch of talking heads around a big conference table in a really hot meeting room for a couple of hours and nothing gets done. It always opens with a couple of organizations presenting their fabulous program (scheduled for 15 minutes but drags on for double the time) and then during Q&A, the same 3 guys always seem to take over the discussion and try to promote themselves and the work of their organizations. Then, somehow the discussion always veers towards finger pointing - especially at the government's tsunami rehabilitation coordination agency. Over lunch the other day, a couple of friends came up with this brilliant idea of devoting the first 15 minutes of every meeting to purely finger pointing. This way, you get all the nastiness out of the way and perhaps this bitch-and-moan session can even act as an ice breaker activity! But of course, to counter the finger pointing, you'll also need to set up a "pat the back" session to make everyone feel all warm and fuzzy - not like the meeting room is already hot enough.

I sat in a meeting earlier this week (was bored out of my mind) and started counting the number of people in the room:

30 old men who loves to talk
2 white women
2 Indonesian women
...and me

Today, it was:

16 old men who loves to talk
1 white woman
...and me

You do the math...