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Bullpen meeting

The simple solution to scale your Bullpen meetings

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What is Bullpen?

This template is built to help foster a company ritual that we call Bullpen.
A bullpen is a multi-threaded meeting.
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The term "bullpen" is often used metaphorically to describe an open workspace where employees work closely together, often in a shared area without individual offices or cubicles. This template is designed to cultivate a similar dynamic in a hybrid work / distributed work setting. The Bullpen should be implemented for all employees within a specific team, department, or the entire company. At Coda, we regularly run a Bullpen with over 200 participants, occasionally covering as much as 50 different topics. This template helps to make Bullpen effective and scale it to large groups of people, by scheduling topics for discussions that can be of different length and finding time during the bullpen meeting for everyone needed for the topic. A Bullpen can be run as a one-off (e.g. during OKR planning, as in my
Planning Handbook
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) or as a weekly recurring meeting. At Coda, the entire company blocks of time a weekly 1h Bullpen. Topics are added and scheduled in advance, in 15 minute blocks. Participants can join any topic, or skip the meeting if not requested for any topic.
This template features the ability to:
Add topics to a schedule
Recommend slots when your attendees are available
Assign breakout room numbers for each topic
Track notes for each meeting directly within the topic row

Ready to get started? → Go down to “
⚙️ Getting started & Setup
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“ to setup this doc.

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Current Bullpen Schedule

Bullpen runs from
12:00 PM
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to
2:00 PM
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— 
Join the Zoom
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(
✏️ Edit timing or Zoom here
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).
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Ready to add a Bullpen topic?

Add topics via the “Add Topic’ button at the top right of the table
Write your topic
select your attendees - you can select the attendees needed for the topic to be discussed, and optional attendees. The tool will try to schedule them, but not block on them not being available at the time.
Select a meeting length in 15 minute steps.
Click “Schedule” to book a slot where all attendees are available (and if that is not possible, only the needed and not the optional attendees)
Keep your meeting notes in the Notes column
Check the box in the ‘Done’ column when your topic has been discussed, to remove it from the list of active topics. You can find all completed topics further down on the page.
Current Bullpen Topics
2
Done
Created on
Attendees Needed
Attendees Optional
Search
Done
Breakout Room
Topic
Length
i
Attendees Needed
Attendees Optional
Double booked
i
Schedule
Slot
Notes
1
1
What impact do social media platforms have on mental health?
AC
Alan Chowansky
JD
Joel Davis
LT
Lola Tseudonym
BD
Buck Dubois
MJ
Mary Jones
​
Scheduled
12:00 PM
Open
2
2
What do you think is the most important issue facing our society today?
AC
Alan Chowansky
BD
Buck Dubois
MJ
Mary Jones
​
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Scheduled
12:15 PM
Open
3
3
"Exploring alternative work schedules and their impact on productivity and employee satisfaction.”
AD
Adam Davis
LT
Lola Tseudonym
PR
Polly Rose
AD
Adam Davis
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Scheduled
12:15 PM
Open
4
4
"Exploring the benefits and drawbacks of remote work for both employers and employees”
AD
Adam Davis
FM
Felix Marlin
JD
Joel Davis
LF
Lawrence Fitzgerald
LT
Lola Tseudonym
MM
Maria Marquis
PR
Polly Rose
BD
Buck Dubois
​
Scheduled
12:45 PM
Open
5
5
How can we improve communication and collaboration within our team?
FM
Felix Marlin
JB
James Booth
JD
Joel Davis
LF
Lawrence Fitzgerald
MM
Maria Marquis
MJ
Mary Jones
FM
Felix Marlin
​
Scheduled
1:15 PM
Open
6
6
"Exploring the benefits and drawbacks of remote work for companies and employees”
FM
Felix Marlin
LF
Lawrence Fitzgerald
LT
Lola Tseudonym
JB
James Booth
​
Scheduled
12:30 PM
Open
No results from filter
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Optimize Schedule

This button reschedules all meetings, aiming to ensure all participants are available. If that's not possible, it will prioritize the availability of the 'Must-Have' participants.' This button is also useful if a lot of topics have changed the duration needed. If there are conflicts, it prioritizes older topics over newer topics.
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Optimize Schedule
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zoom

Zoom Breakout Rooms

To manage many parallel meetings over video conferencing can be challenging. We recommend to use a single Zoom link for the entire bullpen, and to create breakout rooms in Zoom for the individual topics. The template automatically assigns a breakout room to each topic. If you want to reassign breakout rooms, use this button.
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Reassign Rooms
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All Completed Topics
2
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⚙️ Getting started & Setup

Start Time
​12:00 PM
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Duration of Bullpen
0
2
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hour(s)
Zoom/VC link of Bullpen
​
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Update Timeslots
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Slots
0
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View of Bullpen Topics
2
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