Town hall

When to use it

A community has a live disagreement (a facility, a development, a service change, a budget choice) and the standard public meeting format is failing. In that format the microphone rewards whoever is angriest and most available, the quiet majority stays quiet, and the organization leaves with a transcript of six people. This session gives every person in the room the same channel and the same weight, and it produces themes the residents named rather than a staff summary of comment cards.

Do not use it as the statutory record for a process that legally requires a written submissions channel or proof that named individuals were consulted. It sits alongside those, never instead of them. And do not use it when the decision is already made; a community can tell, and it will cost the convener more than the session is worth.

The question

The hardest and most important part of this guide. A town hall question that contains a position produces a fight about the position.

Seeds:

• What matters most to you about how this decision turns out, whatever is decided?
• What would you want the people making this decision to understand about living here?
• What are we at risk of losing, and what are we at risk of missing?
• What would make you feel this process had been fair, even if the outcome was not what you wanted?

The question that fails: anything containing the proposal. "How should we improve the proposed development?" assumes the development, and half the room will refuse the premise, correctly.

The symmetry test, applied out loud: read your question and ask whether someone on each side of the disagreement could answer it honestly without first conceding the other side's premise. If not, rewrite it.

Session settings

• Participants: cap at 100
• Anonymous participation: on, and it is the reason the quiet half will speak
• Raffle: off. Collecting names at a contested public meeting is indefensible
• Blind gather: on
• Blind then reveal voting: on
• Shuffle order: on
• Access after finish: on

Run of show

Ends at: Resolve, the closing segment, when this is the community's one meeting on the question; end at Evolve instead when it is the first of several and the room should choose what the next one asks.

Facilitator notes

This is the room where the correction drill matters most, and where it earns the most. Strong opposing positions on the same subject will land in one cluster, and in a contested meeting that looks like the machine taking a side. When it happens, name it immediately and use the recovery line: the software groups by topic and cannot hear that people disagree, which is exactly why the group does this step. Splitting that cluster in front of a sceptical room is the single most credibility-building thing available in this guide.

Read the unclustered items aloud, with one exception. Skip anything abusive or naming a private individual, say that you are skipping an entry and why, and note it afterwards. Silently omitting things in a contested room is how a facilitator loses the room permanently.

Do not let the numbers become a result. Someone will ask what percentage supported what. The honest answer is that this is a room of self-selected attendees, not a sample of the community, so the themes are real and the proportions are not a measurement of public opinion. Say it before they ask.

Have a second person in the room if at all possible, watching the room while you watch the screen. Co-facilitation is not supported in the software, but a second human at the venue is worth more here than anywhere else.

What the group leaves with

The themes residents named themselves, what resonated across the room, the disagreements preserved rather than averaged away, the open items nobody could group, and a record of what the software proposed and what the room changed. Residents can request the report themselves, without an account.

The failure mode

The room decides the session is a manipulation, usually in the first fifteen minutes, and usually because of the question. Once that judgment forms it does not reverse, and the convener wears it afterwards.

Prevent it in three places. In the question, which must pass the symmetry test. In the opening, where naming what is already decided is more disarming than any assurance of neutrality. And in the Emerge step, where letting the room overrule the software in public is the proof that the process is not steering them. If it happens anyway, stop the process and ask the room directly what would make this fair. Sometimes the answer is usable and sometimes it is not, but asking is the only move that is not a defence.