Open Stack

On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 1:52 PM, Matt Riedemann <mriedemos at gmail.com> wrote:
> How will the TC grow a diverse membership if it's not even held, at least
> every other week, in a timezone where the other half of the world can
> attend?

This is something we do need to sort out. The experiences I have seen
with a number of other meetings that do the alternating time is you
mostly get attendees showing up during their 'local' time slot. This
of course is not how the TC operates, requiring a quorum, and holding
in-meeting votes at times.  I do think that my experience is not
representative of meetings attended by elected members.  Also, we
already ask our close-to-UTC-TZ members to give up evening time
(family time for many) for the meetings.  It might be worthwhile to
look at more than two times for alternation.

There is an additional question around language.  The board has seen
where some members may not be comfortable in a non-native language
meeting and may not speak up like they might otherwise.  The current
board makeup is such that regional meetings (not official board
meetings) in Chinese have become feasible and the feedback is that the
participation is much greater for those in attendance.

The TC meetings are held in IRC and that may somewhat mitigate the
issue for non-native English speakers, but I've had problems myself
keeping up at times with the flurry of comments.  In any case, I think
it would be good to include language in the pile of concerns over
world-wide participation

(I read ahead)  Dims mentions personal conversations with some backing
away from running for the TC due to the meeting time, I wonder how
much language has been a factor for others?

dt

-- 

Dean Troyer
dtroyer at gmail.com