When a meeting isn't a meeting.  And when one is.
 
As a kid, our parents and aunts and uncles and teachers and religious leaders always taught us how substance is far more important than appearance.  It was a good and important lesson.  It's true.  I teach it too.  You know the truth of it intellectually, but that knowledge doesn't usually stick in your heart or your gut.  We always seem to suppress or forget the lesson till we see a rare example of it.  I recently met a man who embodied it.
 
Recently, a regional chapter of an organization I belong to had one of its routine dinner meetings and guest speakers.  The guest was, to my surprise, a globally successful but, to most of us, virtually anonymous and invisible tech entrepreneur, semi-retired, who has a residence and small, nominal branch of his family of businesses in, of all places, Iron Mountain.  He's been here for decades.  I'd heard of him, but didn't know him personally.  From what I gathered and have since been able to research, despite an eye-openingly vast and varied background of learning and experience, the primary thrust of his work is communications and networking.  Or it's these things that make his many other extensive activities in charities, arts, human rights, and disaster relief possible.  Ha!  You never know who's right under your nose and what they're doing!
 
His prepared speech about the history and today's pervasiveness of the Internet was short and relevant, informative and interesting enough.  But it was when we got into the Q&A session that a brief and pointed presentation he made really rocked me.  Rocked us.  Because it was something so jarringly matter-of-fact and true and all of us have just complacently (and disturbingly) been failing to see it.  We were discussing the importance of communication in civic involvement.  Poor attendance at municipal council and board meetings as well as at school board meetings came up.  One woman asked if he attended these regularly where he lived.  This is where it got riveting.  I started shorthanding as fast and as accurately as I could on my BlackBerry.  I'll have to paraphrase most of what he said and trust that I don't misrepresent him.
 
He said not anymore, not regularly.  At least not currently.  To him, a meeting by definition is an occasion at which two or more parties gather to communicate about one or more topics.  Then he proceeded to explain how municipalities and school districts (he included as examples from our immediate area the City of Iron Mountain and School District of Breitung Township) have engineered what they now call meetings to meet the minimum legal and public-relations requirements, but to exclude genuine communication with the public.  That way they don't have to bother with any exchange of information they feel is unnecessary, and they don't have to bother with those people outside the currently official power circle who wish to exchange information with them.  Including open public communication clutters their agenda and threatens movement on their immediate interests.
 
Engineering these so-called meetings, he pointed out, is like sterilizing a healthy young couple of newlyweds -- the parties can still get together, but they're not going to produce anything new and vital.
 
Why is this elimination of communication among parties important? he challenged us.
 
Well, if from nine-to-five daily you have an unresponsive, uncommunicative management staff with whom you and no one else from inside or outside the municipality or school district can deal with, then the municipality or school district becomes incestuous, inbred and self-serving, unhealthy and dysfunctional.  At council and board meetings, it's impossible for anyone to perform the nuts 'n' bolts of business that is supposed to be performed with and by the management staff and committees during daily work hours.  But it's being ignored by the management and committees during daily work hours!
 
Ignore the public's nuts 'n' bolts during the work day.  Impossible to accomplish those nuts 'n' bolts in a so-called public meeting at night ... That's right: as a result of this setup, any valid public business that a city council and its management or a school board and its administration choose to ignore will not receive attention and will not get done.  They've deliberately engineered it to be that way.  And there's no good reason -- that is, no healthy and productive reason -- for it to be that way.  Not in a democratic society.  If they want secrecy, they can adjourn to Executive Session or hold other appropriate and legal meetings among themselves at other times and places to handle confidential matters.  A public meeting, however, should in fact be a public meeting.  The public and its representatives should be able to converse.  To communicate.  Directly.  Question and answer.
 
Important as this problem is, he continued, it's minor compared to the greater direct and practical damage that is being done to the general citizenry of a city or school district -- and therefore the entire welfare of the city or school district -- by these engineered meetings or, rather, by gatherings "sterilized" of give 'n' take, robbed of open communication.
 
If you can't communicate, you can't learn.
 
If you can't learn, you can't make an informed decision.
 
If you can't make an informed decision, you lack the power to choose wisely, to choose in your best interest.
 
If you lack the power to choose in your best interest, those holding the power can and will choose to deceive, manipulate, and exploit you in an effort to serve their interests.

So no, except on rare occasions for specific reasons of learning this, that, or another particular item about something, or to study the phenomenon, he doesn't currently attend these gatherings that those running them call meetings.  Spending his time at them is fruitless.  He explained to us that he can spend his time more profitably and democratically at the local political level by finding, supporting, and promoting council and board candidates who, instead of shunning and victimizing their fellow citizens, will re-open communication and subsequently be both open with the citizens and representative of them.
 
Then he turned the tables on us and asked how we felt about it.  Amazingly, after awkward minutes of stuttering and stumbling about, not one of us (106 in all) disagreed.  (A first!  A miracle!)  At least not openly.  It seems we all felt much the same as he did, but weren't aware of it and had never articulated it.  This gentleman had distilled our feelings and given words to them.  And afterwards it dawned on us that tonight we, at least, had truly had a meeting, as our chair recognized and thanked him for.  Just that realization was kind of cool.  He is the only speaker I remember us ever having to whom we gave a loud and long standing ovation.  And if I've represented him accurately, you can see why.
 
Moreover, it was fascinating to listen to this man and watch him walk through the intelligence of his convictions with a quiet and persuasive passion.  With an unassuming and attractive matter-of-factness.  No bull, no sophistry.  No arrogance, no condescension.  No false charm, no showy and distasteful and repellent salesmanship.  Just perfect sense, right out there in the open for everyone to reach out and share.  All substance and the ability to display and express it.
 
Now what I really want to know is why the guys like this aren't running for office and governing us.  At all levels!