Open Stack

On 12 April 2017 at 10:07, Thierry Carrez <thierry at openstack.org> wrote:
> 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.

+1 on eliminating the meeting.

+1 on the need for the synchronous discussions, that are documented
and linked back to the gerrit review.

One idea that came up talking about the SWG, was a wiki page with a
weekly status update, that gets emailed out each week by the TC
chairperson. The chair has to chase folks who don't update it, ping
folks for their vote on patches they are ignoring, etc. Maybe it would
end up looking like the API-WG emails that cdent sends out, which
links to reviews that are the current focus as possible merge
candidates.

We often only merge things in the meeting, but if we went more towards
expecting a +1 from all members then as soon as all the required +1s
are present the chairperson is free to merge (and maybe timeouts using
the weekly email in API-WG style).

I strongly believe we need to try not having the meeting, and be more
globally inclusive in the TCs activities. I see the TC as a core team,
rather than the only people working on governance type activities. We
all need to work together to maintain and improve the community
vibrant we have. I think success is when we have people from all
around the globe involved in TC related activities and reviews.

Many thanks,
johnthetubaguy