[OT] On Calls and Meetings

[Felix Meschberger <fm...@adobe.com.INVALID>]

Hi all

Calls may at time help converge on some topics. And if you are used to the traditional office environment, you might be used to having calls and meetings.

But keep in mind, that this is *not* the way, how traditional open source project in general, and Apache projects in particular, work. Here we mostly are in an asynchronous mode, even though this might take a bit longer to converge and some more typing.

Having said that, it’s great to see this momentum, but I am concerned with the an outlook that going forward this project really operates in a synchronous call- and Slack-oriented fashion which might indeed create a two-class society of those able to participate in the synchronous activities and those relying on asynchronous mode.

Please keep that in mind as we move this project forward.

Thanks and keep the great work coming !

Regards
Felix

PS: And, of course, as you conclude the call/meeting, having a write up published through CWiki and/or dev list is a must. Thanks.

Re: [OT] On Calls and Meetings

[Isabel Drost-Fromm <is...@apache.org>]

https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/31b2dc9a2f60649484630c17b2e724190c58bac30ee5993e377c2b16@%3Cdev.openwhisk.apache.org%3E ... Was another thread of feedback to keep in mind. Please make sure to track the impact these meetings have in your report, in particular wrt. seeking input from those not participating.

If you're wondering how all this no meeting stuff works, look here:
https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/success-at-apache-asynchronous-decision


Isabel

-- 
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Gerät mit K-9 Mail gesendet.

Re: [OT] On Calls and Meetings

[Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>]

Hi Rob,

On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 8:59 AM, Rob Allen <ro...@akrabat.com> wrote:
> ...The really nice thing about a good asynchronous mode is that you end up with a searchable
> history for each conversation, ideally where the start of each conversation can be easily found
> and contributed to....

Yes, that's the spirit of the Apache "if it didn't happen on the dev
list, it didn't happen" mantra.

However that doesn't mean every discussion needs to fully happen on
the mailing list. As you mention, mailing lists are an old an clunky
tool, I think they can work very well for complex discussions but that
requires a lot of discipline (in quoting, threading etc) which more
modern tools don't require.

What's required however is that someone can follow the action by
*just* subscribing to this dev list: be aware of what's going on, be
informed of where details are discussed if not here, and review and
understand technical decisions in asynchronous mode, without having to
watch hours of recording or read volumes of chat logs.

> ...Mainly I'm letting everyone know that I'm not very active here as I find it hard to be. I
> appreciate that the email list is long-term stable, but it is intimidating and can be a barrier
> for people who are used to web-based asynchronous systems such as issue trackers,
> PRs or forums...

IMO the key is in finding the right way to combine those tools to
create the "asynchronous collaboration bus" that enables Apache-style
projects. Having a complex discussion in a pull request or tracker
ticket is fine, but if it's non-trivial it needs to be reflected here,
even if that's just "hey we are having a discussion about FOO in
ticket OW-1234, plaese join if you're interested" so that someone
who's just paying attention to the dev list doesn't miss anything.

So like Felix I'm worried about (a lot of) OpenWhisk technical
discussions not being reflected here, and I think this needs to change
as the project moves towards graduation. Tools are evolving and that's
great, but the principles remain.

-Bertrand

Re: [OT] On Calls and Meetings

[Rob Allen <ro...@akrabat.com>]

Hi,

> On 11 Jul 2017, at 03:15, Felix Meschberger <fm...@adobe.com.INVALID> wrote:
> 
> Hi all
> 
> Calls may at time help converge on some topics. And if you are used to the traditional office environment, you might be used to having calls and meetings.
> 
> But keep in mind, that this is *not* the way, how traditional open source project in general, and Apache projects in particular, work. Here we mostly are in an asynchronous mode, even though this might take a bit longer to converge and some more typing.
> 
> Having said that, it’s great to see this momentum, but I am concerned with the an outlook that going forward this project really operates in a synchronous call- and Slack-oriented fashion which might indeed create a two-class society of those able to participate in the synchronous activities and those relying on asynchronous mode.
> 
> Please keep that in mind as we move this project forward.
> 
> Thanks and keep the great work coming !
> 
> Regards
> Felix
> 
> PS: And, of course, as you conclude the call/meeting, having a write up published through CWiki and/or dev list is a must. Thanks.


The really nice thing about a good asynchronous mode is that you end up with a searchable history for each conversation, ideally where the start of each conversation can be easily found and contributed to. I'm a fan.

I think that all the OSS projects I'm involved with use an asynchronous mechanism to reach & document decisions. It's not uncommon to see an issue created for a particular conversation that starts with "As discussed on IRC, I spoke with, X & Y as I think that Topic A should be explored. They pointed out that issues 1, 2, and 3 will need thinking about, but I feel that benefits A & B are worth it. Please see issues 10 which is vaguely related.". It's a lovely way of having a nicely isolated conversation where interested people can jump in and comment.

I realise that Apache uses email for this, but personally I find email lists really hard to use as I don't associate email with long-running, discontiguous-in-time conversations as the email inboxes on my iPhone, iPad and Mac do not lend themselves to this. This is very much a demotivator for me personally as it's so much work to manage mailing list conversations via my inbox. 

I'm very unlike to ever reply to any conversation that hasn't had activity since the last time I cleared my inbox to zero. I realise that there's the mailing list archive page, but I couldn't work out how to reply to a thread there as I'm not an ASF committer and don't use Google. I'm not going to come back to my email client to reply to the thread I read on a website; I'll just let it slide.

I don't have much of a point here really. Mainly I'm letting everyone know that I'm not very active here as I find it hard to be. I appreciate that the email list is long-term stable, but it is intimidating and can be a barrier for people who are used to web-based asynchronous systems such as issue trackers, PRs or forums. I assume every other Apache project has overcome this and am be interested to know how they persuade people to use email lists.

Regards,

Rob...