Meeting scheduling and growth

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Ken Finnigan

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Nov 16, 2018, 2:27:56 PM11/16/18
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All,

With the current number of specifications we have, we're now up to about ten hours of meetings every week, not including the Live Hangout every two weeks. MP Health only has their meeting once every two weeks as well.

I'm wondering whether it's worth some specifications either reducing how frequently they meet, or reducing the time each week to a confined 30 minutes, or maybe both for some?

I ask because it's difficult to stay on top of all the meetings, and there are only a couple of people that have the ability to dedicate that much time each week just to meetings for MicroProfile. It also makes it more difficult to find an appropriate time for one off meetings, like MP Architecture, that are conducive to all time zones without overlapping an existing call.

Early on it wasn't an issue as there were only a handful of specifications. But as we keep growing it's not going to scale for every specification to require a one hour meeting every week.

Thoughts?

Ken

Raymond Auge

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Nov 16, 2018, 2:55:40 PM11/16/18
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As a non-participant in the hangouts (simply because I cannot find the time) I find it rather discouraging that so much work is done during those calls rather than in a more open venue like the mail lists.

I personally wish that less emphasis was put in the hangouts vs. the mail lists. It's true that discussion can be harder in the lists and the async nature really makes achieving fast consensus difficult. On the other hand it's much more inclusive and easier for large number of people to observe and stay in touch with day to day activities.

Just my thoughts,
- Ray

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Marcia Peterson

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Nov 16, 2018, 3:08:44 PM11/16/18
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Ken,

In the Agile approach teams are developing to generate trust, buyin and decision making. However, no teams should form or meet without the approval of the Project Coordinator, this individual is incharge of making sure meetings are productive as well as keeping a meeting log. Also, meetings are usually carved out for one hour increments but some meetings may last 30 minutes to an 1 hour depending on the facilitator. I hope, this answers your question.
Thank you,
Marcia Peterson, CAPM 

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 2:27 PM Ken Finnigan <k...@kenfinnigan.me> wrote:
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Ondro Mihályi

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Nov 18, 2018, 5:33:43 AM11/18/18
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I think ad long as hangouts produce complete meeting minutes, it should be up to the spec team to decide. But it's good to agree that having meetings every 2 weeks or just limited to 30 is completely normal and teams should consider these options.

I would like to see a lot of communication in Gitter rooms and use hangouts just to organize and make sure nothing slips through. We may consider also separate mailing lists for specs, but to me Gitter is enough and works fine.

Ondro

Raymond Auge

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Nov 18, 2018, 10:47:16 AM11/18/18
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On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 5:33 AM Ondro Mihályi <ondrej....@gmail.com> wrote:
I think ad long as hangouts produce complete meeting minutes, it should be up to the spec team to decide. But it's good to agree that having meetings every 2 weeks or just limited to 30 is completely normal and teams should consider these options.

I would like to see a lot of communication in Gitter rooms and use hangouts just to organize and make sure nothing slips through. We may consider also separate mailing lists for specs,  but to me Gitter is enough and works fine.

Gitter is indeed helpful. At least it's traceable, and does provide a faster communication turn around, but only for those who choose to observe in real time. Otherwise, it's just like email if you are absent and just get the activity via email.

- Ray
 

Ondro


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James Roper

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Nov 18, 2018, 6:19:01 PM11/18/18
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Personally, I think the hangouts are fantastic - if anyone has anything to complain about it being hard to attend a hangout, its me, the community hangout was at 4am my time (it's shifted to 6am now due to daylight savings) yet I still attended almost every fortnight. I've been working full time in open source for 6 years now, and the biweekly community hangout I have to say is the best, most productive experience I've had in the high level cross organisational syncing of a large, multiple sub project open source project.

As we grow, I do think we need to be more strategic about hangouts. I've said this before, but it's not going to be possible for any one person to be across all sub projects. Organisations will need to delegate. And we do need more project leads to attend the community hangout, so that that delegators that do need to be broadly across projects can at least get a status update each fortnight. If a spec is active, with new contributions every week, then I think it makes sense for that spec to have weekly hangouts. Otherwise, if it's less active, then its hangouts can be cancelled, or go down to once a fortnight or once a month.

