Open Stack

Ildiko Vancsa wrote:
>> On 2017. Apr 12., at 3:18, Monty Taylor <mordred at inaugust.com
>> <mailto:mordred at inaugust.com>> wrote:
>> [...]
>> Email allows someone to compose an actual structured narrative, and
>> for replies to do the same. Some of us are loquatious and I imagine
>> can be hard to follow even with time to read.
>>
>> IRC allows someone to respond quickly, and for someone to be like "yo,
>> totes sorry, I didn't mean that at all LOL" and to walk things back
>> before a pile of people become mortally insulted.
>>
>> Like now - hopefully you'll give me a smiley in IRC ... but you might
>> not, and I'm stuck worrying that my tone came across wrong. Then if
>> you just don't respond because ZOMG-EMAIL, I might start day drinking.
> 
> Big +1 on balance.
> 
> I agree in general that we need to revisit how to be more inclusive and
> how to provide as equal conditions to people all around the globe as
> possible.
> 
> That said I still would like to keep the ability to have allocated time
> for synchronous communication and allow the TC to be more of a team as
> opposed to a group of people driving their own and some shared missions.
> I think it helps with seeing maybe different parts but still the same
> big picture and making the group more efficient with decision making and
> bringing the community forward.
> [...]

Agree with you Ildiko and Monty, we still need sync communication to get
a better feel of everyone's feelings on a particular issue, especially
on complex issues. At the same time, a unique weekly meeting is actively
preventing people from participating. It is also very active and noisy,
the timebox can be painful, and its weekly cadence makes a good reason
for procrastinating in reviews until the topic is raised in meeting,
where final decision is made. Creating multiple official meetings
spreads the pain instead of eliminating it. It makes it easier for more
people to join, but more difficult for any given member to participate
to every meeting. Our ability to quickly process changes might be affected.

One idea I've been considering is eliminating the one and only sacred
one-hour weekly TC meeting, and encouraging ad-hoc discussions (on
#openstack-dev for example) between change proposers and smaller groups
of TC members present in the same timezone. That would give us a good
feel of what everyone thinks, reduce noise, and happen at various times
during the day on a public forum, giving an opportunity for more people
to jump in the discussion. The informal nature of those discussions
would make the governance reviews the clear focal point for coordination
and final decision.

It's clearly not the perfect silver bullet though, so I'd very much like
to hear other ideas :)

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)