1025 Bonus. This ad-free bonus is part of your Grammarpalooza subscription. Parliamentarian Jim Slaughter and talk about synchronous versus asynchronous meetings, the interesting life of the man behind Robert's Rules of Order, and Jim's book recommendations.
This ad-free bonus is part of your Grammarpalooza subscription. Parliamentarian Jim Slaughter and talk about synchronous versus asynchronous meetings, the interesting life of the man behind Robert's Rules of Order, and Jim's book recommendations.
Jim Slaughter is an attorney, Certified Professional Parliamentarian, Professional Registered Parliamentarian, and past President of the American College of Parliamentary Lawyers. He is the author of four books on meeting procedure, including two recent books updated for the new Robert’s—Robert’s Rules of Order Fast Track and Notes and Comments on Robert’s Rules, Fifth Edition. Jim has served as Parliamentarian for many of the largest associations in the world. An array of charts and articles on Robert’s and meeting procedure can be found at www.jimslaughter.com.
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COMPUTER-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT
OK, and now we're here with our special Grammarpaloozians. Thank you so much for supporting the show, and this is your bonus segment.
So, Jim, let's talk about synchronous and asynchronous meetings.
Jim: We stress a lot of these words are old, but it's constantly evolving. As times change, you have new words popping into parlimentary procedure, and of course, "synchronous" and "asynchronous" have been used in meetings for at least 15 years, but I think all students in the United States have become very familiar with these words because of COVID, and asynchronous or synchronous meeting or just types of virtual meetings. A synchronous meeting is it means everybody's on at the same time just like you and I are on this podcast. You could have a virtual meeting, a Zoom meeting everybody is present. And asynchronous meeting just like with school means everybody isn't there at the same time, and it could be a physical asynchronous meeting that would be that our our church isn't large enough to hold everybody at one time so we're going to have a meeting in the morning, and we're having a meeting in the afternoon.
You can do that with meetings as well or votes where everybody's not on at the exact same time.
And the history of that word … we haven't had many Greek words that you and I talked about but Cronos, of course, was the god of time.
And so "synchronous" just means that the "syn," which is with or together "time."
Well, we're doing it all at the same time. It's synchronous, and the reverse of that is "asynchronous," which means we're not all on at the same time.
So if you tried to do any type of business by email or by text, which you're not supposed to do, unless you have some really wonky rules, that would be asynchronous because you're getting in the morning.
I'm not getting it till the afternoon. I respond in the evening. You're asleep. You get it the next morning. That would be asynchronous. Synchronous would be we're all at the same meeting at the same time.
Mignon: And you are a lawyer too. Are there legal issues with having synchronous versus asynchronous meetings? Like, I can imagine, I don't know, it might be tricky with not having everyone there all at once.
Jim: If you thought talking about parliamentary historical words was strange, we definitely don't need to get into legalities of synchronous and asynchronous, but the main problem is that "asynchronous" means it's not really a meeting.
Because the definition of a "meeting" implies that everybody is around at one time; that they can hear each other, and I can respond to the things that Mignon says, and we can deliberate, and we can talk through things, and who knows, I might even be able to convince Mignon that I'm right about a particular issue.
Asynchronous doesn't work that way because again it's just one-way communication, so most states allow synchronous meetings. For asynchronous, you need some higher authority to even allow it. And even then it may just be a bad idea.
Mignon: Yeah, I can see that.
Yeah, I mean, "synchronous" coming from "time" … there are so many words that come from that root: "chronic" comes from the "time" root, and it's a disease that or something that happens over a long time.
"Chronicle" is another one. A chronicle is a history of events over time.
And one of my favorites is "crony." So you know, you're talking about political cronies. That comes from British school slang. It relates to the idea of people you spent time with at school, and then, you know, still like, we're friends with as you got older. So your cronies were your friends from school originally.
Jim: Didn't know the history connection with that word, and you don't hear it as much. But there's also "chronometer," which I've always interpreted to mean a much nicer watch than I'm ever going to own.
Mignon: Yes. Absolutely. And now so we've got these Robert's Rules of Order, and I did find myself wondering like, well, who was Roberts?
Jim: Interesting background, born in the 1830s in Robertville, South Carolina from a long line of ministers.
He went to West Point and became an engineer. Joined the basically Army Corps of Engineers. In fact, he eventually designed or built the Galveston Seawall as well as the San Juan Roberts Redoubt in Washington, but most people know him because of the book. In 1863, he was asked to preside over a meeting in Massachusetts dealing with arming the city against the Confederates.
It was thought, "Hey that guy's in a uniform. He's got to know how to run a meeting." And he said himself that he prayed to Providence that the assembly would behave itself.
And it did not.
So he decided he would never go into another meeting without reading everything there was to know about meetings, which at that time, pretty much was Jefferson's Manual and some books that just dealt with legislative or state legislature procedure.
So he said, "Hey, there are all these organizations popping up. There's all sorts of volunteer groups that are beginning to be developed. There are these public associations to do betterments. They need to know how to run meetings too. So he wrote his first book on parliamentary procedure in 1876.
