Choice of time and place for meetings - some thoughts / issues

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From a very personal point of view, and drifting off topic.

Your drift is appreciated - I'm splitting the topic to add / answer some thoughts on meeting organisation

Choices of date, time, location, venue ... agenda, speakers, facilities ... frequency, publicity, pricing ... for meetings, all need to be made. The old journalist's adage that a story should address "who, what, when, where, why" is worth using as a checklist. 

I am involved in core (committee, officer) group decisions on meetings for a number of organisations - Melksham Transport User Group, West Wiltshire Rail User Group, TravelWatch SouthWest and indeed for our Coffee Shop too. All are very different and I can't think of any which are obvious and ideal for everyone.

Your target audience is typically a mixture of people.  There are those who will make the meeting no matter when and where it is help - they will prioritise attendance.  Then there are those who will make it if they can - ranging from usual attendees to occasional ones.  And finally there is the potential audience who do not attend and you want to attract and perhaps promote into more frequent attendees, and/or advocates, ambassadors, contributors to the campaign.

"Why" should be the first questioning line - "why are we holding a meeting" ... "what outcome do we want" ... "how does this tie in with other elements / goals? As I wrote to someone the other day "there is little point in having another meeting to [discuss the situation] - we need real outcomes"; that's not always the case - a meeting / event can be organised purely for the pleasure of the moment, but is rarely the sole and only objective.

Thank you, infoman, for your question.  It's both an FAQ^▸ (Frequently Asked Questions) question and an IAQ one - Frequently asked question, but infrequently addressed one.  Many organisation run to a meeting routine; a stability of how meetings are scheduled and run makes huge sense for organisers, venues and (most important) regular attendees.  But at the same time, that can leave the organisation and group of people meeting in a groove or rut which is neither revisited nor refreshed to the detriment of purpose or future.

You mention TravelWatch SouthWest.  The objective of the general meeting is networking - to help inform and motivate passenger and specialist groups, campaigners, industry specialists, politicians and local and central government officials of what's going on and what's upcoming with a view to helping them in their roles.  And although it has been twice a year, in Taunton, daytime Friday for many years, that timing has been considered, reconsidered, analysed many times - and so far re-confirmed.  Please do not presume that will always be the case.  Any change to a pattern comes at a cost in terms of lost audience; but may help in attracting an updated audience - a bird in hand being often worth two in the bush.

In contrast, the West Wiltshire Rail User Group meetings are held in the evenings. They were switched what is, now, a few years back from rotating around four of the five towns of the area into a single venue, though still of an evening. We have even addressed the question of the definition of our area - West Wilts District Council was abolished on 1st April 2009, after all.  Do we add ... Frome? Freshford? Pewsey? Chippenham? to our remit?  Do we remove Melksham and concentrate on the main line that London forgot from Bristol to Southampton and beyond, and its intermediate stations?   The change of a single venue provides a consistency for our members, ease of our own admin / liaison, and a locations that's near to a station and with services quite convenient for our current and target audience; it removes an element of group ownership in the other towns.

I cannot / can no longer speak for decisions on meeting I sometimes attend for Railfuture, TransWilts CRP^▸ (Community Rail Partnership), Melksham Town Council, Melksham Historic Association, Melksham Environment Group (partially - I have some input), BRTA. I do know that there's always balances to be made.

Addressing next Saturday's Railfuture meeting in Yatton, I simply don't know if the time, date and venue is planned to make a point of how difficult it can be during engineering works and with lack of wheelchair access, or whether these elements of challenge were not key considered factors in placing the meeting in time and place. In my view, it is right to have such a meeting - a physical one covering quite a wide patch - during the day, allowing attendees to travel in the light, make other associated stops along the way to and from, and not be concerned about driving or otherwise being around in the dark and perhaps on the last train or last bus home.

I presume most contributors on this forum are in the mature age group.

Not sure how many of them on here are in full time employment

I think that rail type meetings and rail talks should be held during day time hours.

