Communication and Information Flow

Example – Setting up monthly Activist Advisory Board meeting 

1. Coordination Team Meeting scheduled over email & recorded in calendar

(top layer being the high level workplan >> decides frequency of Coordination Team meeting > > decides Coordination Team members)

• BigBlueButton: designated meeting room is set up
• Files:
  • Running notes documents are set up along with the agenda for the meeting
  • Other documents relevant to the Coordination Team meeting
• Email: Automatic reminders are set through Nextcloud calendar which are received over email
• Mattermost:
  • Asynchronous Coordination Team channel is used for reminders, follow-up, reschedule, file sharing and agenda reminder
  • Links are shared before the meeting with Coordination Team channel
  • Tagging and direct messaging features

2. Coordination Team meeting takes place, weekly.

• BigBlueButton: meeting takes place in real time
• Files: Running notes maintained during the meeting, action points identified (e.g. organising the next Activist Advisory Board meeting)

3. BigBlueButton: Meeting room dedicated to Activist Advisory Board meetings is set up

4. Monthly Activist Advisory Board meeting dates are recorded 

On Nextcloud (file space) calendar:

• with description
• and BigBlueButton room link

5. Activist Advisory Board mailing list (mailing group) created – Email 

6. Activist Advisory Board files sharing group created – Files

7. Activist Advisory Board folder is created - Files

• Contains agenda and notes document
• Other relevant documents such as workplan, survey questionnaire etc
• BigBlueButton meeting recording links

8. Activist Advisory Board channel is created – Chat

9. Activist Advisory Board Signal group is created - Signal

10. Email is drafted by Coordination Team member(s)

• Files: draft is created in Onlyoffice and stored in Files
• Mattermost: asynchronous coordination of finalising the draft takes place in the Coordination Team channel, sign off is received to send the email on Chat

11. Email: Coordination Team member sends the email to Activist Advisory Board mailing list/group

• Calendar invite is attached with BigBlueButton room link
• If translation is required, the email body text is translated using tools such as Deepl
• Files links are included for meeting related documents

12. Signal: set short reminder

Simultaneously short reminder is sent on Signal to the Activist Advisory Board group to bring attention to the email and to check spam folder

13. Files: Email text is filed

• in a ‘correspondence’ folder;
• and ‘templates’ folder

14. Email: Confirmations

Confirmations are received from Activist Advisory Board member over email for the meeting date

15. Signal & Email: Send reminder

Reminder about the meeting is sent over email one day before and on Signal on the day of the meeting, preferably an hour before the meeting starts

16. BigBlueButton: Activist Advisory Board meeting takes place in real time

Meeting is recorded if consented to, for folks who may not have been able to join.

17. Email: Follow-up email

Follow-up email is sent to Activist Advisory Board with agreements and action points along with links to meeting recording.

18. Signal: Send reminder

Simultaneously short reminder is sent on Signal to the Activist Advisory Board group to bring attention to the follow-up email and to check spam folder.

19. Coordination Team meeting takes place

Action points from the Activist Advisory Board meetings are brought back into the Coordination Team meeting process to close/continue the loop.