nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

of our terrain? What do we need (competences, tools, infos...)? To preparemeans to ask oneself a series of questions, organising a terrain and alsolearning to prepare.progression: where are we and where are we going? A meeting is part of aprocess. It punctuates its course and allows for the collective shaping ofa future.objectives: What are the objectives of the upcoming meeting? Clarifying theobjectives helps us to signpost the terrain. Those objectives have a manifoldcharacter. They point as much to the content (to arrive at a decisionabout something, for instance) and to the process (how will we get to it?)as to that which will be learned (what are the effects of our ways of doingthings?).articulations: what are the articulations we need in order to allow for a pluralityof objectives to exist? This question marks a moment of vigilance:we know how the majoritarian way of cultivating meetings proceeds viaan almost exclusive attention to ‘contents’. This point is there to remindus that if we push too much for one thing, we kill off the other. ‘Content’,‘process’ and ‘learning’ are three different aspects that traverse meetingsat the same time. Each requires their specific rhythm in order to composewith the others.timings: how much time do we have (for the meeting and for all the discussionpoints)? What are we capable of getting done in that time? Taking thesequestions into account will influence the outcome of the meeting. For example,if we overload the agenda this may cause tension in group membersand black out a number of issues that seem, in one way or another,to slow down the ‘efficient working’ of the group.procedure: how are we going to do it? This is about anticipating the differentpaths that each of the discussed ‘points’ will open up, and about imaginingthe articulations amongst those. The important thing here is to proposea way of exploring this/those situation(s). That’s to say, to envisage themultiplicity of possible approaches and then choose the one that seemsmost appropriate and interesting. No certainty at all, just the affirmation ofa hypothesis, a tentative to test it and to learn.needs: what do we need? At the level of content: do we have the necessaryinformation? Do we need any particular inputs before or during the meeting(people, resources, texts...)? At the level of process: what do we needin order to support ourselves (roles, artifices, wallpaper...)? At the levelof atmosphere: how do we tune in and prepare the space? The lighting?What will happen before and after the meeting?67