Are all your committee meetings pretty much the same every month?
Is the length of time fairly consistent?
Does attendance to the meeting vary from month to month or is dwindling?
I’d like to propose a new approach which may only apply to a few committees but may make an impact in the above questions. Borrowing from how ‘hobby club’ meetings generally run, there is the business portion and then there is usually a short presentation or mini class of some sort to teach a skill, a tool, or show new happenings in the particular craft/industry.
Like committes - most of the people don’t really care how the ‘club’ is run but usually come for the demo. And despite themselves, the learn what’s going on in the committee and even end up volunteering to help.
As a for instance, the machine shop meetings generally run 30-45 minutes of actual business and then we usually spend 15 minutes chatting. We reserve a meeting room for 1 hour. what I propose to do is to extend it to 90 minutes - keep the business part to 30 minutes (unless it is dire circumstances) and then offer a short presentation to those in attendance. It could be anything from how to do Jeweling (40 minutes), how to use the height guage, sine guage, harness testing files, how to do engraving, etc. It also gives a good opportunity to bring in a ‘special guest’ from one of the other committees to teach something that may be related or which can be an add-on skill. For example, machinist may be interested in how to anneal metal but have never had anyone show them how. that’s something someone from jewelry and small metals might be more familiar with and might be willing to share. This is a great opportunity to cross-pollinate the committees.
I had a great conversation with a couple of members from jewelry wanting to know what the HAAS could be used for (in their context). I suggested everything from coin and medallion engraving to diamond bit engraving. They seemed open to that and I’d be happy to do a ad-hoc demo for their committee.
This is not something that would have to be done every month, but perhaps every other time to keep things fresh and perhaps draw some of the wall flowers to the meetings.
This is just food for thought. I plan to roll this out to our shop meetings starting in October (assuming I’m still around) but I think this could have universal appeal. the possibilities are endless.
Or, you could keep the meetings boring. cheers!