Gitter conversations are much easier to miss than email conversations. They're great for people who are full time in a project, but terrible for lurkers that just need a quick status update from time to time - such people cannot afford to go back through all the old conversations just to find the important points. To me it feels like the worst of both real time and asynchronous worlds - to be useful, you still need to be on it at the same as the other people, as you do with a hangout, but, if you're not there, it's much easier to miss something important. At least with hangouts, you know that there is one every week or fortnight, and you have a great summary to skim through in the form of minutes, and you've got the recordings if you need more detail - I'm not sure if you've ever read the minutes or watched the recordings for any hangouts, but I'd argue that the structure of a summary in minutes and detail in recordings makes them more traceable, due to a higher level of ease of finding what you need, than Gitter.


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James Roper
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John Clingan

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Nov 20, 2018, 1:48:28 PM11/20/18
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I think this thread delivers some good insights. One problem with the hangouts is that MicroProfile is consensus-driven and we tend to make decisions based on those on hangout calls. James is 100% correct, we've grown to the point where one person can be an expert in all topics nor can one person (pragmatically) attend all calls.  It's going to require some level of divide-and-conquer for larger organizations and pick-and-choose for individuals. From a MicroProfile Live Hangout perspective, we like to start group threads where we think a decision or discussion is required from a broader audience. However, that is definitely not always the case.

MicroProfile has grown to the point where multiple processes need to be updated, and the challenge is going to be balancing our agile/lightweight approach with the need for broader engagement and involvement. Consensus-based decisions tend to be made by those who are active in the project. Personally, I want to maintain that approach. So, do we have the framework in place for those who want to be active to be active? Each project has hangouts and mailing (or issue) lists. Is that enough?

I have this strange urge to discuss this on our next live hangout, LOL.

On Sunday, November 18, 2018 at 3:19:01 PM UTC-8, James Roper wrote:
Personally, I think the hangouts are fantastic - if anyone has anything to complain about it being hard to attend a hangout, its me, the community hangout was at 4am my time (it's shifted to 6am now due to daylight savings) yet I still attended almost every fortnight. I've been working full time in open source for 6 years now, and the biweekly community hangout I have to say is the best, most productive experience I've had in the high level cross organisational syncing of a large, multiple sub project open source project.

As we grow, I do think we need to be more strategic about hangouts. I've said this before, but it's not going to be possible for any one person to be across all sub projects. Organisations will need to delegate. And we do need more project leads to attend the community hangout, so that that delegators that do need to be broadly across projects can at least get a status update each fortnight. If a spec is active, with new contributions every week, then I think it makes sense for that spec to have weekly hangouts. Otherwise, if it's less active, then its hangouts can be cancelled, or go down to once a fortnight or once a month.

Gitter conversations are much easier to miss than email conversations. They're great for people who are full time in a project, but terrible for lurkers that just need a quick status update from time to time - such people cannot afford to go back through all the old conversations just to find the important points. To me it feels like the worst of both real time and asynchronous worlds - to be useful, you still need to be on it at the same as the other people, as you do with a hangout, but, if you're not there, it's much easier to miss something important. At least with hangouts, you know that there is one every week or fortnight, and you have a great summary to skim through in the form of minutes, and you've got the recordings if you need more detail - I'm not sure if you've ever read the minutes or watched the recordings for any hangouts, but I'd argue that the structure of a summary in minutes and detail in recordings makes them more traceable, due to a higher level of ease of finding what you need, than Gitter.

On Mon, 19 Nov 2018 at 02:47, Raymond Auge <raymon...@liferay.com> wrote:
On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 5:33 AM Ondro Mihályi <ondrej....@gmail.com> wrote:
I think ad long as hangouts produce complete meeting minutes, it should be up to the spec team to decide. But it's good to agree that having meetings every 2 weeks or just limited to 30 is completely normal and teams should consider these options.

I would like to see a lot of communication in Gitter rooms and use hangouts just to organize and make sure nothing slips through. We may consider also separate mailing lists for specs,  but to me Gitter is enough and works fine.

Gitter is indeed helpful. At least it's traceable, and does provide a faster communication turn around, but only for those who choose to observe in real time. Otherwise, it's just like email if you are absent and just get the activity via email. 
- Ray
 

Ondro

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Emily Jiang

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Nov 21, 2018, 5:27:44 PM11/21/18
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+1 on James and John's points!

