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During the TC office hours today [1] we discussed the question of
resuming having formal meetings of the TC to ensure we are in compliance
with the section of the bylaws that says "The Technical Committee shall
meet at least quarterly." [2] As not all TC members were present today,
we decide to move the discussion to the mailing list to ensure all
members have input into the decision.

A bit of background
-------------------

The TC used to hold formal weekly meetings with agendas, roll call,
etc. We stopped doing that in an attempt to encourage more asynchronous
communication and to include folks in all time zones. Those meetings
were replaced with less formal "office hours" where TC members were
encouraged to be present on IRC in case the community had questions or
issues to raise in a synchronous forum.

The bylaws section that describes the membership and some of the
expectations for the Technical Committee specifically requires us to
meet at least once quarter year. We have had meetings at the PTGs and
summits, which while not recorded via a roll call were open and
documented afterwards with summaries to this mailing list.

With the change in event schedule, we will no longer have obvious
opportunities to hold 4 in-person meetings each year.  During the
discussion today, we established the general consensus that our current
informal office hours do not constitute a "meeting" in the sense that
any of us understand this requirement.  As a result, we need to consider
changes to our current meeting policy to ensure we are in compliance
with the foundation bylaws.

Today's discussion
------------------

A few folks expressed concern that we work to ensure these meetings
*not* be seen as a replacement for asynchronous communication, and that
we continue to encourage ad hoc discussions to continue to happen on the
mailing list or during office hours. I think we agreed we could do that
by managing the agenda carefully (i.e., the chair or vice chair would
need to add topics to the agenda, rather than allowing anyone to add
anything as we have done in the past). We also talked about only
allowing recurring topics on the agenda, but I would prefer that we not
write too many hard rules at the outset.

We discussed how frequently we should meet, and everyone seemed to agree
that weekly was too often and quarterly was not often enough. I proposed
monthly, and there was some general support for that. We also talked
about whether to find a new meeting time or to use one of the office
hour times.

As things stand now, the proposal is to try to find a time a few hours
earlier than office hours on the first Thursday of each month for the
meetings. The earlier time is so that APAC participants (Ghanshyam, in
particular) do not need to stay up until midnight or later to
participate.

Next steps
----------

TC members, please reply to this thread and indicate if you would find
meeting at 1300 UTC on the first Thursday of every month acceptable, and
of course include any other comments you might have (including alternate
times).

Thanks,
Doug


[1] http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-10-04.log.html#t2018-10-04T15:02:31
[2] https://www.openstack.org/legal/technical-committee-member-policy/ (item #4)