Meeting Etiquette Louise Suter, March 12th The three House Office - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Meeting Etiquette

Louise Suter, March 12th

The three House Office buildings are connected by underground tunnels. Similarly, the three Senate Office buildings are connected by underground tunnels. You are encouraged to use these tunnels to go between meetings to avoid having to go through security again. Please note that in order to walk from the House buildings to the Senate buildings, or vice versa, you must walk outside. You cannot use the Capitol Building’s underground tunnels unless accompanied by a Member of Congress or congressional staff.

Visiting offices

• You will need to go through airport style security, food, bottles of

water, laptops are ok

• Remember there will lots of walking and you may need to carry lots
• f packets with you.
• Dress: Business professional.
• Be sharp and well-groomed. It communicates respect, i.e. you

respect them enough to take the effort to present yourself well.

• Don’t try to be flashy
• Don’t change/finish dressing in the offices/halls (e.g. shoes, ties,

jackets – don’t laugh, it has happened more than once before!)

• Don’t wear anything political (e.g. a red tie is OK, a red tie with a

pattern of little elephants is not. A U.S. Flag pin is OK, a U.S. Constitution tie is a little too far)

• You will need to go through airport style security, food, bottles of water, laptops are ok
• Line may be long
• If you leave if can take a while to get back in
• If you can try to cluster meeting on house or senate side.
• Use the tunnels to go between buildings, by going down to the basement
• You will also find cafeteria- our general meeting place - plus gift shop, coffee shop, post office
• Can be confusing! Keep checking the map
• There is also a train to go between house and senate side
• Mixed opinion on how useful that this.

Important! For Rayburn and Longworth first digit of room number is building number 2 = Rayburn, 1 = Longworth i.e. 1314 is 3rd floor of Longworth Cafeteria under Longworth

House side

For House offices, you can tell the building and floor by the room number. Cannon House Office Building (CHOB)

• Any three-digit room number
• The first digit indicates the floor
• Example: 327 CHOB is on the third floor of Cannon.

Longworth House Office Buildings (LHOB)

• Four digit room numbers beginning with “1”
• The second digit indicates the floor.
• Basement room numbers begin with a “B”.
• Example: 1223 LHOB is on the second floor of Longworth.

Rayburn House Office Building (RHOB)

• Four digit room numbers beginning with “2”
• The second digit indicates the floor.
• Basement room numbers begin with a “B”.
• Example: 2449 RHOB is on the fourth floor of Rayburn.

Dirksen and Hart are basically the same building Also cafeteria (and gift shop) in the basement both better than the house side Cafeteria under Dirksen

For Senate offices, you will need to know the building as well as the room number. In all buildings, the first digit indicates the floor. Dirksen Senate Office Building (DSOB)

• Three digit room numbers proceeded by “SD”.
• Example: SD 145 is on the first floor of Dirksen.

Hart Senate Office Building (HSOB)

• Three digit room numbers proceeded by “SH”.
• Example: SH 320 is on the third floor of Hart.

Russell Senate Office Building (RSOB)

• Three digit room numbers proceeded by “SR”.
• Example: SR 216 is on the second floor of Russell.

Note: Meeting in Capital are rare, but rules are stricter. You will need an appointment and they will call to confirm when you try to enter No food or drinks allowed

In teams of two we visit offices of congresspeople and representatives, generally meeting with staffer. Call primary and secondary Bring with us a packet of material on HEP, to help support

• ur message and your discussion

10

Go to each meeting in pairs

• Primary: the tripper with a connection to the member or district.

Responsible for “running” the meeting. 
 This is the person who should do most of the talking (the one with whom the member scheduled a meeting and wants to listen to!)

• Has to do research on office!
• Needs to make notes on each meeting immediately after you

leave, to be submitted later as a meeting report.

• Secondary: Plays a support role in the meeting: fill in a little in

areas with more expertise than primary, keep a somewhat detached eye on the meeting (are the staffer’s eyes glazing over? Wrap up and make a graceful and grateful exit.), etc.

