Determining topics for future meetings

After last week it became obvious that we needed a better way to select our future topics. Norm, Ron and I were joined by Vince and Tim after today's meeting and came up with this approach.


1) Each topic will be given two weeks. It seems that the first discussion is just a warm-up. We would not really dig into the topic unless we had a follow-up week. We could vote to continue a topic for a second week, but the voting process is problematic. Since all of our topics are broad, it was decided that it would be easier just to give each topic two weeks, an Overview Week and a Zoom-In Week.

We just finished the Overview for ObamaCare. We had several discussion points that we could have reserved for the Zoom-In. I picked three which seemed to resonate with the group. So here is the plan for next week:

Topic for 9/26 Zoom-In Meeting
Zoom-In on ObamaCare with focus on:
1) Free preventive care, a good thing or just more opportunity for over-diagnosis
2) The 30 million Uninsured, do we need Single Payer?
3) ObamaCare politics

Just as in the first meeting, other ObamaCare related topics or general health topics are on standby if we need more material. But it seems that should not be a problem for our group.


2) Future topics will be selected by the facilitator from a candidate list The decision will be based on a survey. Here is our draft list of candidate topics. You can suggest changes to the list by commenting on the blog or by sending me an email. The list will be final on the day before the meeting and be printed as the survey sheet. At the next meeting, members can indicate their preference by ranking the topics that they care about.

On the survey, you can also indicate if you are willing to be the topic leader. If you volunteer to be the topic leader, your topic will be given preference. As the topic leader you can do what I did, which was just create as list of talking points to stimulate discussion, or you can define your own format. Those not able to attend the meeting can indicate their preference and willingness to be topic leader by sending an email.

Four topics will be chosen to cover the following eight weeks. This will allow us to publish a schedule. If this process is satisfactory, we can repeat it every eight weeks.