Open Stack

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Riedemann [mailto:mriedemos at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 10, 2017 4:41 PM
> To: openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org
> Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [tc] [elections] Available time and top priority
> 
> On 4/10/2017 2:55 PM, Dean Troyer wrote:
> >
> > 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 don't attend many TC meetings, it's usually on accident, but yeah, when I
> do I always note the flurry of cross-talk chatter that just drowns everything
> out. I feel like there are usually at least 3 parallel conversations going on
> during a TC meeting and it's pretty frustrating to follow along, or get a
> thought in the mix. That has to be much worse for a non-native English
> speaker.
> 
> So yeah, slow down folks. :)

[Amrith Kumar] A huge +1000 to that. I have found it very hard to follow the conversations of the TC and some months back (may be over a year back) there was a meeting where someone had to explicitly ask for people to stop the wisecracking. Just unwinding the multiple conversations from last week's meeting where I was trying to have parallel conversations with several people on a proposal I had before the meeting was very challenging. The challenge this must face for people who don't natively think in English is something I can hardly imagine.

It may not be a bad idea to have TC meetings be moderated and where people who wish to speak must be recognized and the floor yielded to them. It will be different, but I think it can work.

> 
> I'm not advocating splitting the meetings though. It's possible to have your
> cake and eat it to if done properly. For example, Alex Xu runs the Nova API
> subteam meeting and we have people from China, India, Japan, UK and USA and
> get through it fine, but it does involve slowing down to get an
> acknowledgement from people that they are OK with any decisions being made.
> 

[Amrith Kumar] I think the answer lies more in having the discussions in mail, on the mailing list and reserving the TC meeting for the actual vote. By framing the meeting more as a procedural mechanism, one can even allow for offline voting and then the time of the meeting becomes less important.

To be truly welcoming of a distributed community, I think this approach would be way better.

> 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.
> 
> --
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Matt
> 
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--
Amrith Kumar