Moving WeeklyUpdate meeting to 11 AM Pacific?
David Tenser
in the last few years I'm going to propose that we move the weekly
update meetings from 1 PM Pacific to 11 AM.
This would not affect Japan much (from 4 AM to 2 AM), but it would be a
much more humane time for the increasing number of people in Europe that
are participating (8 PM instead of 10 PM makes a huge difference!). I
also know that there are people in Europe that are not calling in to the
meeting today because of the late time.
If there is another weekly meeting happening at 11 AM, I would suggest
that that meeting time is swapped with the WeeklyUpdate meeting.
Thoughts?
mze...@gmail.com
> Maybe this has been requested before, but since we've grown quite a bit
> in the last few years I'm going to propose that we move the weekly
> update meetings from 1 PM Pacific to 11 AM.
How many non-MoCo people dial in and will moving it increase
participation?
Axel Hecht
non-MoCo isn't the issue, as both David and I are MoCo, as are others. I
don't have better numbers for you, though.
I personally call in less often these days, fwiw. Not sure if
"participation" is the right word to describe what I'm doing when I'm
calling in, though ;-)
Axel
Robert Kaiser
I for one, haven't been calling in to Monday meetings because I usually
leave here between 9pm and 11pm on those days and the meetings now
starts at 10pm. I might be interested to follow those meetings though,
and 8pm (i.e. 11am Pacific) would make that easier.
Robert Kaiser
David Tenser
I think that's two separate questions. The first one (how many non-MoCo
people dial in) I don't know, but the other question (will it increase
participation?):
For Europe, this means 8 PM instead of 10 PM, which is a better time for
most people while still not conflicting with normal office hours for
those with other full time jobs. For MoCo people, this means a much more
humane time to call in (between 10-11 PM, I can think of better things
to do then keeping my significant other awake giving an update for SUMO).
For Eastern Europe (as well as Finland, Turkey, etc), this means 9 PM
instead of 11 PM; a sure improvement.
For the East Coast, this would mean a meeting time of 2 PM rather than 4
PM, which can only be seen as an improvement for MoCo people, without
changing much for non-MoCo people.
In Asia, we're moving from 4 AM to 2 AM, which doesn't really make much
difference at all (that's an entirely separate problem that I'm not
trying to solve here).
Given the above, I can only assume that moving the meeting will increase
participation -- most notably in Europe, but probably also for some
people on the East Coast.
Mike Connor
On 15-May-09, at 5:10 AM, David Tenser wrote:
> Given the above, I can only assume that moving the meeting will
> increase participation -- most notably in Europe, but probably also
> for some people on the East Coast.
Don't forget the New Zealanders though. This would move it from 8 AM
to 6 AM.
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=5&day=18&year=2009&hour=11&min=0&sec=0&p1=283
gives the potential times involved, for those interested.
I think we should consider whether this meeting is really just a
loosely organized podcast, and whether we should consider prerecording
segments and rolling those in for people who are giving updates from
odd timezones. Other than SUMO, and occasionally a few other people,
there aren't a ton of updates from Europe-based contributors, and if
we're willing to forgo the concept of questions (which never really
happen these days) then people can just watch the broadcast in the
morning.
-- Mike
Mike Beltzner
> I think we should consider whether this meeting is really just a
> loosely organized podcast, and whether we should consider
> prerecording segments and rolling those in for people who are giving
> updates from odd timezones. Other than SUMO, and occasionally a few
> other people, there aren't a ton of updates from Europe-based
> contributors, and if we're willing to forgo the concept of questions
> (which never really happen these days) then people can just watch
> the broadcast in the morning.
I've been trying to avoid turning this conversation into a bikeshed
about how to perhaps modify the content of the Monday meeting with an
eye towards improvement, but the issues might be totally intertwined.
I do think that Connor's on the right track, here. Presently the
meeting is very much about consuming information; there isn't a lot of
questions or give and take, and I think there are a few reasons for
that, up to and including the way in which the information is
presented. Not sure we want to spin off into those discussions now,
though.
Regardless, I think the meta-point here is important. We're never
going to find a truly global time for this meeting, so we should
figure out how to make it possible for people to time-shift it.
cheers,
mike
Robert O'Callahan
> On 15-May-09, at 5:10 AM, David Tenser wrote:
>
>> Given the above, I can only assume that moving the meeting will
>> increase participation -- most notably in Europe, but probably also
>> for some people on the East Coast.
>
> Don't forget the New Zealanders though. This would move it from 8 AM to
> 6 AM.
Most of us already don't dial in. Blair does apparently.
Rob
David Tenser
I'd love to participate in a discussion focusing on the value of the
current meeting format and the ways it could be improved; I agree that
it's important. However, that is a more complicated discussion that in
my opinion shouldn't stop us from making a quick improvement right now
if there are no major problems with the change.
My hope is that we can consider moving the regular meeting time to 11 AM
PT asap, as that will surely be an improvement for many people (assuming
there are more Mozillians in Europe than there are in New Zealand).
Tim Riley
Asa has a few stats about how many people view the AirMozilla video in
realtime, how many are hitting the wiki page, etc. We could look s at
those to see where current people are coming from. We could also
measure how this changes if/when we move it to a new time.
But this data is not measuring the right stuff ( 1-who is currently not
participating, but would join is we changed times and 2-who would we
lose). Also it is not reliable with limited number of data points.
Maybe Asa has some data going back. We would still need to give it some
time for poeple to migrate to the new time.
