Meetings are a great way to take part in discussions and meet speakers on special issues outside the main clp business meetings.

• You have a great idea for a meeting and you want to share it?
• You know a good speaker with an important message for us?
• You are passionate about a certain topic and want to tell us?

It’s straightforward to organise an online meeting for Labour International; and there are procedures in place to make sure that your meeting won’t clash with a LI business meeting or some other all members event.

Planning

Allow at least 2-3 weeks from scratch – (unless it’s an emergency) – and more if necessary. You will need this time to finesse your arrangements and speaker’s brief.

Choose 2 or 3 dates/times, and check with membership@labourinternational.net that those times are free.

Then, if you have a speaker or speakers, confirm one of the dates with them, and then ask the Membership Officer for a Zoom link and passcode.

You now have your meeting in place, and at this point you should let LIEC know what you are doing, namely policy-campaigns@labourinternational.net and politicaleducation@labourinternational.net and if relevant, any other EC officers.

Draft a notice for communications@labourinternational.net to send to all members via mailchimp.

Allow our Communications Officer at least 10 days notice in order to get the publicity sent out a week in advance. Also, ask for a reminder on the day or the day before, as that can be programmed that at the same time.

It should start with the name of the campaign group or with the name of the branch (unless it is from a LIEC officer). The time should be UTC and if you can manage the world clock timeanddate link, put that in.

The notice needs to be plain text, justified left with absolutely no other formatting. Any formatting preferences (typeface, colour, bold etc) can go with it, or you can just leave it up to Communications to design it. 200-300 words is ok, then any longer documents can be linked to it.

Include your contact details and any photographs – especially of your speaker or related to the topic.
Don’t put ‘All Members Meeting’ in the title – there are legal reasons why you can’t do this. Just put ‘open to all LI members’ prominently in the text below.

At the same time, you can send the information to the branch secretaries and ask them to inform their branch members, or include it at a branch meeting.

If there are any other meetings (ie a GC), make sure you mention it in AOB.

The Newsletter is published at the end of each month, so if the timing is right ask Communications to put the notice in there as well.

Before the meeting

Establish a brief or agenda with your speaker if you have one. Also if you want to record them ask their permission, and send them the meeting notice, the Zoom link and passcode.

Recruit any help you need to chair or moderate the meeting, spot ‘hands up’ etc.

Recording should be on speaker view (not gallery) so you really need someone just to do that.

Make sure you know how to claim the host, and create a co-host as you will need to do this to record the meeting.

Double check all the arrangements!

At the start of the meeting

You must have permission to record the speaker. If you do not already have it in writing, ask them. Speakers almost always consent, but if they do not then their word is final. Let other members know that the recording will be edited and their images and voices will not appear. Then anyone who wishes can switch off their camera and post their comments and questions in chat.

A recording is very useful as it can be posted on the LI website for members who may have missed the meeting, and linked to your write-up of the event in next month’s Newsletter. Whoever makes the recording must become host or co-host on Zoom. You can find out how to do this from Membership.

The released version of the video should be edited down to the speaker only and members’ questions printed on slides (except for anyone specifically agreeing to be included). If you do not have someone with the skills to do this, contact policy-campaigns@labourinternational.net or other LIEC officers who may be able to recruit help.

After the meeting, write a short article about it for the LI Newsletter, with your edited video attached and any other follow-up information and links

An All Members Meeting is run on behalf of Labour International; a Campaign Meeting by one of its campaign organisations. An Open Branch meeting is run by and for the branch (but open for the rest of LI).

The arrangements for the meetings are otherwise much the same.

The routine use of Zoom is one of our advantages as Labour International CLP – let’s use it.