The Dispatch / Running your first town hall
Running your first town hall
Room, agenda, timekeeper, follow-up. The four things that separate a meeting from a nice chat.
Most first town halls fail in the same way. Forty people turn up, everyone talks, nobody writes anything down, and there is no second one. Four decisions prevent that.
The room
Book somewhere slightly too small. Thirty people in a room for forty feels like momentum; thirty in a room for two hundred feels like failure. Chairs in a shallow arc, not rows — people talk to a room they can see.
The agenda
Ninety minutes, published before the night, and stuck to. A working shape: fifteen minutes on why everyone is here, thirty on the issue with someone who actually knows it, thirty of open floor, fifteen to agree what happens next.
The timekeeper
Somebody other than the person chairing holds the clock and is allowed to interrupt. Give the job to whoever is least worried about being liked. Two minutes per speaker from the floor, enforced from the first speaker so it does not look personal later.
The follow-up
The meeting is not the product. Within forty-eight hours everyone who came gets one page: what was decided, who agreed to do what, and the date of the next one. Without that page, a town hall is an evening out.
One more thing: take the sign-up sheet seriously. Names and emails collected on the night are the only asset a first meeting reliably produces.