Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (213 mails)
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Re: [opensuse-project] Drop the openSUSE project meetings on IRC?
- From: Bryen M Yunashko <suserocks@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:08:29 -0500
- Message-id: <1331507309.2167.398.camel@linux-sl6g>
On Thu, 2012-03-08 at 22:33 +0100, Pascal Bleser wrote:
In the very current state of affairs, the idea of dropping the meeting
is sound, but I think we need to bring some history into the context
because I think we're sacrificing something that used to be worthwhile.
* Project Meetings -- Used to be held around 17:00 UTC. Not sure
how/when it was created, but in my own early days I attended these
meetings. They were sometimes boring and sometimes useful. Ideas and
initiatives were sometimes born in these meetings. Meetings were
time-shifted every two weeks to accommodate different timezones.
Project meetings were not owned by the Board. 1 Hour meeting.
* Board Meetings -- Originally closed door, it was moved to open
meetings to be held the same day as Project meetings but a few hours
later. However, two meetings a day proved a strain for a number of
people. At the same time, we saw a decline in attendance to Project
meetings. 2 Hour meeting
* Merged Meetings -- It was decided to try to increase overall
attendance and community participation by merging the two meetings.
Meeting time held during normal board meeting time. Overall meeting
time = 2 hours.
Despite best intentions, we did not see an increase in participation.
Times do change, and people's ability to participate can be greatly
affected by their work and life impacts. And, as with anything else in
FOSS, we can't expect the same usual suspects from years before to be
continuously present.
We never did a good job of proactively encouraging people to come to the
meetings. It was a very passive process. We wrote on the wiki. From
time to time, I would try to remember to send out a tweet or post a
message in other IRC channels (such as #suse) saying "A meeting is
happening now, come join us!" and I would actually see people from those
places log in, albeit just hang out in lurker mode.
We also never widely published the results of meetings. (Ok some
meetings really didn't have anything useful to publish.) All we do is
simply post the minutes or logs of a meeting. We once did post a
meeting summary on news.o.o and had a rather interesting backlash from
PJ but also some good comments that the summary was well appreciated.
These days, our meetings are attended by people who already know about
it and are able to fit it into their schedule.
What I miss fondly about the "good old days" of the Project Meeting is
that it had a more brainstorming quality to it. Because it was a fairly
open and non-rigid process, people were able to come up with some good
ideas. My personal favorite, of course, is when we came up with
Community Week a few years ago. Community Week creation is the direct
result of people participating in the Project meeting and trying to come
up with some interesting initiatives.
Now... back to the question raised by Pascal. Again, looking at the
current state of affairs, its easy to agree with his question. But, I
fear we are pruning a tree down to its bare minimum branches rather than
giving the tree a chance to reach full bloom. We shouldn't be taking
the attitude of elimination, but rather the attitude of proactivity. We
should be discussing HOW do we increase community participation (whether
it is via IRC or ML or whatever...) The Project, at its core, is about
being a place to create initiatives and increase contributions.
Closing down the meeting may be sound. Its time may have come and gone,
but I would argue the question should be appended to add "... and what
are our alternatives for increasing Project initiatives?" Let's please
discuss rescuing the intent rather than killng the symptom.
Bryen M Yunashko
openSUSE Project
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@xxxxxxxxxxxx
I'd like to propose or at least discuss dropping the bi-weekly
openSUSE project meetings on IRC.
Reasons are:
* because of timezones, work/family/etc, only a handful of
people is able to attend the meetings (and there is no
solution to that);
* as far as I've been attending those meetings (so that's a few
years now already), there have always been 5 or 6 people who
have participated (aside from the board team);
* there is nothing that is discussed there that couldn't be
discussed on the opensuse-project mailing list instead.
Now, that meeting also acts as a board meeting, but
* the board can still meet, that's up to the board team to
define;
* anyone can poke the board team any time via email or poke us
individually on IRC;
* as far as transparency is concerned, we can, should and will
publish emails about our decisions and our work anyway.
Any reason to keep the IRC project meetings?
I don't see any, even though I'm quite fond of IRC ;)
cheers
In the very current state of affairs, the idea of dropping the meeting
is sound, but I think we need to bring some history into the context
because I think we're sacrificing something that used to be worthwhile.
* Project Meetings -- Used to be held around 17:00 UTC. Not sure
how/when it was created, but in my own early days I attended these
meetings. They were sometimes boring and sometimes useful. Ideas and
initiatives were sometimes born in these meetings. Meetings were
time-shifted every two weeks to accommodate different timezones.
Project meetings were not owned by the Board. 1 Hour meeting.
* Board Meetings -- Originally closed door, it was moved to open
meetings to be held the same day as Project meetings but a few hours
later. However, two meetings a day proved a strain for a number of
people. At the same time, we saw a decline in attendance to Project
meetings. 2 Hour meeting
* Merged Meetings -- It was decided to try to increase overall
attendance and community participation by merging the two meetings.
Meeting time held during normal board meeting time. Overall meeting
time = 2 hours.
Despite best intentions, we did not see an increase in participation.
Times do change, and people's ability to participate can be greatly
affected by their work and life impacts. And, as with anything else in
FOSS, we can't expect the same usual suspects from years before to be
continuously present.
We never did a good job of proactively encouraging people to come to the
meetings. It was a very passive process. We wrote on the wiki. From
time to time, I would try to remember to send out a tweet or post a
message in other IRC channels (such as #suse) saying "A meeting is
happening now, come join us!" and I would actually see people from those
places log in, albeit just hang out in lurker mode.
We also never widely published the results of meetings. (Ok some
meetings really didn't have anything useful to publish.) All we do is
simply post the minutes or logs of a meeting. We once did post a
meeting summary on news.o.o and had a rather interesting backlash from
PJ but also some good comments that the summary was well appreciated.
These days, our meetings are attended by people who already know about
it and are able to fit it into their schedule.
What I miss fondly about the "good old days" of the Project Meeting is
that it had a more brainstorming quality to it. Because it was a fairly
open and non-rigid process, people were able to come up with some good
ideas. My personal favorite, of course, is when we came up with
Community Week a few years ago. Community Week creation is the direct
result of people participating in the Project meeting and trying to come
up with some interesting initiatives.
Now... back to the question raised by Pascal. Again, looking at the
current state of affairs, its easy to agree with his question. But, I
fear we are pruning a tree down to its bare minimum branches rather than
giving the tree a chance to reach full bloom. We shouldn't be taking
the attitude of elimination, but rather the attitude of proactivity. We
should be discussing HOW do we increase community participation (whether
it is via IRC or ML or whatever...) The Project, at its core, is about
being a place to create initiatives and increase contributions.
Closing down the meeting may be sound. Its time may have come and gone,
but I would argue the question should be appended to add "... and what
are our alternatives for increasing Project initiatives?" Let's please
discuss rescuing the intent rather than killng the symptom.
Bryen M Yunashko
openSUSE Project
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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