We should not slow down our progress by placing a bottle neck. For me personally, I would like to attend quite a few specs, but I know I cannot. I choose the ones I should contribute more and attend other calls infrequently or check minutes or git issues or PRs.

Weekly hangouts are extremely useful. It is much more productive. So many issues can be sorted out via talking, explaining and screen sharing.

We should leave the weekly hangout to each individual spec workgroup to manage. However, weekly minutes should be maintained, so that anyone can check on the progress whenever needed. It is also a good place to store useful info as well.

My 2cents.
Emily



On Tuesday, November 20, 2018 at 6:48:28 PM UTC, John Clingan wrote:
I think this thread delivers some good insights. One problem with the hangouts is that MicroProfile is consensus-driven and we tend to make decisions based on those on hangout calls. James is 100% correct, we've grown to the point where one person can be an expert in all topics nor can one person (pragmatically) attend all calls.  It's going to require some level of divide-and-conquer for larger organizations and pick-and-choose for individuals. From a MicroProfile Live Hangout perspective, we like to start group threads where we think a decision or discussion is required from a broader audience. However, that is definitely not always the case.

MicroProfile has grown to the point where multiple processes need to be updated, and the challenge is going to be balancing our agile/lightweight approach with the need for broader engagement and involvement. Consensus-based decisions tend to be made by those who are active in the project. Personally, I want to maintain that approach. So, do we have the framework in place for those who want to be active to be active? Each project has hangouts and mailing (or issue) lists. Is that enough?

I have this strange urge to discuss this on our next live hangout, LOL.

On Sunday, November 18, 2018 at 3:19:01 PM UTC-8, James Roper wrote:
Personally, I think the hangouts are fantastic - if anyone has anything to complain about it being hard to attend a hangout, its me, the community hangout was at 4am my time (it's shifted to 6am now due to daylight savings) yet I still attended almost every fortnight. I've been working full time in open source for 6 years now, and the biweekly community hangout I have to say is the best, most productive experience I've had in the high level cross organisational syncing of a large, multiple sub project open source project.

As we grow, I do think we need to be more strategic about hangouts. I've said this before, but it's not going to be possible for any one person to be across all sub projects. Organisations will need to delegate. And we do need more project leads to attend the community hangout, so that that delegators that do need to be broadly across projects can at least get a status update each fortnight. If a spec is active, with new contributions every week, then I think it makes sense for that spec to have weekly hangouts. Otherwise, if it's less active, then its hangouts can be cancelled, or go down to once a fortnight or once a month.

Gitter conversations are much easier to miss than email conversations. They're great for people who are full time in a project, but terrible for lurkers that just need a quick status update from time to time - such people cannot afford to go back through all the old conversations just to find the important points. To me it feels like the worst of both real time and asynchronous worlds - to be useful, you still need to be on it at the same as the other people, as you do with a hangout, but, if you're not there, it's much easier to miss something important. At least with hangouts, you know that there is one every week or fortnight, and you have a great summary to skim through in the form of minutes, and you've got the recordings if you need more detail - I'm not sure if you've ever read the minutes or watched the recordings for any hangouts, but I'd argue that the structure of a summary in minutes and detail in recordings makes them more traceable, due to a higher level of ease of finding what you need, than Gitter.

On Mon, 19 Nov 2018 at 02:47, Raymond Auge <raymon...@liferay.com> wrote:
On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 5:33 AM Ondro Mihályi <ondrej....@gmail.com> wrote:
I think ad long as hangouts produce complete meeting minutes, it should be up to the spec team to decide. But it's good to agree that having meetings every 2 weeks or just limited to 30 is completely normal and teams should consider these options.

I would like to see a lot of communication in Gitter rooms and use hangouts just to organize and make sure nothing slips through. We may consider also separate mailing lists for specs,  but to me Gitter is enough and works fine.

Gitter is indeed helpful. At least it's traceable, and does provide a faster communication turn around, but only for those who choose to observe in real time. Otherwise, it's just like email if you are absent and just get the activity via email. 
- Ray
 

Ondro

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Raymond Augé (@rotty3000)
Senior Software Architect Liferay, Inc. (@Liferay)
Board Member & EEG Co-Chair, OSGi Alliance (@OSGiAlliance)

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