Energising meeting

I am not fond of meetings, in fact I avoid them if I can. I'm thinking general business-type meetings. However yesterday I chaired a day-long meeting and had a fabulous time. I was still buzzing at 10pm! 

Today I tried to explain to my 17 y.o. why I enjoyed it so much. He struggled to understand. I think it was a combination of factors:

• collaboration on a creative project that you are passionate about is energising, 
• everyone at the meeting was passionate about what we are doing and were there because they wanted to be,
• everyone is committed to doing a quality job and improving every issue we put out,
• so often I'm struggling on my own trying to make decisions for this magazine, it was wonderful to have a roomful of people to consult about decisions that are hard,
• we're a Virtual Team, as in we all work from our own locations and not at a central location, it was exciting to get everyone together at the same place at the same time, and



Simon, one of our editors.

• our team is made up of volunteers, many of whom are very pressed for time, so our interactions are usually very much about business, it was fun to have time to get to know one another aside from the urgent business at hand yesterday.

Oh, and it is a little bit fun being in charge of a meeting. You don't have to patiently wait for someone else to draw people into line, you can do it yourself (and I, being not fond of meetings, prefer to move things along fairly quickly.)

Another thing that was especially satisfying about yesterday's meeting was getting people together who had never met before, yet had been working "together" for months or even years on this magazine. Plus, people, who've experience friction because of communication issues, coming together and getting along. 

It was also an answer to prayer. I pray regularly for the magazine and my team, to see answers to prayer, especially about interpersonal relatioships, was very exciting. Now I'm praying that this will positively effect our work from now on. Not that I expect everything to be perfect, but perhaps a few less bumps along the way?

I'm so thankful at how it all worked out. I've been thinking and planning for this meeting for months. Just thankful.