FreethoughtJournal.com

Meeting practicalities for freethought forums

For more background, see Freethought forums for the advancement of evidence-based rational beliefs.

The term "freethought forums" is nothing more than a descriptive label for an interactive, participatory type of small-group meeting focused on freethought.

There is no organisation and no entity name for the group of people meeting.

Meetings are private (even if held in public places) and only for people aged 18 and up, and participation is by invitation only. Only people who are known to existing members who have attended at least one meeting can be invited. The inviter should familiarise the invitee with what the meetings are about and how they work.

Members receive notice of upcoming meeting times, venues, and RSVP dates. Venues may be anywhere in the Sunshine Coast Region, but are more likely to be more often in or near Buderim than anywhere else. Members should respond by the RSVP dates in case numbers affect venue bookings or whether the meeting will go ahead. Inviters should ask invitees to respond to the RSVPs as well. Meetings are cancelled after the RSVP deadline if fewer than four people have indicated they will attend.

Meetings are not necessarily held at a regular time or place, and usually no more often than about once a fortnight. They may be at a variety of times such as 7pm on a weeknight or any time on the weekend, both for variety and to suit different kinds of venues. Venues may include members' homes, restaurants, cafes, parks, beaches, small meeting halls or rooms, and the like. Members are free to indicate what days or times wouldn't suit them so that a good range of meeting times can be planned.

Meetings should usually go for no more than about 2 hours, and will often be a lot shorter. So no more than 10 people should present talks, which may be rare anyway, and a lower limit may be considered if the 2-hour duration is reached too often. Participants are free to bring their own food and drink and are free to eat at any time before, after or during the meeting, regardless of whether the meeting is at a mealtime.

Meetings start with 15 minutes of snacking and mingling, followed by a maximum 10-minute ice-breaker activity involving everyone mentioning their name and saying something about themselves, followed by a 2- to 5-minute pep talk by the meeting host, covering some aspect of guidance on the freethought focus and times and venues for future meetings.

Those wishing to present a talk then indicate their interest in doing so, and draw numbers to determine the order. They each speak for 2 to 5 minutes, with a warning beep at 4 minutes and a final alarm at 5 if they reach those durations. Each speaker's timeslot is followed by a discussion and question time of up to 5 minutes. Unfinished discussion can continue informally after the meeting.

If all speaker and discussion times finish before the end of the available meeting timeframe, numbers can be drawn by any speakers who have a second prepared talk (which must be on a different topic from their first), to determine an order for a second round. Once all talks and discussion times end, or at the end of any talk in progress after the meeting's 2-hour mark is reached (whether in the first or latter rounds of talks), the talk presentation time ends and final announcements begin, when anyone can spend up to 1 minute each updating others on their recent freethought activites or inviting others to join them in upcoming ones.

The organised part of the meeting then ends, and people are free to continue talking informally as long as they wish, within any limitations of the venue, or up until a suggested limit of 9.30pm if the venue is a member's home on a weeknight.

Members may be invited to be a host for an upcoming meeting, which simply involves managing the venue and timing of the meeting and moving the meeting through its stages, including running the ice-breaker, doing the pep talk, and paying attention to things newcomers may not know about how the meeting works. Hosts are encouraged to appoint a backup host in case they are sick or otherwise unable to attend. Backup hosts don't need to prepare a pep talk, but should be ready to convey any information passed on to them about future meetings.