OpenSliding into Democracy

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Hello Comrades!

As you all know, at our last general meeting, the chapter debuted a new online meeting organizing tool: OpenSlides. This was our first run with OpenSlides, and we did have some important success with it. We were able to successfully reach a quorum of people logged into the OpenSlides and capture a record of the most important vote of the meeting – amending our quorum requirement in the chapter bylaws. However, the rollout of OpenSlides was a little bumpier than it should have been.

There was not enough attention paid to educating members on how to use OpenSlides and preparing other volunteers to assist in administering the meeting through OpenSlides. As a result, we had to fall back on the expert meeting management skills of some of our veteran members who had to act heroically on the fly to make sure we could carry out the rest of the meeting. I can imagine how they felt, being put in that position, and have endless admiration for their ability to keep calm and land on their feet in a high pressure situation.

As the person who took on the task of readying OpenSlides for the meeting, this is on me, and I want to do a better job of making sure members are prepared to use OpenSlides at our next General Meeting in July. Recording Secretary Michael offered the next Steering Committee Meeting skillshare for an OpenSlides tutorial. He and I will also be preparing dedicated reference resources, and planning more trainings leading up to the July meeting to make sure that members have what they need to be comfortable with it going forward. After it was successfully employed at the 2023 DSA National Convention to keep a meeting of more than 1000 members on track, the national org has made a big investment in moving the org towards using OpenSlides. So it’s going to be an important tool for members to be familiar with if they want to participate in the org beyond the chapter level, and we want to make sure everyone feels like they are being set up to succeed with OpenSlides.

I look forward to seeing as many of you as can make it to any training we will be holding leading up to the next general meeting. If you had any problems logging in, or did not receive an invite to OpenSlides, please reach out to me at the member data email address below, if you haven’t already. Thanks everyone!

In Solidarity, Matt O

Member Data Coordinator

memberdata@twincitiesdsa.org