Open Stack

On Mon, 10 Apr 2017, Matt Riedemann wrote:

> This might also tie back in with what cdent was mentioning, and if the flurry 
> of conversation during a TC meeting throws people off, maybe the minutes 
> should be digested after the meeting in the mailing list. I know the meeting 
> is logged, but it can be hard to read through that without one's eyes glazing 
> over due to the cross-talk and locker-room towel whipping going on.

Aw, you beat me to it. This is part of what I was going to say in
response to your earlier message. I think there are at least three
things to do, all of which you've touched on:

* Alternating the meetings, despite the issues with quorum, probably
   ought to happen. If the issues with quorum are insurmountable that
   may say something important about the TC's choice to be dependent
   on IRC meetings. Is it habit? Doesn't most of the real voting
   happen in gerrit? Can more of the discussion happen in email? I
   think we (by we I mean all of OpenStack) can and should rely on
   email more than we do expressly for the purpose of enabling people
   to include themselves according to their own schedules and their
   own speeds of comprehension.

   Email and writing in general is by no means a panacea. We don't
   want any of email, IRC, voice or expensive international
   gatherings to be the sole mode of interaction.

* People who are participating in the TC meetings can be much more
   considerate, at least during critical parts of the meeting, about
   who has the speaking stick and what the current topic happens to
   be. Sometimes the cross-talk and the towel whipping is exactly
   what needs to be happening, but much of the time it is not and
   makes it all very hard to follow and frustrating. We see a lot of
   behavior in the channel that if we were in person or on the phone
   would be completely unacceptable. Each communication medium
   affords different behaviors, but we still want to manage to
   understand one another. As you say, Alex does a great job of
   making the nova api subteam meeting work so there's probably
   something we can learn from there.

* Digested minutes of the meeting and any pending business
   in gerrit can give an additional way to stay in the loop but they
   are more about providing an invitation or encouragement to
   participate. It shouldn't be a substitute that's there because the
   real grind of participation is inaccessible. Participation needs
   to be more accessible.

-- 
Chris Dent                 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯           https://anticdent.org/
freenode: cdent                                         tw: @anticdent