Let's try to get a little more input and then make a call. I'll mention
it at the end of today's update meeting.
-Tim
Mike Connor
On 18-May-09, at 3:06 PM, Tim Riley wrote:
> Asa has a few stats about how many people view the AirMozilla video
> in realtime, how many are hitting the wiki page, etc. We could look
> s at those to see where current people are coming from. We could
> also measure how this changes if/when we move it to a new time.
>
> But this data is not measuring the right stuff ( 1-who is currently
> not participating, but would join is we changed times and 2-who
> would we lose). Also it is not reliable with limited number of data
> points. Maybe Asa has some data going back. We would still need to
> give it some time for poeple to migrate to the new time.
>
> Let's try to get a little more input and then make a call. I'll
> mention it at the end of today's update meeting.
I think that before we make a call we should get to a point where we
have broader consensus on what we're trying to achieve here. Getting
more people to participate "live" seems like a non-goal, unless we're
going to actually bring back discussion as a part of the call. I also
think the timing sucks, especially since it involves rescheduling
large chunks of Mondays for a lot of people at MoCo during a final
push to release, so I'd want to delay any disruptive schedule changes
like this until after 3.5 ships at least.
Let's figure out what we want out of this meeting, and how to best
achieve that, and then we can figure out how scheduling matters in
that new model. I don't think anyone thinks the existing setup is
especially successful or focused, despite a lot of hard work.
In the meantime, if people based in inconvenient time zones can't make
the meeting without impacting their personal lives, perhaps the least
disruptive solution would be to hand off delivery of the update to
someone based in a friendlier timezone? I understand David's desire
to avoid 10 PM meetings, but I'm sure that someone else on the SUMO
team could give that update instead, as a stopgap until we have a less
timezone-sensitive setup?
-- Mike
Tim Riley
>
> I think that before we make a call we should get to a point where we
> have broader consensus on what we're trying to achieve here. Getting
> more people to participate "live" seems like a non-goal, unless we're
> going to actually bring back discussion as a part of the call. I also
> think the timing sucks, especially since it involves rescheduling large
> chunks of Mondays for a lot of people at MoCo during a final push to
> release, so I'd want to delay any disruptive schedule changes like this
> until after 3.5 ships at least.
>
> Let's figure out what we want out of this meeting, and how to best
> achieve that, and then we can figure out how scheduling matters in that
> new model. I don't think anyone thinks the existing setup is especially
> successful or focused, despite a lot of hard work.
>
> In the meantime, if people based in inconvenient time zones can't make
> the meeting without impacting their personal lives, perhaps the least
> disruptive solution would be to hand off delivery of the update to
> someone based in a friendlier timezone? I understand David's desire to
> avoid 10 PM meetings, but I'm sure that someone else on the SUMO team
> could give that update instead, as a stopgap until we have a less
> timezone-sensitive setup?
>
> -- Mike
I agree we shouldn't rush into this. We have 3.5 going out and the
office move. So how can we make progress on this? Have a meeting?
Pick some options? Send out a surveymonkey survey?
--Tim
David Tenser
>
> On 18-May-09, at 3:06 PM, Tim Riley wrote:
>
>> Asa has a few stats about how many people view the AirMozilla video in
>> realtime, how many are hitting the wiki page, etc. We could look s at
>> those to see where current people are coming from. We could also
>> measure how this changes if/when we move it to a new time.
>>
>> But this data is not measuring the right stuff ( 1-who is currently
>> not participating, but would join is we changed times and 2-who would
>> we lose). Also it is not reliable with limited number of data points.
>> Maybe Asa has some data going back. We would still need to give it
>> some time for poeple to migrate to the new time.
>>
>> Let's try to get a little more input and then make a call. I'll
>> mention it at the end of today's update meeting.
>
> I think that before we make a call we should get to a point where we
> have broader consensus on what we're trying to achieve here.
That is a bigger, longer discussion that shouldn't block this. As I said
before, this quick change would likely increase the number of people
calling in to the meeting; I don't think we should hold off a change for
the better just because we want to solve a separate issue at the same time.
Note that I'm not saying that what you and Graydon are proposing are bad
ideas, but I also know that the usefulness of these meetings have been
discussed for at least 1.5 years, and I don't think we'll find an
optimal solution anytime soon.
Moving the meeting to a time that is better for a major Mozilla
community continent while not degrading the situation much for anyone
(except Blair -- sorry!) seems like the right call to me.
> Getting
> more people to participate "live" seems like a non-goal, unless we're
> going to actually bring back discussion as a part of the call.
Getting more people from Mozilla to participate is a good thing even if
active discussions don't increase. The point of the meeting (today at
least) seems to be to share updates, and the more people that call in,
the better.
> I also
> think the timing sucks, especially since it involves rescheduling large
> chunks of Mondays for a lot of people at MoCo during a final push to
> release, so I'd want to delay any disruptive schedule changes like this
> until after 3.5 ships at least.
>
What other meetings would be affected? I know the weekly IT meeting
happens on 11 am.
>
> In the meantime, if people based in inconvenient time zones can't make
> the meeting without impacting their personal lives, perhaps the least
> disruptive solution would be to hand off delivery of the update to
> someone based in a friendlier timezone? I understand David's desire to
> avoid 10 PM meetings, but I'm sure that someone else on the SUMO team
> could give that update instead, as a stopgap until we have a less
> timezone-sensitive setup?
