Date: April 8, 2021
Time: 6:00 pm EST
Present: Logan Meyer, Des Bennett, Kaley Bachelder, Robbie Flanagan, Meryl
Prendergast
Recorded by: Logan Meyer
Summary of Meeting
We spent this entire meeting discussing plans for the end of our hiatus. We established a timeline based on our collective bandwidth over the next few months, adjusted our hiring timeline, and made plans for how to train new hires in circle-specific knowledge.
Discussion – To-do List for the End of Hiatus
We began the meeting making a list of what each circle will need to complete before the end of hiatus. Production will need to finalize the Trimester Breakdown and to start talking about programming. Literary will need to shepherd the Dramaturgy Handbook to a comfortable stopping point. Education needs to build out anti-racism and D&I onboarding coursework. The timeline for this specifically will be decided at a later date. Operations needs to build out onboarding courses, create a budgeting process, and make organization and security improvements to the Google Drive and Slack.
Marketing has possibly the biggest lift, needing to finish the website and create a fair number of graphics, a marketing plan for the foreseeable future, and a post-hiatus newsletter. We also expect that we will need to do outreach work before the end of hiatus, so that we can adequately market our open positions. This will need to include reviving relationships with Maren’s past contacts and creating a system for tracking relationships. Finally, we think that Development needs to create a plan for how to get started with fundraising once we hire people.
Discussion – End of Hiatus Timeline and Bandwidth
We don’t think we can get this list done by the original End of Hiatus date at the end of April, which left us with the question of when to end the hiatus. We agreed that our hiatus will end at the same time our marketing/worldly presence resumes. We do need to make sure that we have something going on when our hiatus ends, so that hiring isn’t our only visible activity. To decide that, we need to know more about everyone’s bandwidth over the next several months.
The month of May won’t be hospitable to a few of our circle members, so several suggested ending the hiatus at the end of June. This would be technically feasible, but Robbie suggested moving the full end of hiatus to the end of August for both personal and pragmatic reasons. Moving to the end of August would give us more time to complete our heaviest lifts intentionally, and we agreed that this would be a good plan.
Postponing to the end of August, however, means that we will not have had an internet presence for a full calendar year. Meryl raised the concern that if we continue to push back our return, our existing network may have largely left the city. This, however, will happen anyway, and an extra four months doesn’t make a huge relative difference at this point. Either way, the world needs to know what we’re doing, and we’d like to be doing something. Logan proposed creating a series of low-lift workshops or community-building events like discussion groups or a picnic. Other proposed ideas included artist circle meet-ups and a speed-date or mixer for young theatre artists in Boston. Something that will let artists meet and get to know one another will be crucial.
With that, we agree to end our formal hiatus at the end of June. Marketing and hiring will begin then, and we’ll do our low-lift community-building in that timeframe. We will announce programming at the end of August and begin full company operations at that time.
Discussion – Hiring, New Plan and Timeline
Logan then reviewed the updated Hiring Plan, which gives us two options. Option 1 reprioritizes positions based on our previous discussions of our immediate hiring needs. This would leave us hiring 9 people in Stage 1. Option 2 splits Stage 1 into two parts, each about 8 weeks in length, and evens out the number of positions being hired in each stage. This option would leave us hiring fewer people at once, just hiring them more quickly. We agree that we prefer Option 2, and that when we are hiring we will make every effort to include the current member of a given circle on the interview panel for every position being hired for that circle.
Discussion – Training our Circles
We then chatted to figure out what new hires in each circle need to be trained in. We began with Literary. Before Maren left, she was kind enough to prepare a document about onboarding Dramaturgs. The document provides a scheme for how to train Dramaturgs to dramaturg that accounts for varying levels of prior experience. With that in mind, we expect training for Literary Circle members to continue past onboarding so that our dramaturgs get experience with full programming during their training period. We also plan to train these new hires in the Dramaturgy Handbook and how to “ask questions.”
We will need to train Education in all the things Education will be training people in. Facilitators will also need to be trained how to interact/work with our event coordinators and dramaturgs for programming-related education. We also want to train Facilitators in the various learning styles, how to give ethical feedback, and how to run a talkback. Education will plan to create a logbook of connections to track connections with people and organizations. We want to be prepared if we need to plan a talkback with a bunch of “silly little scientists.”
Producers will need to be trained to find and book venues and to produce streamlined production paperwork. They’ll also need to be familiar with production processes and organizational policies. We think it will also be useful to train them how to run a production meeting, and that de-escalation training might be prudent. It will likely also be necessary to train them in basic stage management practices, so that we have back-up if stage management has an issue during programming.
Marketing will need training in our organizational voice and style guide, as well as training on our current branding and how we use it. We’ll also need to train the webmaster in how our current website works when they come onboard. We may also train marketing staff in best practices for social media, web design, marketing strategy, and graphic design, depending on what each new hire already knows and what their job requires.
We do not think that Operations will need to train all circle members in any specific set of skills since the circle’s positions are so varied.
Backlogged Agenda Items
We did not add any agenda items to the Backlog during this meeting.
Action Items for Next Meeting
For the next General Circle meeting, we will move our action items tracking to Airtable, revise our hiring timeline, propose a new organizational schematic for the Google Drive, and prepare updates on the website.
Next Meeting
The General Circle will next meet on Monday, April 12th at 6:00pm EST.
The General Circle Steering Group will next meet on Thursday, April 15th at 6:00pm EST.