"Six community-building event lessons" that we generally ignore.

There are good points in this article pertaining to how to get things done with meetings. I've culled the six lessons and provided bullet points. How often do the many merchant/community meetings in New Albany take these into consideration?

Six community-building event lessons learned from the Good Hundred Experiment, by Tad (The Local Good)

Lesson #1: Have a clear objective and perspective
There are few things worse than bringing together a group of amazing people and saying, “We should all do something together. What you do you all think it should be?” That way lies madness. You can get away with that move once. Maybe twice. But after that, your credibility is gone. Those events are largely a waste of people’s time.

Lesson #2: Pick your people carefully
Over the years, I’ve learned that, outside of a clear intention based on a need in the community, 90 per cent of an event’s success is about who’s in the room.

Lesson #3: Have a clear schedule and structure, but don’t overschedule
If the focus of the day is clear, it’s much easier to create the schedule and flow of the event.

Lesson #4: Uniqueness is not a weakness. Diversity makes us stronger.
We believe that diversity gives us more points of view. It makes us wiser and our solutions better. It helps complicate things in the most wonderful way. It gives our projects and perspective subtle nuances they would never have had before.

Lesson #5: Celebration!
It can be easy to get caught up in work, work, work. But so much of the glue that holds communities together comes from informal socialization and celebration.

Lesson #6: Reflection — bringing in the harvest
We take time regularly to reflect on our event. What went well? What went poorly? Ask for feedback.