I'm not just calling in to give my SUMO update; I'm calling in because
I'm interested in hearing the other updates, and because I want to
attend to the following MoCo meeting, which is still going on at 11:14
PM today. I'm sure others in Europe calling in feel the same.
Also, as I said previously, there are other MoCo people in Europe that
would want to call in if the time was more reasonable (see the other
forum thread).
Thanks,
David
mco...@mozilla.com
so institutionalized that no one really owns it. I think a survey is
wrong, and a meeting without someone clearly being the decision maker
lacks a clear mandate.
I think we need to just pick a person with a mandate to make this
meeting relevant amd compelling again, or find a new solution. I
think the best person to give such a mandate to would be Mark Surman.
I'm not saying he has to the legwork, but I think that finding a
direction for this meeting falls more under the Foundation's mandate
than anywhere else, and he has the best chance of balancing project-
wide concerns.
To be clear, I would like us to address:
* Is a meeting/broadcast still necessary/useful at our scope? If we
didn't have this meeting now, is there a case for making it happen?
* If it is felt that it is useful, what outcomes are necessary for
this usefulness?
* is a large, weekly all-hands meeting at a fixed time the best way to
create those outcomes?
If Mark isn't the right person, nominations would be great.
- Mike
David Tenser
> On 2009-05-18 22.06, Mike Connor wrote:
> That is a bigger, longer discussion that shouldn't block this. As I said
> before, this quick change would likely increase the number of people
> calling in to the meeting; I don't think we should hold off a change for
> the better just because we want to solve a separate issue at the same time.
>
> Note that I'm not saying that what you and Graydon are proposing are bad
> ideas, but I also know that the usefulness of these meetings have been
> discussed for at least 1.5 years, and I don't think we'll find an
> optimal solution anytime soon.
Just to be clear, I totally agree about waiting until we ship 3.5 to
minimize disruption. But we should keep the bigger discussion about the
format and usefulness of the meetings separate, as we've been having
that discussion on and off for at least a couple of years now, so it's
obvious that it's a hard problem to solve. Changing to a better time isn't.
mco...@mozilla.com
I have a block of four meetings on Mondays, which would need to be
rearranged, and that's less complicated than rearranging shaver's day.
I think you are underestimating the disruption involved in shifting a
meeting that literally hundreds of people attend.
The meeting broadcasts are available online to allow time-shifting, so
I really think everyone who isn't giving updates can watch after the
fact, so the "better for the whole continent" argument doesn't hold a
lot of water for me, since anyone can give an update. The MoCo
meeting is a different case, but equally solvable.
To be clear: I think it's a bigger change than you realize, and I
think the benefits aren't going to be as big as you are asserting they
will be.
- Mike
Christian Sejersen
> On 18-May-09, at 5:30 PM, David Tenser <djst.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have a block of four meetings on Mondays, which would need to be
> rearranged, and that's less complicated than rearranging shaver's
> day. I think you are underestimating the disruption involved in
> shifting a meeting that literally hundreds of people attend.
So it isn't just a matter of moving these meetings +2 hours as I would
expect everybody associated with Mozilla has 1-3 PM PDT blocked out in
their calendar?
> The meeting broadcasts are available online to allow time-shifting,
> so I really think everyone who isn't giving updates can watch after
> the fact, so the "better for the whole continent" argument doesn't
> hold a lot of water for me, since anyone can give an update. The
> MoCo meeting is a different case, but equally solvable.
If we imagine that it is possible to reschedule people's Monday
meetings from 11-1 PM PDT, are there other reasons for not moving the
meeting to 11 AM PDT?
> To be clear: I think it's a bigger change than you realize, and I
> think the benefits aren't going to be as big as you are asserting
> they will be.
Was there a different assertion than participation will increase?
/Christian
Mike Connor
On 18-May-09, at 6:18 PM, Christian Sejersen wrote:
>> I have a block of four meetings on Mondays, which would need to be
>> rearranged, and that's less complicated than rearranging shaver's
>> day. I think you are underestimating the disruption involved in
>> shifting a meeting that literally hundreds of people attend.
>
> So it isn't just a matter of moving these meetings +2 hours as I
> would expect everybody associated with Mozilla has 1-3 PM PDT
> blocked out in their calendar?
This is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul. I think we'd basically have
to swap all meetings with the 10-12 range, not 11-1, instead of
forcing a lunch meeting on everyone in PST, or forcibly ending the
meeting so people have time to grab lunch. And assuming that's right,
now we're having to move more meetings like SUMO, and possibly mobile,
which seems to go over the hour mark often enough. And unlike this
meeting, most of those meetings _can't_ be timeshifted (i.e. watched
later), and involve a lot more two-way discussion. I don't think that
this meeting has clear enough value that we should block off prime
meeting hours to have it instead.
To explain that last sentence, we basically have two hours each day
which are reasonably conducive to getting active participation from
Europe (by active I mean discussions and questions, etc). I would
rather optimize for enabling meetings where people actually engage and
converse in those hours, vs. blocking off for something that is one-
way, can be watched later, and has the same content in the meeting
notes.
>> The meeting broadcasts are available online to allow time-shifting,
>> so I really think everyone who isn't giving updates can watch after
>> the fact, so the "better for the whole continent" argument doesn't
>> hold a lot of water for me, since anyone can give an update. The
>> MoCo meeting is a different case, but equally solvable.
>
> If we imagine that it is possible to reschedule people's Monday
> meetings from 11-1 PM PDT, are there other reasons for not moving
> the meeting to 11 AM PDT?
