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Meeting Paper

A City of Troy finance committee meeting was chosen to help me gain a better understanding of a meeting's dynamics. I found out about the meeting through the City of Troy's website. The meeting was on the third floor of City Hall in Troy and started at 6pm. The room was small and it really seemed to get smaller as the people started to file in. I thought the temperature in the room was a bit on the warm side but not too the point of being unbearable. I was in the meeting room about 20 minutes before the scheduled start of the meeting.
When I entered the meeting room I immediately noticed the beautiful view of the Hudson River to the left of me. This view put me at ease. A second after noticing the view I observed a round table in the middle of the room with twelve chairs around it. The chairs were almost touching one another. On the immediate right there was pen marker writing board on the wall. Also, there was an American flag and little garbage can in the little space between the door and writing wall. On the far side of this wall were two zoning maps of the City of Troy. I did not recognize what these maps stood for until I actually went over and stood in front of them to observe them. This wall was than intercepted by a wall that ran to the left that connected to the window wall. A small T.V. on a stand, coat rack, and about a dozen chairs stacked up on top of one another was on this wall. In front of the area where this wall connected to the window wall there were about three chairs where one could sit as well. I chose one of these particular chairs to set in due to the fact that I was here only to observe and not participate. There was a round light hanging from the ceiling above the round table and lighting above the windows to illuminate the meeting room (see drawing of room).
Two men were the first to the meeting a couple of minutes before 6pm. They were talking to each other and then when they saw me they stopped talking. I got up to...