• You should also take notes and submit trip reports

Meetings with Senators and Representatives offices

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DC trip wiki

• Please make an account, it has lots of useful in on the trip
• Its important that we have everyones on the trip contact info so you can contact

your primary/secondary if something goes wrong

• Please go here and fill in your details http://www.fermilab-uec.org/mediaWiki/

index.php?title=TripAttendees2017

• Email me if you can’t edit the pages and I can change your account preferences

12

Dress nice, wear sensible shoes

• Dress code is business
• That means ties if wearing a suit
• There is a lot of walking be prepared
• You may have to carry 10+ packets around for

most of the day, bring a (smart) bag

• Most people wear a suit, if you don’t own one

ask a friend if you can borrow one.

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Dress nice, wear sensible shoes

14

If you have uncomfortable dress shoes consider bring a second pair to wear while walking

• Also consider bringing
• Water bottle - lots of talking
• Watch - easy to check time with out puling out your phone
• Phone charger/battery pack - you will need to be contactable
• Bandaids - have your worn in your shoes
• Spare tights
• Breath mints
• Deodorant
• Notebook and pen - decide on your best way to quickly take notes
• But do not bring a huge bag of stuff! You will be on your feet for a lot of the day and mostly you will retreat

it

• Some people bring laptops
• Great for additional research, reading notes on districts
• Can add a lot of additional weights
• tablets, if then have them, can be a nice compromise
• Note: there is no where to print on the hill (we know about)
• Be careful of branding. Look at your stickers on your water bottle or laptop, if political in any way. Don’t

bring it.

• DO not wear partisan badges, ties, hats.
• Wifi passwords: House: HousePublic , senate: Public???? (changes often)

Should be warmish May rain Will be cold at night, will probably want a coat and an umbrella

• It is very important to practice. Recommend practicing with non

scientists

• Research your offices!
• What is in their districts
• Look what policies are important to them
• The staffers job is to meet with people visiting the Hill like you all day
• These people are from a wide range of topics, teachers, doctors, vets,

gun control eta.

• You want the staffer to remember you and to think that your ASK to work

bring to the congresspersons attention. You want them to advocate on your behalf to the congressperson.

• Not all office will have HEP as a priority. Most office will agree that its

worthwhile but if you can make a connection beyond that this will go a long way

Meeting with congresspeople

• Most meetings will not be them
• First of all be thankful and respectful
• These might go a little different than normal.
• If you do have them scheduled be aware they might be longer than

normal unto an hour

• These meeting might go off topic more than with the staffers, go with the

flow, pull it back to the HEP as much as you can

• If they say things which are incorrect about science, do not tell them

they are wrong

• This is your opportunity to make a long lasting connection and

advocate for HEP in congress.

• Be excited about your work and physics and make a good impression!

Researching the offices

• This is the primaries responsibility
• Read the trip reports on the wiki and on whips
• Look on their website - what do they list under issues - look for science, stem, national security eta
• use it to steer the conversation to something they care about if needed.
• State/District Funding: VERY important. Find the DOE and NSF funding for the state. This

information is crucial for them to justify support in many cases.

• DOE HEP - department of energy high energy physics
• DOE SC - department of energy office of science
• NSF MPS - National Science Foundation, Maths and physical science
• This is broader than the scope of our advocacy but our ASK is an all NSF ask and does let

you tie back to smaller districts without a research program in them.

• Michael Baumer’s HEP funding tool – this gathers HEP related funding data very conveniently.

However, one caveat: the “SC Contract” numbers do not include university grants from non- HEP DOE SC offices (e.g. Nuclear Physics, BES, etc.) https://mbaumer.github.io/ us_hep_funding/

• https://mbaumer.github.io/us_hep_funding/

You must print this information and bring it with you! If have a meeting on senate include all info on the state If visiting on the house side include info just on that district Rob and Breece have sent nice formatting

Fermilab procurements

• These sheet only breaks things down

by state.

