"Far as I can tell, the best trick is for everyone to be really, really busy. Herald meetings are a lot more efficient, none of us want to spend any more time on it than necessary." 

"Huh, I'm not sure that's a panacea, academics get busy too, but they also care a lot about being understood, which tends to make them wordy whenever someone doesn't seem to get it."

"Some of us can get like that, but in general we'll try to split up and have just the people who are actually disagreeing stay behind and hash it out, if they still want to." 

"Oh, that's clever, I don't think my department ever tried that."

"I think meetings are just better the fewer people you have, then it's more like a normal conversation." 

"I don't think there can reasonably be a 'just' about it, there has to be some reason more people is worse - like, lectures work, probably something to do with the lecturer doing all the talking and controlling the flow of questions, right, and those can scale up to hundreds of people -"

"That's an interesting point. I guess part of the lecture format is that everyone expects the teacher to do most of the talking, none of the students are going to feel slighted that the teacher's getting more attention than them. Er, at least if they did they'd be a pretty annoying student. And it's not hashing something out in real-time, you know the lesson and you're teaching it to people who don't know it yet. I think the Council meetings that go best are the ones where we just need to call a vote on some proposal and it's all written up already, so Randi or Tran are doing most of the talking and just fielding questions, it's almost more like a lecture than what I would call a normal meeting." 

"Except half of them do feel like they should get their say and make some changes, and then they fight about it for four candlemarks." 

"Maybe it'd work better if they did that in some other format?"

"I bet we could stand to make the process more efficient and, er, less frustrating. That's the kind of meeting I really hate. We could try to do more optional meetings beforehand that are just for everyone who wants to come to say their bit, and then the full meeting is only for signing off on it?" 

"Puts two meetings on the docket for whoever's got to be at both but saves time for those who don't, not sure how good a trade that is."

"I'm not sure either, but if it made the second meeting take a candlemark instead of four then that'd be pretty useful." Vanyel yawns. "I should probably call it a night soon. It'll be another long day tomorrow." 

"Good night! Try not to dream about us, it would be even sillier than usual!"

"It'd be so silly!" Vanyel agrees. 

Savil rises as well. "Night, everyone." 

Leareth takes Belrun's hand. :A reasonably smooth first day, I think: 

:Yup! I like my note format:

:I am very pleased with your note format: He's been using his own shorthand, well-honed over a very long time, but hers is more customized for this particular use. 

Their guest-room is not vastly spacious, but it's comfortably furnished and there are already lots of wards on it that the mages he brought have set up. Leareth casts some more anyway. 

She doesn't object to this, just waits for him and snuggles up when he comes to bed.

Snuggle!

:Love you: she tells him, and she falls asleep.

The next morning, breakfast seems quiet. Savil is up, sitting with tea and looking at her notes, but she looks kind of pale and is occasionally coughing into a napkin. 

"Are you okay? I've been assuming you'd bring some Healers along but if you left them all at Haven I'm better than nothing..."

"Oh, I don't think it's anything serious. We did bring Healers but I didn't want to bother them just because I'm coming down with a cold or something." 

"I Heal myself at the first sign of a sniffle so maybe I'm not well calibrated on it," says Belrun dubiously.