Meeting Room
The first thing to do is find a place to meet. There are many possibilities: local community centers, schools, churches; restaurants often have back rooms available for meetings; perhaps one of your members has a garage that could be used for the meeting.
Chairs
What kind of chairs? Folding chairs are convenient to store away if that needs to be done. Chairs with arms are more comfortable.
How many chairs? That of course depends on the number of members. In fact, it turned out that the number of chairs dictated the number of members for the group at the New York Athletic Club. The room they started their meetings in had 17 chairs in it. That number capped the number of members allowed to join. A waiting list soon built up.
How to arrange the chairs? In a circle? Or in rows? Or around a table? You can spice things up by changing the arrangement of the chairs from time to time.
Refreshments
Serve coffee and tea — decaf most likely? Or, if there’s a Starbucks or similar place nearby, rely on members bringing their refreshment in from the outside?
If you serve coffee and tea at the meetings, there will of course be the fun of washing up. Dull Men like to do the washing up. This means ceramic coffee mugs, not styrofoam cups, should be used.
Blackboard
A blackboard can be nice to have available. Members can use it when explaining things.
Audio and Video
Also nice to have audio and video facilities. Members can show pictures of their collections of things (coat hangers, toothpicks, restaurant menus, etc.) or of themselves enjoying some safe excitement (watching paint dry, raking leaves, mowing lawn, etc.).
WiFi
Having WiFi available can be a good thing. If an argument breaks out about a particular fact, a member can pull out a laptop and google for the answer. This will dull down the meeting — arguing can get members riled up.
Storage Box
If you don’t have exclusive use of the meeting room, you’ll probably need a storage box to store things you want to have available in the room for your meetings.
Certificates and Wallet Cards
We are developing “Certified Dull” wallet cards and certificates to be mounted on walls that local groups can hand out to members. We have a certificate you can download now, click here to get to it. We will be refreshing it soon.
Dues
If there is rent, refreshments, etc. to pay for, dues will probably need to be collected.
If there are dues, you’ll probably need a treasurer to count the collections, deposit the cash, pay the bills.
You can have another member or members to double count the collections. This is not because you don’t trust the treasurer; it’s because Dull Men like to count things so this will spread the fun around to other members.
Topics
Click here to get to our blog posting of suggestions for topics to discuss at your meetings.
