What-you-need-for-your-book-club.md

What you need for the book club - processes and planning

Preparation

Materials

• Choose whether you want everyone to read the same single piece or have a variety of sources. DataKind UK’s initial plan was three materials (One book, 1 article, 1 paper) connected by an overarching theme which encompasses all three texts (and changes each month). In practice, we found more than three sources most times, and sometimes chose to focus on a single “main” piece.
• Consider access Not everyone wants to buy a book. we made sure some/all materials were free each time, and also made people aware of loans between community members, library use, etc. for books. Some attendees shared a book copy and shared reading duties!

What makes for good materials?

• Range of lengths
• Range of technical degrees of difficulty (a news article can be just as revelatory as an academic data science article, and vice versa. This also applies to academic philosophy or sociology articles).
• Range of media. We used books, online articles, videos, etc. We also used fiction and poetry as well as reporting.
• Range of perspectives. DataKind UK ethics committee made an effort to look beyond what was coming out of US institutions. We didn’t always succeed, and would like to cover more of a global perspective in future (looking for writing out of the global South more). Also this can be creative - a review article that quotes a lot of others will work!

Schedule

• DataKind UK went with approximately every 6 weeks with some tweaking for availability and venues, etc. Choose topic for next book club Decide timeline for planning next topic, venue, facilitators, materials and publishing event page Add to trello Calendar (power up for Trello)

Location

• What sort of event is it?
  • One location in person only?
  • Remote only?
  • Multiple locations?
  • Asynchronous? (e.g. a month-long slack discussion or twitter hashtag)
• If in-person:
  • Who are the hosting venue? If it’s a sponsor do due diligence for their reputation, accessibility of the room, inclusivity (are there gender-neutral bathrooms?) etc.
  • Will the host expect to speak to attendees about their awesome company and how they’re hiring? Set aside time.
  • Check on capacity.
  • Check on entry requirements (Does the building have a real name policy at security? Do people need ID? Do they need to be escorted through security individually so you have to factor in that time?)
• If remote:
  • Decide if via teleconference (and with/without video) or some public/invite-only text service like Slack or twitter.
  • Especially relevant for remote events. Are details sent out? have you updated software? are there any limits on time or number of joiners? Do you need video? Do you want to have private subrooms available?
• If Asynchronous:
  • Can be good to start the discussion with a few internal folk first.
  • Allocate individuals to days for checking the discussion, moderating, and kick-starting it again if needed.
  • DataKind UK hasn’t done this one yet. We consider it an option for the future though!
• Combining Locations:
  • This is theoretically possible but having most people in the room and a few on a call and them trying to talk to each other is hard. It can be unavoidable in work meetings but in a social book club where you’re wanting small-group discussions anyway? It’s eminently avoidable.
  • DataKind UK coped with this by:
  1. having small group discussions anyway so that even those in the room were split out
  2. making the remote small group discussion completely separate from the one going on in the room, with its own facilitator and sign-up. This meant we could have tweeting at the same time and a blog write-up including any discussions that had gone on, but didn’t have to bother as much with technology and communications.
  • This may be needed if you have an author giving a talk for example, but treat that as a one-off session.

Prep for the event

• Invite people!
  • If within your community only, Slack/newsletter/Meetup/in-person spruiking.
  • If public, Twitter, open Eventbrite or Meetup events, etc.
  • In sufficient time that they can read materials.
  • Plan for no-shows. For free public events via platforms like Eventbrite and Meetup we got around 50-70% attendance (varies with weather, public transport outages, etc). For an onsite work event with colleagues and free food, attendance would be higher.
• Create and disseminate any pre-work
  • Do you want people to think about any specific questions in advance or even to discuss them ahead of time? Some book clubs have pre-meeting questions for consideration or set up an active discussion (on Slack for example) before the event. DataKind UK considered but never actually did this (yet!), because of the load on volunteer committee members and because it seemed like many attendees of the book clubs read things at the last minute!
• Decide on host/s and ensure enough potential facilitator/s.
  • We found that small groups (5-9) were the best size for discussion and allocated facilitators accordingly (allowing for no-shows as above).
  • Same host every time? rotating host? choose!
• Decide on Designated Tweeter/s (DTs)
  • We found that people who are engaged in discussions don’t tweet. That’s great as it means they’re engaged with the actual community around them. However, if you do want to show what’s happening and open it up for other perspectives, having 1-2 folk who roam between small groups and tweet what they hear, while taking a less active role in the discussion themselves, is highly recommended.
  • At DataKind UK the staff mainly took on the role of Designated Tweeter - not only did they have access to the org twitter account, but it meant they could jump between all the groups and get a sense of multiple discussions!
• Plan snacks
  • If at a location. Super important! Snacks help reading clubs succeed. Do try and ensure budget for snacks/drinks, if possible, or ask people to bring something if they can, as an alternative (obviously without any pressure, compulsory food-bringing sounds like a bad idea!).

On the Day

• Getting Ready
  • Print things. Do you need a list of names to sign people in? Large signs pointing along corridors? Hard copies of facilitator notes? Get those things!
  • Get snacks, drinks, cups, nametags and pens.
• Use the Hosting Guide.
• During Discussion
  • Keep someone monitoring the door for latecomers (and/or the social media for people complaining the teleconferencing link is broken…).
  • Make sure Designated Tweeters are tweeting.
  • Use the Facilitator Guide.
  • Break for snacks!
• Ending the Book club
  • Do you want to have groups report back to everybody? If so, each small group can nominate a speaker to report e.g. 3 key answers to discussion questions or top interesting debates in their group.
  • Announce topic for next book club.
  • Give people a chance to come to the staff and talk about any discomfort they felt, how to be more inclusive etc.
  • It can be useful to have a pub or cafe in mind to gather afterwards for people who want to keep chatting - especially if you’re on location in an office and have to be out at a set time.

After the Book Club

• Do you want to build a survey?
  • Maybe you want to survey attendees for feedback to improve the book club in the future, or simply to get new ideas for topics or materials. This will need to be designed via one of the many online tools. IF you have consent to contact people, we suggest surveying the next day while people still remember the evening clearly!
  • And of course have a look at the survey results and decide whether to make changes.
• Summarise and Publicise
  • You should have found people interested in blogging at the event or from your team. Plan for deadlines for drafts/comments and edits/publication.
  • Publish!
  • Improve this repo ;)

Longer-Term Planning

• DataKind UK Ethics Committee used Trello to keep a list of potential book club topics and materials. This helped us plan in advance.
• Because we were a volunteer committee, we had book club topics and materials only one event ahead each time. It would be possible to plan an entire syllabus for a year (with flexibility for new articles!) if you wanted to.
• It would be possible to do a lot more pre-event work around e.g. discussion groups on Slack for conversations as people read, warm-up questions posted to attendees the week before, summaries of longer works, etc.