Like I said, it's whether this is the meeting we should optimize for.
I really think it'd have to be 10 AM to not screw with everyone's
lunch in PST, and that means we lose 20% of our best time each week
for meetings with people in Europe. I'd rather kill the meeting than
eat those times, tbh.
>> To be clear: I think it's a bigger change than you realize, and I
>> think the benefits aren't going to be as big as you are asserting
>> they will be.
>
> Was there a different assertion than participation will increase?
That's the assertion I'm questioning.
My point is that relatively few people really "participate" in this
meeting. I have not heard from a single project that can't have
someone provide an update unless we move the meeting, so I don't think
there's going to be any increase in actual participation. If someone
in Europe/Asia/etc wants to listen to the updates, they can watch the
stream on Tuesday morning their time, so I'm not sure how making it
easier to watch/dial in at the same time substantially changes their
level of engagement. I really think that there's other, less
disruptive ways to solve this problem in the short term, if it's
really urgent to solve the problem.
-- Mike
Christian Sejersen
>
> On 18-May-09, at 6:18 PM, Christian Sejersen wrote:
>
>>> I have a block of four meetings on Mondays, which would need to be
>>> rearranged, and that's less complicated than rearranging shaver's
>>> day. I think you are underestimating the disruption involved in
>>> shifting a meeting that literally hundreds of people attend.
>>
>> So it isn't just a matter of moving these meetings +2 hours as I
>> would expect everybody associated with Mozilla has 1-3 PM PDT
>> blocked out in their calendar?
>
> This is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul. I think we'd basically
> have to swap all meetings with the 10-12 range, not 11-1, instead of
> forcing a lunch meeting on everyone in PST, or forcibly ending the
> meeting so people have time to grab lunch. And assuming that's
> right, now we're having to move more meetings like SUMO, and
> possibly mobile, which seems to go over the hour mark often enough.
> And unlike this meeting, most of those meetings _can't_ be
> timeshifted (i.e. watched later), and involve a lot more two-way
> discussion. I don't think that this meeting has clear enough value
> that we should block off prime meeting hours to have it instead.
I am not sure I agree with the point about moving it to the 10-12
range as it - as you mention - will have too big an impact on other
meetings. Keeping it in the 11-1 range seems better and would
basically make the meeting a brown-bag for the PST folks.
> To explain that last sentence, we basically have two hours each day
> which are reasonably conducive to getting active participation from
> Europe (by active I mean discussions and questions, etc). I would
> rather optimize for enabling meetings where people actually engage
> and converse in those hours, vs. blocking off for something that is
> one-way, can be watched later, and has the same content in the
> meeting notes.
I don't buy the argument about it being one-way. I agree that's mostly
the case for the MoFo meeting, but not so for the MoCo meeting. So an
alternative could be to move the MoCo meeting to another day and time
perhaps?
>
>>> The meeting broadcasts are available online to allow time-
>>> shifting, so I really think everyone who isn't giving updates can
>>> watch after the fact, so the "better for the whole continent"
>>> argument doesn't hold a lot of water for me, since anyone can give
>>> an update. The MoCo meeting is a different case, but equally
>>> solvable.
>>
>> If we imagine that it is possible to reschedule people's Monday
>> meetings from 11-1 PM PDT, are there other reasons for not moving
>> the meeting to 11 AM PDT?
>
> Like I said, it's whether this is the meeting we should optimize
> for. I really think it'd have to be 10 AM to not screw with
> everyone's lunch in PST, and that means we lose 20% of our best time
> each week for meetings with people in Europe. I'd rather kill the
> meeting than eat those times, tbh.
It is always difficult to determine who has the biggest cost: eating
lunch during a meeting or having the meeting at 10 (or 11) PM. As I
mentioned above, I don't think 10 AM is the right time.
>
>>> To be clear: I think it's a bigger change than you realize, and I
>>> think the benefits aren't going to be as big as you are asserting
>>> they will be.
>>
>> Was there a different assertion than participation will increase?
>
>
> That's the assertion I'm questioning.
>
> My point is that relatively few people really "participate" in this
> meeting. I have not heard from a single project that can't have
> someone provide an update unless we move the meeting, so I don't
> think there's going to be any increase in actual participation. If
> someone in Europe/Asia/etc wants to listen to the updates, they can
> watch the stream on Tuesday morning their time, so I'm not sure how
> making it easier to watch/dial in at the same time substantially
> changes their level of engagement. I really think that there's
> other, less disruptive ways to solve this problem in the short term,
> if it's really urgent to solve the problem.
Of course this isn't an urgent problem to solve, it has been like this
forever :) On the other hand, it doesn't imply that it doesn't need to
be solved and one option could be to move the MoCo meeting to an
earlier timeslot perhaps even on another day.
/Christian
Gervase Markham
> Let's figure out what we want out of this meeting, and how to best
> achieve that, and then we can figure out how scheduling matters in that
> new model. I don't think anyone thinks the existing setup is especially
> successful or focused, despite a lot of hard work.
I think the principle of having some method of finding out in overview
what's going on across the project is a good one. At the moment, this is
the best we have. I guess we could try and replace it by a textual
medium, but that would be even less immediately interactive.
Does the current meeting take questions via IRC?
