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Progressive Stack
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Stack

Many TWC chapter meetings using a technique called Progressive Stack to manage the order of who speaks during a discussion. Below is a brief summary of why and how it works.

Principles

Stack is intended to make group discussions more equitable to prevent a small group from dominating a discussion. A person, the stack-taker, manages the stack and is in charge of deciding the order of who speaks next. In particular,

  • Prefer to hear first from people who haven't spoken yet, or don't often speak.
  • Prefer to hear first from marginalized people who may otherwise be silenced, ignored, or discouraged by "they who shout loudest" or "first come first served" orderings.

Relatedly, registering a desire to speak should be a low-friction one-time action. For example, briefly raising a hand and attracting the attention of the stack-taker, rather than needing to hold a hand up until the current speaker has finished, which may not be possible for some people.

In addition to a facilitator and minute-taker, we recommend having a third person to manage the stack.

In-person

For in-person meetings, a person registers their desire to speak by raising a hand. If they want to interject or talk about a current point, they can raise both hands. When someone finishes speaking, the stack-taker chooses the next person to speak, returning to the facilitator if the stack is empty.

Remote meetings

Taking stack has challenges in remote meetings, as not every participant will have video, it's hard to keep track of everyone's videos at once, and so on. Below are some procedures and tips we've found helpful managing the stack for specific remote meeting tools.

Zoom

A person can "raise a hand" by:

  • Raising their hand if they are on video. This is not possible for people without video, and may be infeasible for large meetings.
  • Using the Raise Hand feature in Zoom.
    • NOTE: Meeting hosts cannot use the Raise Hand feature, so will have to use some other mechanism to raise their hand.
  • Using one of the 👏 or 👍 emoji overlays.
  • Posting in the chat that they would like to speak.

The person taking stack should then post changes to the stack in the chat. For example,

*person A raises hand*

stack-taker: "stack: A"

*person B raises hand*

stack-taker: "stack: A, B"

*person A talks*

stack-taker: "stack: B"

*person B talks*

stack-taker: "stack:"