Source of MLC Town Hall Meetings (and why they are a good place to start)


  So you found out about us — the MLC community. 

You probably only joined recently and felt like you've missed _everything_.<br>
You probably got overwhelmed by all the platforms: Discord (and the tons of channels and thousands of messages flooding it everyday), email group, YouTube, Twitter, and this Wiki...<br>
You probably joined with a specific purpose (e.g. publishing your first ML paper, finding your first external collaborator, wanting to give back to the ML community) but don't know where to start.

Worry no more! We are hosting recurring **Town Hall Meetings** to fill you in on:

 - What is MLC
 - What has happened in the past
 - What is to happen in the near future
 - What are concrete ways you can contribute to all the happenings (_Be the change you want to see!_)
 - And most importantly, how can we help? (We are a non-profit whose sole purpose here is to connect resources to great causes, in this case, people in need.)

Other ongoing topics:

 - What kinds of structure on Discord make sense to you? E.g. what channels are missing, redundant, no longer useful? What roles make sense to you?
 - How can we make it easy for newcomers to navigate the space?
 - What do you imagine this community should be, or could be?
 - How can we make it easy for volunteers to take on tasks in community building?
 - How do we reward members who contribute in research and community building?

For each topic, we would either have options for you to vote on, or we would openly ask for your input and make options, and eventually decisions on the spot. A big part of the Town Hall is just all of us collectively typing on a shared doc. So, it is a [participatory planning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_planning) event where not only we want you to _attend_ to stay informed, but also we want to you to _speak_ and _act_ to stay engaged! We will also hear from current active members of MLC: Admins and Mods on the Discord, as well as leads of interests groups on what actions they've been taking to keep the community alive. It's a party!


### Upcoming Town Hall

* 8th Town Hall, March 17, 2024, 10am PT (already on the [Events Calendar](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=e4p5s7715ersqsoet6cq4509q0@group.calendar.google.com))

### Past Town Halls
* 7th Town Hall, November 5, 2023: [slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1izG0sCCHKhJvodlO-U5QGVhQ0wtLtJJEYuEYq3UCuuU/edit?usp=sharing), [notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lnmtgQvVxg0rfEUe_73afVBubVGG1uQyM02E19dWMIM/edit)
* 6th Town Hall, May 21, 2023: [slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Uq6rNkUujDjuU2xOKVWY3EFudSn4CfrxeYXKkAMe5SI/edit#slide=id.p), [notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JLfeCjyJLFvbv56M3MCP9KIyWKuFzEP8ZiJxMYNUFYY/edit#heading=h.yqmfl3rn1p6u)
* 5th Town Hall, November 6, 2022: [slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-9vnC1HQDbEkWwYR4jFDZy49m_BmeRCu9Nx7HPfZXqo/edit?usp=sharing), [notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UwFxsUI0cfKSOUJkCCBB75RKl8QH_UEWVMDBmGRVWGY/edit#)
* 4th Town Hall, July 10, 2022: [slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1J6dXZbb9qGC8eDDdAJ7KU5NkjZ4JGSvQwah09RdlSUE/edit#slide=id.p), [notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sExUpnHSetmIiiC6Ef7_pvGHccVLCgUaCjNM3CrX-ak/edit?usp=sharing)
* 3nd Town Hall, May 1, 2022: [slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HUIotckqIjTAEDX53h8AclpuntOJ6QeclBoQfivbRlA/edit?usp=sharing), [notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TPmE4S_9-ST0LFLAfsu4ym9ZCdA9o78EKDnrCHTxzqo/edit?usp=sharing)
* 2nd Town Hall, January 16, 2022: [slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WLHCEIk7y_Zn2VPPzdWsyFWNueZ3ay55ASYyqEe2hi4/edit#slide=id.p), [notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hm9-_toanZlzysnAswlr82F8W9nS9UZikVTlx2SsUMk/edit#).
* 1st Town Hall, October 24, 2021: [slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16IFEfXODSc0VFBxu_aAV-NV30NepBeAkasjExDe1eyg/edit#slide=id.p), [notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mrGf6NcEeGslBMQpH2gnap7TruaSdmEvwtaq4khWpow/edit#).