Conversation Starters/Survey Questions

Conversation starters for Recruitment:

• How did you get here? Who recruited you? Did you volunteer? Where did you learn about TAC/Councils?

• What is the biggest barrier to entry to join your team?

  • What can we do about that (blue sky thinking)? i.e. if I could give you anything, what would you ask for? You may bend the rules of physics, capitalism, space, and time in this answer.

  • What can we do about that more practically?

• What do you feel comfortable with in your responsibilities and what do you not?

  • Not looking for only leadership concerns here, which have been noted elsewhere, but the nuts and bolts of the work.

• What have you learned on TAC that you didn’t know before?

• Would you recommend serving on TAC? Why or why not? Focus on the ‘why not’ if you have any. 

Conversation starters for increasing Visibility:

“Community” is defined broadly as any user of ArchivesSpace, not limited to just creators of archival description and not limited to those who are part of member institutions.

• Do you have any ideas for increasing the visibility of TAC/UAC and our work to the community? This question is purposefully broad.

• Is there anything you wish the AS user community knew about the councils or the work?

• Do you wish you could engage the community more directly in your work on councils? What answers would you like from the community?

• Have you ever reached out to the community for council work? For example, have you ever posted a question to the listserv to help address a work item for your sub-team(s)? Does that sound like a good idea or a bad idea and why? If you have done so, did it help, or was it successful?

• What about the opposite: There is a risk of too many voices on a single topic. Please feel free to discuss the idea that engaging the community might be problematic for your work (too many chefs). Are there too many community thoughts in your work on councils, or too few?

• Is there anything you want to show off from this term or from a prior term?

• Is there anything you wish the board knew?

  • Reaching outward is one thing, but reaching upward is another.

  • TAC and UAC Chairs provide quarterly reports to the board and have a board representative. In addition to summaries, we may also raise concerns and ideas. Did you know that? Now that you do, would you raise a concern or an idea to the board?

Conversation starters for Improving workflows:

“Workflows” can mean: how your team works; how work is tracked, assigned, and managed; how tasks get scheduled. Note that Communication is important to any workflow, but it is a separate topic (below), but maybe it isn’t actually a separate topic…

Attention is being paid to the fact that those serving in first term will have different takes on this topic than those in their second year and beyond. We’d love to leverage that difference in experience and see if improvements are happening.

• For people in their first term (and those with long memories):

  • How did the beginning of your term go? Were you lost? Did you feel supported? Did you know what to do and when?

  • What do you wish you could improve about the workflows in your sub-team? This survey is anonymous, so that isn’t a trap that will obligate you to fix it.

• For people serving their second+ term:

  • What has improved in terms of workflows since you joined TAC?

  • What didn’t improve for workflows? Specifically, what’s a problem/annoyance/roadblock you faced in the past that is still here?

• All respondents:

  • Open comments on any topic related to workflows. Be generous with your own definition of what workflow means, i.e. anything related to getting the work done. This could be resources available to you, communication channels, real life conflicts, confusion over tasks or the organization of information.

  • Would you have appreciated hearing from last term’s sub-team as work began on the new term? i.e. would you have liked to have members of the 2020-2021 team on the first or second call for 2021-2022?

Conversation starters for Communication:

Communication refers to Communication within your team or within the councils; for communication with the community, please consider filling out the Visibility survey.

• For people in their first term:

  • What do you wish you could improve about communication in your sub-team or in council? This survey is anonymous, so that isn’t a trap that will obligate you to fix it.

  • Are you clear on the the goals of the team you’re on and your role in that work? Was the clarity hard to come by? Alternatively, were you clear from the start?

• For people serving their second+ term:

  • What has improved in terms of communication since you joined TAC?

  • What didn’t improve for communication? Specifically, what’s a problem/annoyance/roadblock you faced in the past that is still here?

  • How did scheduling go this term/how is it going? Were meeting times settled quickly or were they something you had to return to?

  • Do you have any ideas for improving scheduling? What tools have you used outside of your TAC experiences that may help? i.e. is there a better future than Doodle?

• All respondents:

  • How did your team communicate outside of meetings? Email? Comments in Jira tickets? Did your team start a slack or a discord channel? Now that I asked, do you wish you had one? Alternatively, are you glad you don’t?

  • Open comments on any topic related to Communication. Be generous with your own definition of what workflow means, i.e. anything related to getting the work done. This could be resources available to you, communication channels, real life conflicts, confusion over tasks or the organization of information.

Notes on conversation starters

The question “Do you know someone who hasn’t served but would be a good fit?” was removed from the Recruitment section.

Should we do this on a rolling basis? Can we guarantee continuity for that effort?