This is the first of several posts on the 6/9/20 Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Quality of Life meeting, the first ever virtual meeting, held on Zoom. The second concerned the timing for new construction. The third concerned neighborhood checkpoints.
It was going to be messy, wasn't it? Empire State Development, the state authority overseeing/shepherding Atlantic Yards, isn't known for transparency, and in this case beforehand failed to share an agenda or a protocol for the meeting.
That's a departure from past practices, as shown in the screenshot at right.
So the hour-long meeting, though surely better than no meeting, suffered in several ways. There was no video of speakers, just audio, and attendees were muted throughout.
We couldn't see who was at the meeting, and how many. (Only at the 48-minute mark of the meeting, which lasted little more than an hour, did we learn that peak attendance was 41.)
More importantly, we couldn't see the questions posed by others in the chat, or judge whether they'd been answered.
While presenters did answer most of the questions I posed, including those sent beforehand, in one case moderator Tobi Jaiyesimi simply ignored my question, declaring that there had been no more questions pending for Barclays Center spokeswoman Mandy Gutmann.
During the meeting, responding to questions regarding why participants couldn't view the chat, Jaiyesimi offered a non-answer: "this is our first virtual Quality of Life meeting, and to ensure we have a format that is as expeditious and responsive as possible, this is the current set-up."
She said they'd take into consideration suggestions about how to improve it. Ok, in an effort to make it more like an IRL meeting, how about:
That's a departure from past practices, as shown in the screenshot at right.
So the hour-long meeting, though surely better than no meeting, suffered in several ways. There was no video of speakers, just audio, and attendees were muted throughout.
We couldn't see who was at the meeting, and how many. (Only at the 48-minute mark of the meeting, which lasted little more than an hour, did we learn that peak attendance was 41.)
More importantly, we couldn't see the questions posed by others in the chat, or judge whether they'd been answered.
While presenters did answer most of the questions I posed, including those sent beforehand, in one case moderator Tobi Jaiyesimi simply ignored my question, declaring that there had been no more questions pending for Barclays Center spokeswoman Mandy Gutmann.
Going forward, better practicsOr they can ignore a question#AtlanticYards @pacificparkbk— Norman Oder (@AYReport) June 9, 2020
and no answer re the biggest questions about neighborhood lockdown, ceding that to NYPD
During the meeting, responding to questions regarding why participants couldn't view the chat, Jaiyesimi offered a non-answer: "this is our first virtual Quality of Life meeting, and to ensure we have a format that is as expeditious and responsive as possible, this is the current set-up."
She said they'd take into consideration suggestions about how to improve it. Ok, in an effort to make it more like an IRL meeting, how about:
- unmuting participants so they can speak, when called on, and thus ask follow-up questions
- showing who's present
- making the questions public in the chat
- providing an agenda
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