> In the meantime, if people based in inconvenient time zones can't make
> the meeting without impacting their personal lives, perhaps the least
> disruptive solution would be to hand off delivery of the update to
> someone based in a friendlier timezone? I understand David's desire to
> avoid 10 PM meetings, but I'm sure that someone else on the SUMO team
> could give that update instead, as a stopgap until we have a less
> timezone-sensitive setup?
Alternatively, would it be possible for people to submit updates as Ogg
video segments which could be played into the stream and simultaneously
watched by the live attendees in Mountain View? (I don't know what tech
Asa is using to put things together at the moment, so it may be that
this isn't possible.)
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> To explain that last sentence, we basically have two hours each day
> which are reasonably conducive to getting active participation from
> Europe (by active I mean discussions and questions, etc).
I assume you mean 10am and 11am PST (7pm and 8pm Europe)?
> Like I said, it's whether this is the meeting we should optimize for. I
> really think it'd have to be 10 AM to not screw with everyone's lunch in
> PST, and that means we lose 20% of our best time each week for meetings
> with people in Europe. I'd rather kill the meeting than eat those times,
> tbh.
Are there meetings which aren't on the community calendar?
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Community_Calendar
It seems that the two key slots (assuming I've understood you rightly)
are not filled every day. Or do people use Thursday and Friday morning
for smaller, unpublicised meetings with European collaborators?
Gerv
Mark Surman
Sorry to jump into this late. I'd be happy (probably w/ help from
Gerv) to pick up ...
On 09-05-18 04:06 PM, Mike Connor wrote:
> Let's figure out what we want out of this meeting, and how to best
> achieve that, and then we can figure out how scheduling matters in that
> new model. I don't think anyone thinks the existing setup is especially
> successful or focused, despite a lot of hard work.
... this longer term thread over the next couple of months.
Definitely a hard problem to solve, but easier if there is someone
dedicated to shepherding the conversations. Also, already some good
substantive innovation ideas bouncing in here amidst all the
scheduling bits (e.g. editing together video from different parts of
the world).
Anyways, let me think on some ways to move this conversation ahead and
then come back.
>I have a block of four meetings on Mondays, which would need
>to be rearranged, and that's less complicated than rearranging
>shaver's day. I think you are underestimating the disruption
>involved in shifting a meeting that literally hundreds of people attend.
FWIW, I'm with mconnor re: the potential disruption of moving this
meeting for so many people. I wouldn't stand in the way of moving it,
but I do think it could create a chaotic domino effect on a day very
packed w/ group meetings already.
And, of course ...
On 09-05-19 08:24 AM, Christian Sejersen wrote:
>Of course this isn't an urgent problem to solve, it has been like this
>forever :) On the other hand, it doesn't imply that it doesn't need
>to be solved and one option could be to move the MoCo meeting to an
>earlier timeslot perhaps even on another day.
... good to get even the scheduling resolved, but probably not urgent
and worth balancing against disruption.
- ms
Mitchell Baker
we have a time that works for the Americas, but nowhere else. That time
is a remnant from 1999 when we were *all* in North America. It seems
odd to me that we don't move this to a time when some other time zone
can join us. A giant chunk of our users and contributors are in Europe,
and we can make things significantly easier by moving a couple of hours
earlier. (We should also get good archives so that other timezones can
at least watch if they want.)
The big objection I've seen to moving the meeting is that the time is
better spend in individual discussions with European contributors and
that the meeting isn't worth taking that time away. If the meeting
isn't worth the time it takes then we should fix it or shorten it or
abolish it. Many people want the meeting to be "better" but very few
people say they don't want some regular project-wide way to connect. I
don't think those of us in the Americas should decide for everyone else
that it's good enough to spend some time on but not theirs.
The last meeting, where a set of interns described what they are working
on, seems a perfect example of how there is relevant info that isn't
available in distilled form elsewhere.
So this is a last call for any other objections I should consider.
Absent some big new issue I've missed, I'm planning to make this change
sometime in July.
For those people who are able to join us, I will ask you to think hard
about what you'd like to have happen at this meeting, how to make it
more worthwhile. I bet a fresh perspective will be helpful. If the
meetings are beneficial, that's great. If they are a disappointment
then please help us improve them.
Mitchell
Mike Connor
On 24-Jun-09, at 4:22 PM, Dan Mosedale wrote:
> On 6/24/09 12:52 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:
>> [lots of sound reasoning elided]
>>
>> So this is a last call for any other objections I should consider.
>> Absent some big new issue I've missed, I'm planning to make this
>> change sometime in July.
> Great!
>
> Is the plan that when daylight time changes happen, the meeting will
> remain nailed to 10AM Pacific and may move for other participants?
I'm not sure we settled 10 vs. 11, Mitchell's seeming to indicate we'd
move to 11. I am much more in favour of 10 than 11, as I argued
earlier in the thread we probably don't want to run into lunchtime in
MV, since that will create a bit of a hard wall with people wandering
off to eat.
-- Mike
L. David Baron
> Is the plan that when daylight time changes happen, the meeting will
> remain nailed to 10AM Pacific and may move for other participants?
I think keeping the meeting pinned to North American summer time
changes is the right thing to do.
I think a large majority of the participants will be in a timezone
that observes northern hemisphere summer time rules (either North
American ones or European ones), particularly since a large number
of the Mozilla community members in places that don't have northern
hemisphere summer time have the meeting in the middle of the night
anyway (East Asia, Australia, New Zealand). For more details, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DaylightSaving-World-Subdivisions.png
(where the distinction that matters is blue vs. not-blue). (There
used to be a good map somewhere on wikipedia that had lines
separating areas that followed different summer time rules, but I
can't find that one right now.)
