We walked into the meeting at the university and, on the table as we entered the door was a copy of an agenda for the meeting, minutes from the last meeting, the evaluation report for the last year of the project and a draft of their proposal for this year. Because there were a dozen people meeting and some got caught up at
the office or had a long drive to get to the university, the meeting began about ten minutes late when eleven out of the twelve people had arrived. By then, everyone had a cup of coffee or water, had glanced at the papers they picked up on the way in and was ready to start. The woman chairing the meeting said, "Okay, the first item on the agenda is when we can next meet. We always do this first because we know that sometimes people have to leave early or we go over in our discussions, so let's decide this first and move on to the next item."
Three people pulled Palm Treos out of their briefcases or purses. One had a Blackberry. Six had Palm PDAs. One kind of laughed about being low-tech as she pulled out her appointment book. "How about December 4th?" asked the chair.
"We can't do it on the fourth," said one woman, pointing to the woman next to her, "our district has a meeting with all the aides that day."
"How about the Friday two weeks before that?" asked another person, "Maybe we could meet early."
"That's the day after Thanksgiving," the chair reminded, looking in her Palm Treo, "almost everyone has the day off. I know we do."
"Oh, right, I forgot."
"How about the 15th? Is everyone good for the 15th?"
There were nods around the table, so the chair said, "All right, it's the 15th at 11:30 to 1."
Just at this moment, the twelfth person came in, looking pretty hectic. "We just agreed on the 15th at 11:30 for our next meeting," the chair said, "can you make it?" He pulled out his appointment book and looked. "Yes, and I'll try to be on time for that one. What a day I had, you wouldn't believe it."
She nodded, "Yes, I probably would. Have some coffee and relax." Then, she turned to the person taking notes. "You got that in the minutes? Next meeting is at 11:30 on December 15th. We'll email everyone a reminder three days in advance. Okay, next item ..."
The very next day, we had a meeting in the tribal administration building. It went like this....