Open Stack

2011/12/9 Paul Voccio <paul.voccio at rackspace.com>:
> I think the benefits of an "all hands" irc/irl meeting is to reduce
> the overall amount of time needed to drive to a decision. I can
> usually do this in a 30 minute meeting if I have the relevant people
> and have a handful of items that need to be decided upon. Having to
> have that same conversation with people usually takes a few days as
> email is not usually treated as a real-time medium.

Ok, let's assume that a decision will always be reached if a topic is on
the agenda for a meeting. Let's also assume that points for discussion
can pop up at any given time throughout the week. (For the record, I
only believe that one of these assumptions is sound, but meh.) As such,
with a weekly meeting, it can take anywhere between 0 and 168 hours (or
an average of 84 hours) to reach a decision.  I honestly don't see how
that's better than a predictable few days.

This project is bigger than your office. You simply can't expect to "have
all the relevant people". Ever. How much Japanese attendance do we have
at our meetings?  It's exceedingly frustrating that this part of my
objection is completely ignored: It will cost me an evening and will be
in the middle of the night for Japan.  You guys can spend each other's
*working hours* on meetings all day long for all I care.  This is
(supposed to be) my spare time. We put *every* single meeting in this
project in US business hours, *every* single meeting *outside* European
and Japanese business hours, and *every* single design summit in the US
and we're surprised there's a strong US bias?  Seriously?

Also, I stand by my other arguments against synchronous meetings and for
e-mail discussions:

>> Compared to IRC meetings:
>>
>> * No need for everyone to be in the same place at the same time.
>> * No need for everyone to sit through a meeting where only a fraction
>>   of the topics are relevant to them.
>> * Mailing list archives makes it simple to look up past discussions.
>> * Much looser time limits. If I need to test a hypothesis before I make
>>   a statement, I can do that on my own time. That's very hard to do
>>   during a synchronous meeting.

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