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Beyond Labels will restart next Monday, October 12, in a virtual “Zoom” format.

After resisting the move to a virtual platform for months, the pressures to restart our discussions and (what I hope has been) our community’s growing competence with “Zoom meeting etiquette” have combined to convince me that it’s time to revive Beyond Labels.

Registration

Each week’s session will require registration via the Blue Hill Public Library website, with the total number of participants limited to 15 each week. To register for a given week’s session, you can visit the BHPL upcoming events page or its full event calendar. After registering, you should receive a confirmatory email with the Zoom link and a reminder the day before each Beyond Labels session.

Given my continuing concerns about the online format, I hope that “a goodly number” of Beyond Labels regulars will register early–at least for the first few sessions. I do want to make sure the standards and protocols we developed over the years will be maintained. As with the physical sessions, Beyond Labels meetings are open to anyone.

I look forward to speaking with [up to 15] of you next Monday. (We haven’t set a topic for Monday, but it’ll certainly be related to politics and our upcoming election.)

Scott

The Library has asked whether our group would like to conduct our meetings “virtually” while BHPL is closed to the public.

Personally, I am not a big fan of the virtual format for discussions like ours, and I would not be inclined to participate. Although I am generally a technophile, I think that having meaningful discussions of difficult topics doesn’t really work when we’re not physically together–no “body language” feedback, too many background distractions, etc.

But if someone would like to lead a virtual initiative, I encourage you to contact Hannah Cyrus at the Library to get the information for their “GoToMeeting” account. And I’ll be happy to help publicize the information on the Beyond Labels website (if you don’t know how to do it yourself).

People seem to be less and less involved with the decision making processes of local government. Under 10% of town residents come to the annual town meeting. Even fewer people come to select board meetings until something makes them angry. I hear a victim perception from people I generally run into about town decision making. Is this a problem or the way things are? Are we moving towards a business model only of town management? Are there things we should be doing to increase participation?