• Expect to get asked what this was

spent on. We have this info. You can follow up via email with this

• For 2018 and 2017 we have this broken

down by zip code (see wiki)

• This is important for districts, they

will want to know how much went to them.

• You can look up the zip codes for

your district

What Fermilab brought from around the country

Researching the offices

• Committee/Subcommittee assignments: Make sure you know all of their. This tells you

their primary legislative interests.

• Info is on WHIPS
• Remember the 8 most important subcommittees with obvious relevance to us:
• DOE Appropriations:
• House Appropriations/Energy & Water Development
• Senate Appropriations: Energy & Water Development
• NSF Appropriations
• House Appropriations/Commerce, Justice, Science & Rel. Agencies
• Senate Appropriations: Commerce, Justice, Science & Rel. Agencies
• DOE Authorization:
• House Science, Space & Technology/Energy
• Senate Energy & Natural Resources/Energy
• NSF Authorization:
• House Science, Space & Technology/Research & Technology
• Senate Comm., Science & Transp./Space, Science & Competitiveness

But others like Homeland Security, Defense, Agriculture, etc. will help guide you in connecting with them and their priorities.

What to expect

Meeting Duration: practice/prepare for the right time

• A typical meeting will run about 15-20 minutes or so. Your baseline,

practiced talk should conform to this.

• If meeting is with offices on non-relevant committees, or with members

themselves, may be shorter so know how to condense your spiel.

• If meeting is with Big 8 office, could easily go longer.
• Prepare for what else you want to cover if you have more time.
• Be aware of this when scheduling meetings, i.e. don’t schedule another
• ne 30 minutes after this one in another building.

Big 8 Subcommittees: know if your Primary is on these!

• Meetings with these offices may be at a significantly higher, more

detailed level.

• Some of these staffers (particularly those whose members are Chairs or

Ranking Members) know areas of our program better than we do.

• Get to the meeting 10 mins early.
• Meet your secondary OUTSIDE the office. Do not go in until you are both there and its time for your

meeting! Do not go more than a few mins early.

• You should brief each other in that 10 mins
• Who you both are, what you work on, details about the office and our connection to it
• Get your self ready for the meeting OUTSIDE, change your shoes, make your you have the right packet

and business cards, eta

• If your primary/secondary is not there, all/message them. If you are late and on your way let your primary/

secondary know. Only if there is no other option will you go in alone.

Walk to desk. State who you are and who you have an appointment with Hand them your card. You are then likely to wait for a few mins Once staffer comes out. Shake their

• hand. THANK THEM.

Office can be very busy, you may up meeting in many weird place. Exchange card with staffer(s). Generally this is when you sit down for the meeting, but could be when the first come meet you While waiting remain

• professional. 


DO NOT talk politics, bad mouth the state, the office the decor. Once you are in that office treat it as part of the meeting

Having an effective meeting

• Pick a Packet Item: use it as the focus of your meeting, Likely the main brochure

and use it as a guide for the meeting.

• Don’t try to get through everything
• Know the Rest: Familiarize yourself with all the packet materials
• Use specific items to connect to that office’s interests
• Be ready to pull out something in response to questions
• Find Your Passion: What about our story gets you fired up?
• People tend to support happy, positive people. They won’t get excited about

something that you are not obviously excited about.

• Make the “Ask”: Make sure they know the bottom line
• Use it early up front you never know if your meeting may need to end

suddenly , close with it, be ready if they ask for it

Meeting Etiquette

• First: Thank staffer for meeting with you and introduce

your self

• Second: Thank congressperson (get their title right)
• Third: Tell them why you here. This is the ASK, can be

weird to give this up front, but this is their job.

• ASK is congressional support and funding for DOE HEP

and NSF.

• Forth: Now tell them why they should support the ASK.

• All way stay on message
• Its ok to discuss your home collage team or something from that district to make a

connection to the staffer, but you must keep coming back to HEP.