If we pin to North American summer time rules, then the meeting is
an hour earlier in Europe for a few weeks in the spring and fall.
If we pinned to European rules, it would be an hour later in North
America for that same small set of weeks.
Pinning to European summer time rules is a possibility, but I think
keeping the time consistent for the largest number of people
probably wins, and I suspect the meeting has more participants in
North America.
-David
--
L. David Baron http://dbaron.org/
Mozilla Corporation http://www.mozilla.com/
Gervase Markham
> Pinning to European summer time rules is a possibility, but I think
> keeping the time consistent for the largest number of people
> probably wins, and I suspect the meeting has more participants in
> North America.
I'd just written almost exactly the same message as David, before
noticing he'd beaten me to it. I concur with his analysis.
Here's my first go at the consequences, although this is so complex that
there's a good chance at least some of it is wrong.
N = normal; ST = spring transition; AT = autumn transition
PST 10am 11am
Mtn 11am 12pm
CST 12pm 1pm
EST 1pm 2pm
UK 6pm N; 5pm ST; 7pm AT 7pm N; 6pm ST; 8pm AT
WEur 7pm N; 6pm ST; 8pm AT 8pm N; 7pm ST; 9pm AT
EEur 8pm N; 7pm ST; 9pm AT 9pm N; 8pm ST; 10pm AT
China 1am Apr->Sep, 12am Oct->Mar 2am Apr->Sep, 1am Oct->Mar
Japan 2am Apr->Sep, 1am Oct->Mar 3am Apr->Sep, 2am Oct->Mar
NZ 5am Apr->Sep, 7am Oct->Mar 6am Apr->Sep, 8am Oct->Mar
(+ transition complexities!)
So 11am means the New Zealanders might be able to take part (perhaps
from home) even from April to September. (We should ask them if they
actually would.) But it eats more into the evening for the Europeans.
Gerv
Robert O'Callahan
> So 11am means the New Zealanders might be able to take part (perhaps
> from home) even from April to September. (We should ask them if they
> actually would.) But it eats more into the evening for the Europeans.
AFAIK no-one from the Auckland office dials into the weekly update
meeting, currently. I don't think that's likely to change.
Rob
Blair McBride
likely mean I'll be dialing in less, but I'll still try. If anything, it
will make it easier to attend at the end of a really late night!
Either way, I'm not currently an active contributor for these meetings.
So no major objections from me.
- Blair
> _______________________________________________
> dev-planning mailing list
> dev-pl...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-planning
Gervase Markham
transitions go both in the same direction, because US DST starts earlier
and finishes later than Europe. This is better, because it's easier to
remember, and because the difference never becomes greater, only less.
PST 10am 11am
Mtn 11am 12pm
CST 12pm 1pm
EST 1pm 2pm
UK 6pm; 5pm transitions 7pm; 6pm transitions
WEur 7pm; 6pm transitions 8pm; 7pm transitions
EEur 8pm; 7pm transitions 9pm; 8pm transitions
China 1am Apr->Sep, 12am Oct->Mar 2am Apr->Sep, 1am Oct->Mar
Japan 2am Apr->Sep, 1am Oct->Mar 3am Apr->Sep, 2am Oct->Mar
NZ 5am Apr->Sep, 7am Oct->Mar 6am Apr->Sep, 8am Oct->Mar
(+ transition complexities!)
I can see the desire to "get the week started" in Mountain View before
having the meeting, which makes 10am less desirable. Would 10am be a
more plausible candidate if we moved from Mondays to e.g. Tuesdays? Or
is having the meeting at the beginning of the week valuable?
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> I can see the desire to "get the week started" in Mountain View before
> having the meeting, which makes 10am less desirable. Would 10am be a
> more plausible candidate if we moved from Mondays to e.g. Tuesdays? Or
> is having the meeting at the beginning of the week valuable?
Further info: if we are sticking with Monday, then according to the
Community Calendar[0] the 11am slot is free, but taking the 10am slot
would clash with the SUMO meeting, so presumably they would need to move.
The 11am slot on Tuesday and Wednesday has a major Firefox meeting in
it, and 10am has Thunderbird and Firebug (Tue) or Community Marketing
and AMO (Wed). Moving the day sounds like it would lead to fairly
serious rearrangements. And perhaps people wouldn't care too much for
back-to-back meetings anyway.
If the Europeans are OK with 11am/7pm, and they seem to be if the two
major Firefox meetings are at that time on Tue and Wed, then 11am on
Monday would seem to be the optimum choice. (Which I guess was David's
suggestion at the top of the thread :-)
Gerv
Mike Connor
On 24-Jun-09, at 8:13 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:
> Mike Connor wrote:
>> On 24-Jun-09, at 4:22 PM, Dan Mosedale wrote:
>>> On 6/24/09 12:52 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:
>>>> [lots of sound reasoning elided]
>>>>
>>>> So this is a last call for any other objections I should
>>>> consider. Absent some big new issue I've missed, I'm planning to
>>>> make this change sometime in July.
>>> Great!
>>>
>>> Is the plan that when daylight time changes happen, the meeting
>>> will remain nailed to 10AM Pacific and may move for other
>>> participants?
>> I'm not sure we settled 10 vs. 11, Mitchell's seeming to indicate
>> we'd move to 11. I am much more in favour of 10 than 11, as I
>> argued earlier in the thread we probably don't want to run into
>> lunchtime in MV, since that will create a bit of a hard wall with
>> people wandering off to eat.
