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Best of Communities Magazine

Communities magazine is the leading publication for all topics related to intentional community. From the broad-stroked overviews to the intimate details, this quarterly publication covers it all. With so much content to explore, we’ve distilled it into a single compilation!

Volume IV – Good Meetings

Much of a community’s culture is showcased in meetings—the arena in which the most important decisions are made. In cooperative groups you can tell a lot about a group by observing a meeting.

Community meetings tend to be a much more complex animal than business meetings in the mainstream culture because you are expected to work constructively with the energy in the room, not just the ideas. Savvy groups understand that you need to offer a variety of ways to engage (because no one format works best for all or in all situations) and ways to access emotional and intuitive wisdom as well as rational insight. Humans bring a menagerie of personalities and preferences to the table and it’s an art learning how to make the most of it.

The following 21 articles offer of our best advise for setting up and facilitating good meetings.  You’ll learn about creating structure, making space, taking space, and developing trust so you can have the best possible outcome.

You will recognize authors leading the intentional community movement, representing cutting-edge thinking and how-to explorations of the social, ecological, and economic aspects of sustainable living.

Volume IV includes the following articles:

1. Community Meetings: Getting Off to a Good Start by Tree Bressen, #105
2. Agenda Planning:The Experienced Communitarian’s Technique for Making Meetings Flow by Tree Bressen, #113
3. Facilitating in an Altered State: Trusting the Magic Laird Schaub, #128
4. When Meetings Aren’t Just One Big Circle by Tree Bressen, #127
5. Moderating the Vocal, Encouraging the Shy: Workable Ways to Equalize Participation in Meetings by Tree Bressen, #111
6. False Meeting Economy: Learning When It’s a Bad Bargain to Go Fast by Laird Schaub, #110
7. Second Helpings: When to Talk and When to Walk by Laird Schaub, #129
8. Send it to Committees by Tree Bressen, #121
9. Nine Ways to Develop Trust in Committees in Small Groups by Sharon Villine, #119
10. Pulling Proposals out of a Hat (or Some Orifice) by Laird Schaub, #140
11. Poor Minutes Lead to Wasted Hours: Keys to Effective Notetaking by Laird Schaub, #129
12. Who Says I Can’t Participate? Issues of Inclusion and Exclusion in Ecovillages by Beatrice Briggs, #114
13. It Works for Us! by Kat Kinkade, #109
14. When People Miss Meetings by Rob Sandelin, #109
15. Things you (as a participant) can do to improve meetings by Paul Delapa and Betty Didcoct, #109
16. Working with Difficult Behaviors in Meetings by Rob Sandelin, #104
17. What Do You Do When …? by Beatrice Briggs, Tree Bressen, Laird Schaub, #129
18. What to Say if Someone Questions the Value of Process by Laird Schaub, Beatrice Briggs, Tree Bressen, #132
19. Business and Well-Being by Tree Bressen, Laird Schaub, Beatrice Briggs, Caroline Estes, #140
20. Best Meetings by Tree Bressen, Beatrice Briggs, Laird Schaub, #141
21. Group Works: A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings by Chris Roth, #156

You can have ALL the BEST

Volume IV is part of a 15-volume compilation of the Best of Communities magazine. The set includes over 200 articles about intentional communities from the 1990’s and 2000’s. Purchase the entire set and save!

Communities magazine is now published by GEN-US

For over 30 years, the Foundation for Intentional Community had the pleasure to publish Communities magazine.
Although we are no longer its publisher, Communities is still alive and thriving with GEN-US. Subscribe to the magazine today!