Notes on Meetings

As this blog is now a month old I thought it would be interesting to look more closely at the meeting count to date.

Why the count?

BSF is enormously bureaucratic. At one stage earlier this year we did a rough meeting count and it was well into the hundreds over a period of two years. I thought a meeting count would be a simple way of illustrating how intensive the process is. Admittedly things are particularly busy at the moment, but I think high levels of meetings will continue for at least another year. It would be impossible to keep track of the amount of time consumed by BSF outside of meetings, but it's a lot. Probably at least the amount of time spent in meetings.

What counts as a meeting?

For the purposes of this blog it's any scheduled meeting where the main focus is some aspect of BSF. I haven't counted meetings where it was one agenda item amongst many, and I haven't counted inpromptu discussions, of which there are many. I've only counted meetings involving me, which are most of the meetings related to Stoke Newington School, although there have been a couple of ICT meetings that have just been attended by the Network Manager. I haven't counted meetings that have been cancelled, because that would be cheating. I also didn't count a BSF social event or the session with prospective Headteachers.

What types of meeting are there?

Lots! And to illustrate this, here are some statistics since the start of this blog. Sorry if this is a bit sad. I promise, I do have a life.

Total number of hours spent in meetings: 51
Longest meeting: 4 hours
Shortest meeting: 1 hour
Number of working days since 2/11: 22
Total number of BSF meeting free working days: 4
Most meetings in one day: 4 on 27th November
Number of meetings off site: 7

Meeting Topics: Design & Build 10
Facilities Management 2
ICT 4
Staffing 2
Legal 2
General/consultation 5

And in Conclusion....

.... BSF involves a whole heap of meetings! Of course we knew that anyway. Meetings involving me are a small percentage of total meetings for Hackney BSF, and this really isn't intended to be a "poor me" aspect of the blog. All three Phase 1 schools will be having the same numbers of meetings, and there are masses that go on in the background involving a cast of thousands. I'm afraid this is a process that lends itself to enormous numbers of meetings. Now the cost of these meetings? Well, that's a subject for another post (but one four hour meeting was attended by 19 people).

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 3/12/07 - Twenty-Five