I know not everybody will be watching this, but might be hearing about it, but I'm holding up a copy of his original book which was only 176 pages. It's very small; it was designed to fit in a pocket. So, very small.
Mignon: Yeah, it's sort of a reddish brown. It's small; it would fit in a pocket, and it's pretty thin.
Jim: It is pretty thin, and this was designed to help run meetings that were non-legislative at the time.
And then for the last, oh, since 1970 there is a Robert's Rules Association, and about every 10 years they put out a new book that sort of keeps up with what's happening in the world. For instance, the latest edition is Robert's Rules of Order 12th edition.
It's 714 pages long and it has things in it about electronic meeting,s telephone meetings, virtual meetings, electronic voting, and I will just turn it sideways to say it's a much larger book, but but you don't have to
Mignon: Wow, yeah, that's a door stopper.
Jim: It is a door stopper. You don't have to know everything in this book to run meetings. This would answer any question about parliamentary procedure.
Most people just use some pages from this book to have better meetings, but if you need it, it's like a dictionary or an encyclopedia of meeting procedure that there's an answer for almost anything in there if you need to go read it.
I would not recommend reading it from beginning to end. It's not that kind of a book; it's more of a resource, so if you want to learn procedure, I'd say start at my website and then either read my books or some other introductory books, and they can ease you into procedure, and if this stuff really flips your switch, you always have Roberts or one of the other parliamentary books you can go take a look at.
Mignon: Yeah, do you know, was Roberts famous in his own time for the rules of order?
Jim: He was well known by the time he died in 1923, and I'll mention because it depends on where the apostrophe is. His name was Robert, with no S on the end, so when we say, "Robert's," we're saying it was his book, but you're correct most people and they type out Robert's Rules of Order on the internet, there's no apostrophe. The thought is his last name was Roberts, but his last name was Robert.
Mignon: And you said he was from, I think, he was from a town that had Robert in its name. Was he related to the town founders?
Jim: He was indeed, and again from a long line of Baptist ministers his father though as I understand it was an abolitionist Baptist minister in South Carolina, and he again went to West Point and joined the Union army.
There were lots of books actually on parliamentary procedure in the 1800s. My website has a listing of like over a hundred that you could have found.
But I think the reason Roberts won out as he was an engineer, very methodical thinking. There's an orderliness to how he did it. He decided that some motions needed to come ahead of other motions.
If you've heard the phrase that motion is "out of order" almost always means the motion was made at the wrong time because there's an order of precedence of the motions. It is not precedence; that's a lawyer term.
It's precedence because some motions have to come ahead of other motions, and the orderliness, the good sense that he put in his book went a long way to helping him win out over all these other competitors: books that were around in the late 1800s and the early 1900s.
Mignon: I love that he got started because he essentially ran a failed meeting, and then you said I'm going to make this better.
That's great and you said, you know, the "you're the out of order" thing is making me think of movies or something where you see, like, "You're out of order, sir!"
Do you read books or watch movies and find that you see little parliamentary or meeting tidbits that are critical to the plot where you think, "This is my wheelhouse! This is where we're in the media."
Jim: Yes, which I recognize is a little sad, but occasionally, the book or the movie there will be some instance of one of these words we talked about or there was a West Wing episode if you remember back a ways, and in the middle of the night, the president I believe his name was president Bartlett. He needed to figure out how to do something in Congress, and so he said in a shout, "Somebody go find me a parliamentarian!" And that's one of those few times people like me can go "Yes!"
Mignon: I have an urgent need for a parliamentarian. That's great.
Well, thank you so much. To wrap up, we always ask people to give us their book recommendations, and you know this can be in your field, but I'm also interested in if you know if there's a novel you recently loved or even your favorite cookbook so what are your three book recommendations?
It would be everything. I am a voracious reader. I read on the Internet far too much news, but I love reading everything, but because I read so much legal stuff during the day, I find myself at a point in my life where I like to read things that are very not legal or even nonfiction. I was a history major. I love history.
But more lately I find myself I'm going back through Brandon Sanderson's book series. I have just recently read all of the "Dune" books again, and at the same time I've got a Green Egg cookbook next to my bed where I'm trying to learn how to cook things, and so it could be anything on any given evening.
Mignon: Did you say "green egg"?
Jim: A green, yes, a Green Egg kamoda-type smoker, you know, a grill, a smoker.
Mignon: Ohhhh!
Jim: A Green Egg is a type of a cooker, you know, it was green, and so they came up with the name Green Egg, but it would be basically any one of those cookers that is very hard, made out of the space-age materials, and you can either grill on it or you can put something in it and cook it at a very slow temperature for like 10 hours and I don't know how to use it.
Mignon:I thought it was some kind of specific egg, and I thought that is a very niche cookbook. My goodness, well. Now I get it. Thank you. Yeah, make all sorts of good smoked food.
Jim Slaughter, thank you so much for joining us today.
Tell people again what your website is so they can find you.
Jim: www.jimslaughter.com
Mignon: For when you have an urgent need for a parliamentarian. Thanks so much.
Jim: Thank you.