Who wants to wait around on bus stops for a bus that may never arrive

on a wet cold winter dark day in December.

The car is an option for SOME of us,

but stories I hear that so many mature drivers don't drive night any more,

as they are unable to make out land marks even in their own area.

Not to mention if they have driven long distance,

as well as trying shield your eyes from the sun as it starts to set on the horizon.

Lets not even go down the brightness of the LED lights on modern day cars 

Thankfully TWSW^» (TravelWatch SouthWest - website) meetings are day events 

Maybe a poll could be conducted to see how many would like have day time meetings.

Adding to note - yes, a poll would be an idea - but, rather a survey with linked questions so that we could tell how multiple answers related to each other.  Forum software limitations do not provide the tool; I do have limesurvey (down)loaded but need to have time to set it up or to have someone do so - and that's time I don't have.

"Thankfully TWSW meetings are day events" - does that mean (I hope so) that you're coming along - networking wise I would love to meet you in person.

Edit to improve formatting

[infoman]

Thank you Grahame for your input,

on a personal note I have shares in several large companies,and all of the AGM^▸ (Annual General Meeting)'s are scheduled for day time hours.

[grahame]

on a personal note I have shares in several large companies,and all of the AGM^▸ (Annual General Meeting)'s are scheduled for day time hours.

Large company's AGMs will attract / are aimed at wealth managers and pension fund admins, run by paid employees and gather attendees from far and wide, and all those factors suggest that a weekday, daytime is logical.

To complete the review for groups where I have a significant ability to place meetings ...

For the Melksham Transport User Group, we hold meetings early in the evening - timed at 18:30 to co-incide with the arrival of the train at 18:00. Meetings for 2026 will be whole group (3 times a year) and committee (six times a year) on a Thursday as our committee includes members from local parish councils who meet regulary on other business on Mondays and Tuesdays, and we chose which Thursday to avoid a clash with the Historic Association with whom we also share members.

Our own Great Western Coffee Shop ... hardly ever meets, or meets continuously whichever way you want to look at it. We have (and should perhaps, for 2026) had an AGM to "checkpoint" ourselves.  In additions, members sometimes arrange to meet each other in places and at times mutually convenient, but without any form of formal agenda from the admin / moderator team.

[bobm]

There are a lot of good points here.

Perhaps the most important is "Do we need a meeting?".  Often the answer is yes, but increasingly I find since the advent of online gatherings a lot of meetings are called simply because it is so easy.   Often a five minute phone call or an email exchange would achieve as much if not more.    Internal meetings where people look at a shared calendar and see what they perceive as a gap leave you with little time to do things apart from meetings!

You also run the risk of burnout.  I work with a lot of groups who rely on volunteers and so meetings are held in the evening.  An online meeting for an hour and a half or so starting at 5.30 or 6 virtually writes off the evening.  Do you have your dinner before or after is another issue.  This week I have an evening meeting every night bar Friday.   Three on line and one about 20 minutes away.  Two of those I would classify as worthwhile ahead of them - the others simply because it is the second full week of the month and we "always do".

I also find with online meetings there is an increasing trend of people not preparing properly for them.  I swear often I can see people reading the reports as we reach them on the agenda.  The discipline of physically travelling to a meeting often focuses the mind better.

[grahame]

Good stuff, BobM ... and I totally agree with there being too many meetings for - err - meetings sake, and too many people not as prepared as they should be for meetings.  The ease of calling an online meeting and the lack of investment in travel time to get there, perhaps, tend to make people not prepare as seriously as they should.

But - there are meetings, and then there are meetings.  I am going along on Thursday evening to a meeting of the Melksham Historical Association which apart from a few announcements will be a talk on "The Trials of the Revd Barnwell". I have done minimal/no preps and don't expect or think I need to. But then Lisa, who is giving the talk, has been building up to it and preparing for a - err - very long time.

Perhaps meetings are like trains - they all have more or less the same basics, but the character varied hugely