>> -- Mike
>
> I checked with Karen, she didn't think lunch at the end of the
> meeting would be a problem.
On what level? Logistics? My concern is that we'll feel pressure to
wrap up the meeting because food's waiting and everyone's hungry.
I've seen it before, and I don't think it's the best situation. We
frequently go over an hour, so maybe 10:30 AM?
> If we move to 10am we run into the problem that people are really
> rushed trying to get a handle on the week before the meeting
> starts. Too easy for nothing to happen before the meeting, rather
> than get in, do a bunch of work to get the week rolling before
> breaking for an 11am meeting.
> Will check on this.
I'd like to think that if the meeting has value, especially in terms
of presenting an overall organization context, it would be the best
kickoff for the week we could have. Knowing what the shape of things
is will generally make it easier, not harder, to plan and drive into a
week effectively.
-- Mike
Mike Shaver
> On what level? Logistics? My concern is that we'll feel pressure to wrap up
> the meeting because food's waiting and everyone's hungry. I've seen it
> before, and I don't think it's the best situation. We frequently go over an
> hour, so maybe 10:30 AM?
In my experience, every time you add time pressure to a meeting, the
quality of the meeting improves quite quickly. This meeting is a
valuable resource, but it's also a high cost, in that you're talking
about literally hundreds of person-hours of time spent on the call.
Constraints are liberating. :)
Mike
Boris Zbarsky
> On what level? Logistics? My concern is that we'll feel pressure to
> wrap up the meeting because food's waiting and everyone's hungry. I've
> seen it before, and I don't think it's the best situation. We
> frequently go over an hour, so maybe 10:30 AM?
Quite honestly, I see a lot of time wasted during the Monday meetings.
Things being presented that are not really relevant (e.g. who's taking
PTO when), people talking at length for some reason when they could
present the same information quickly and link to more specific details
from the minutes, etc.
I think a bit of time pressure would do the Monday meetings a world of
good. Possibly to the point of making them actually worth attending.
> I'd like to think that if the meeting has value
Which as it stands is somewhat questionable, to me...
-Boris
Mitchell Baker
On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Mike Connor<mco...@mozilla.com> wrote:On what level? Logistics? My concern is that we'll feel pressure to wrap up the meeting because food's waiting and everyone's hungry. I've seen it before, and I don't think it's the best situation. We frequently go over an hour, so maybe 10:30 AM?
wow, why didn't i think of that? and here's what I mistakenly sent back only to mconnor rather than all:In my experience, every time you add time pressure to a meeting, the quality of the meeting improves quite quickly. This meeting is a valuable resource, but it's also a high cost, in that you're talking about literally hundreds of person-hours of time spent on the call. Constraints are liberating. :) Mike
The lunch we bring in on Mondays was initially designed to make the monday meetings more effective. Both providing lunch so everyone is there rather than getting lunch and in the timing.
We can move the lunch to 12:30 if that makes more sense, or 1pm. There's no reason it has to be at noon exactly. Maybe 12:30 or 1 will be better for those who don't get up at 6 or 7 in the morning.
You're right, it's different; maybe it won't work out. We'll see. I know that 10:30 will be a problem for the steering committee in its efforts to make the most of the week; its current 10:30 meeting has already proved this. That's a small number of people but also the one longtanding meeting that is shifting to accomodate this.
mitchell
Mike Connor
On 26-Jun-09, at 12:12 PM, Mike Shaver wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Mike Connor<mco...@mozilla.com>
> wrote:
>> On what level? Logistics? My concern is that we'll feel pressure
>> to wrap up
>> the meeting because food's waiting and everyone's hungry. I've
>> seen it
>> before, and I don't think it's the best situation. We frequently
>> go over an
>> hour, so maybe 10:30 AM?
>
> In my experience, every time you add time pressure to a meeting, the
> quality of the meeting improves quite quickly. This meeting is a
> valuable resource, but it's also a high cost, in that you're talking
> about literally hundreds of person-hours of time spent on the call.
> Constraints are liberating. :)
This is a fair general rule, but in my experience, that generally
works by constraining discussion and avoiding deep-diving on subjects
that can be followed up later. Short of everyone's updates simply
consisting of "just go read the wiki" I don't think we're going to
carve much off the schedule.
-- Mike
Dan Mosedale
people reading their wiki section aloud don't strike as a particularly
good use of time.
Dan
Mike Shaver
Mosedale<dm...@mozillamessaging.com> wrote:
> Why is that a problem? The portions of the meeting that consist of people
> reading their wiki section aloud don't strike as a particularly good use of
> time.
Having people present has nice social benefits, but I agree in the
large: I would rather hear a summary and additional focus on things
that people want help with for the "active presentation", while
hopefully having everything also captured in the wiki for the many
people who can't be there real-time.
Mike
Mike Beltzner
> Having people present has nice social benefits, but I agree in the
> large: I would rather hear a summary and additional focus on things
> that people want help with for the "active presentation", while
> hopefully having everything also captured in the wiki for the many
> people who can't be there real-time.
Are we designing the structure and content of this meeting? I was
pretty sure that was explicitly called out as a non-goal for this
discussion by Mitchell back when it started, but perhaps I am mistaken.
