So I start my first meetup on Saturday, eek. I have 11 sign ups and can easily fit about 10 - 12 of us in my apartment so I will make one more try tomorrow to find a meeting space at a library ($10 an hour) and then plan for it at my apartment if not. I have several people coming who I know in real life so I can feel comfortable with that, a few new faces, but still ok. If I rent a space I am going to promote to more people at my school as well. Either way I will have a suggested donation for space and meetup cost.
Advice is welcome, I am planning on leaving 15 minutes for everyone to find the place and get settled. A 15 minute or less formal introduction with a question about what we bring to our work and practice. Then 20 minute sit. I was going to put together a 20-30 minute presentation on the current state of mindfulness in education. We can have a nice long time for discussion and then food of course. I want to wrap up with some next steps, was the amount of time good, do people want a regular presentation by me or to rotate, space and date and time of course, then what we would need to charge to make sure that we are covering costs and offering something to the presenter for that meetup.
I feel pretty strong in facilitation. I have been one of 4 of us in my meditation group for the last couple years. I had a person last Monday who was getting us off track but was pretty okay until the end when he said something that I had never heard in 30 years of study, and it seemed to be a way to either show how smart he was or just to take us off into someplace weird. I shut it down, but my co-facilitator found it nice and skillful. My role as a facilitator is to hold that space for discussion and practice so at times we need to re-direct a person or the group. Before we had our group of 4 there was one guy who took over the group with conspiracy theories and dominating conversations.