Hello @reef-recruitment,
Thanks a lot for that proposal.
I personally don’t see the coherence between “we will organise the next two presentations” and “we will not organise any after that until it’s clear we are.” I will not object, but my concern is that bringing in people at this moment might be counterproductive, because it may give a false impression on the risks of our project. My personal advice would be to put everything on hold until the PV of the réunion de projet comes in, but I’m happy to go with the collective wisdom.
One point where I would like to bring in a concern is about the plenary meetings. I think it is a really good idea to make it explicit that we may have quite some “full members only” plenary meetings. The reassurance that I would like to get is that there won’t be any pressure (like we have had in the past) à la “we need to invite them because we owe it to them”. As soon as one person has a preference for a full members only setting, I think we should follow through on that. So I would like it to be made clear to the new members that we are not in a regular working methods mode, and that we won’t consider like we owe them access to the plenary meetings.
We are possibly going into the most difficult moment that The Reef will go through in its entire history, and I would like to have all the energy and liberty to take care of the current group without having to worry about Associate Members for whom we might not have a space anyway. Writing down my thoughts like this I am realising that if I’m really honest, taking on new Associate Members is actually a tad outside my range of tolerance. Thinking back of how difficult things have been 12 months ago when we were working on the plans, my appetite for doing that with people who might not even be able to join is close to zero. It’s risking to get really difficult, and I personally think that the benefits of pausing for two months are well worth it. I won’t be there tomorrow, and I reckon I’m a minority view on this topic, so I’m happy to stand aside as long as we can re-evaluate as soon as there is the slightest sign that the new members come at the cost of the current group coming to conclusions on the new plans.