I would recommend that we not conflate the topics, too much, as the
latter can lead to a much broader discussion which would, I fear, not
be on topic for dev-planning (while this discussion of when the
meeting should take place very much is!)
cheers,
mike with the moderator hat on
Mike Shaver
> Are we designing the structure and content of this meeting? I was pretty
> sure that was explicitly called out as a non-goal for this discussion by
> Mitchell back when it started, but perhaps I am mistaken.
Goes to minimum required time-slot, your honour.
Mike
Dan Mosedale
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Dan Mosedale<dm...@mozillamessaging.com> wrote:
>
>> Why is that a problem? The portions of the meeting that consist of people
>> reading their wiki section aloud don't strike as a particularly good use of
>> time.
>>
> large: I would rather hear a summary and additional focus on things
> that people want help with for the "active presentation", while
> hopefully having everything also captured in the wiki for the many
> people who can't be there real-time.
>
that we try and simultaneously use the wiki as both a script for the
meeting and as a place to fill in notes for posterity ends up messing up
the way we think about the meeting. I wonder if we wouldn't do well to
explore separating out those two functions.
This has wandered a bit from the original question about changing the
time. However, my impression is that there are quite a few folks who
aren't terribly happy with the current format of the meeting anyway (I
include myself in this set). So one possible tack would be to go ahead
with a time that does impose a constraint, and assume that we're going
to need to modify the format to deal with that constraint pretty quickly.
Dan
Mike Connor
On 26-Jun-09, at 12:45 PM, Mike Shaver wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Dan
> Mosedale<dm...@mozillamessaging.com> wrote:
>> Why is that a problem? The portions of the meeting that consist of
>> people
>> reading their wiki section aloud don't strike as a particularly
>> good use of
>> time.
>
> Having people present has nice social benefits, but I agree in the
> large: I would rather hear a summary and additional focus on things
> that people want help with for the "active presentation", while
> hopefully having everything also captured in the wiki for the many
> people who can't be there real-time.
So how do we get there? Can we switch to a system where we separate
the agenda for what people want to present/talk about and confine the
current "here's what we did last week and this week" status updates to
the wiki notes? Right now the meeting and the wiki are basically the
same content, which creates a positive time pressure on people to be
concise, but I think also makes it unlikely that anyone would dare
spend five minutes on anything.
Personally, I'd like to see us spend more time on a subset of the
content of the wiki notes. Not sure who would be good to make this
call, but if we only got up and spoke about "big things" I'd probably
find this a lot more valuable, in the same way I think the newsletter
has been a real success.
* Project kickoffs (i.e. Mozilla Creative Collective,
hacks.mozilla.org, marketing campaigns)
* Product releases (i.e. new AMO, significant milestones for Labs
projects)
* Major milestones on projects (i.e. working PoC for Electrolysis)
* Requests for help from across the community
* etc (not an exhaustive list)
-- Mike
Daniel Veditz
> On what level? Logistics? My concern is that we'll feel pressure to
> wrap up the meeting because food's waiting and everyone's hungry. I've
> seen it before, and I don't think it's the best situation. We
> frequently go over an hour, so maybe 10:30 AM?
Do we? Only if you count the following MoCo meeting and that could be
moved if necessary (especially for occasional lengthy things like
discussing slide decks -- those could be an event of their own).
I don't think I've ever seen the Mozilla Community meeting go more than
an hour, and usually half that.
Gervase Markham
> Are we designing the structure and content of this meeting? I was pretty
> sure that was explicitly called out as a non-goal for this discussion by
> Mitchell back when it started, but perhaps I am mistaken.
I guess it's on-topic if someone feels there's no way the meeting could
be made useful, and so should be scrapped.
If we are all agreed that there is a form of this meeting that's worth
having, then yes, we can separate the discussions :-)
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> Do we? Only if you count the following MoCo meeting and that could be
> moved if necessary (especially for occasional lengthy things like
> discussing slide decks -- those could be an event of their own).
This is an interesting demonstration of how some participants in a
discussion can be operating with an entirely different set of
constraints to other participants, and neither side realizes.
I may be wrong, but I think this is the first time someone has mentioned
in this thread that there's a MoCo-internal meeting following the
general meeting. I confess I'd forgotten that, and I'm sure loads of
people never knew. I was thinking that people in MV sure liked to have
lunch early...
And it seems that Mitchell is saying that there's normally a Steering
Committee meeting before the general meeting. Is that right? Is it OK
for that meeting to move to afterwards, or are the Steering Committee
now going to have to be in the office at 8am on Monday morning? Are
there other constraints that we've missed?
Gerv
David Tenser
> On 26/06/09 09:17, Gervase Markham wrote:
>> I can see the desire to "get the week started" in Mountain View before
>> having the meeting, which makes 10am less desirable. Would 10am be a
>> more plausible candidate if we moved from Mondays to e.g. Tuesdays? Or
>> is having the meeting at the beginning of the week valuable?
>
> Further info: if we are sticking with Monday, then according to the
> Community Calendar[0] the 11am slot is free, but taking the 10am slot
> would clash with the SUMO meeting, so presumably they would need to move.
>
The SUMO meeting can always be moved; no problem if 10 AM PT is a more
desirable time for most people than 11 AM PT.
However, I like the idea of having a time constraint of 1 hour (we
rarely exceed it anyway, although with the recent intern introductions,
we have) and go for lunch after the meeting ends, so if were to pick a
time, I'd go with 11 AM. Discussions seem to take place in MV after
these meetings since everyone gets together, and what better way to
discuss face to face than over lunch?
- David