• You are representing all of HEP, and do have the ability to do damage to our field and our

funding

• Do not discuss politics. If you support it or are against it does not matter, if they strongly

anti science does not matter

• Your job is to be a human face to HEP, to be excited and proud of what your do
• Be patient be professional. Physicists like to be right and get the last word, suppress

it! Do not agree disagree with people, either the primary or secondary or staffer.

• No not lecture people, specially to the teachers/professors here, staffers are young but

they are not your students!

• Remember the people you are talking to are not experts, keep the science simple. If you

make them feel dumb it won’t go well.

• If you don’t know the answer, say you will follow up.
• This is a great way to make an ongoing connection to an office.

• Keep an eye on the staffer
• Are they bored?
• Do they not have any idea what your talking about?
• Are they putting material in a pile - sign that they are done.
• They are busy and will have meetings all day and will most likely one

every 30 mins and will want you out before that time

• If you are going late and have another meeting you can also try to wrap

up.

• Still be polite, they will understand that you also have other meetings

to go too, but do not cut people off.

• The secondary had a big role here. Part of their job to help save

meetings that are not going well

• They should keep an eye on the staffer and course correct if needed.

• Staffers job is meeting people all day
• Generally they will be polite and seem interested - its their job
• Very occasionally (1-2 meeting per trip) this is not the case.
• Do not get upset, no not get angry
• Always be polite.
• The worse you can get is ‘why should we fund HEP compare to X” or

“your asking for this increase in HEP what we should we cut instead”, You may get “If we can only fund one of these things which

• ne do you think is most important”
• Never say you should cut X, or Y is more important.
• You can say that you understand that congress has constraints and

they have an almost impossible job, but you are thankful for the support you have got, and in this meeting you have try to pass on information to help them make their discussion

The P5 process

• Support for P5 is strong in congress, the community, the executive branch
• The U.S. particle physics community has come together to develop a clear vision for

the future

• The P5 plan that balances investments between research at leading universities and

laboratories throughout the country and overseas, and the construction of new U.S. facilities.

• These carefully chosen investments are pushing forward the frontiers of discovery science

and driving U.S. leadership in key areas.

• The P5 plan for particle physics is the plan of record vetted by the DOE and OMB, in line

with the basic research mission strongly supported by Secretary of Energy Perry[*], that enjoys strong support in both houses of Congress.

• It makes the tough choices and is enabling the next rounds of scientific discovery within

a sound, constrained budget framework.

• Continuing the present funding trajectory for high energy physics within the DOE

Office of Science and the National Science Foundation in FY2017 and FY2018 is vital for this highly successful path to continue.

• [*] "I support the academic and government mission of basic research, even when you may not see the results of that for a
• generation. Our scientists and our labs are the envy of the world. … I have a strong record of aggressively courting leading

scientific minds to bring innovation and job creation to my home state" -- https://www.aip.org/fyi/2017/perry-says-hearing-he- will-defend-doe-news-breaks-possible-cuts

• FY 2015 House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Report: –

“The Committee notes that the high energy physics research community is currently engaged in developing a ten-year plan for U.S. particle physics, which will include a ten-year report by the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel under various budget scenarios. The Committee applauds the Department for this undertaking . . .”

• FY 2016 House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Report: –

“The Committee strongly supports the Department’s efforts to advance the recommendations of the Particle Physics Prioritization Panel and urges the Department to maintain a careful balance among competing priorities and among small, medium, and large scale projects.”

• FY 2017 House ($823M) and Senate ($833M) marks above President’s

Request ($818M)

• Passed House under unanimous consent (voice vote) on January 24,

2017

After the meeting

• Make notes straight after the meeting, you will be having many and otherwise you

will forget

• Fill out the wiki trip reports as soon as you can before you forget
• Follow Up: Build relationships for the future
• A day or two later: thank them for time, respond to info requests
• Further out: there will be calls for you to communicate with offices regarding specific

legislation