> Justin pointed out his earlier post and the apparent disagreement I had with > it with the > "pick a long thread topic" example - and he has a point. I meant it as an > example, and > didn't say as much, and I meant more to focus on decision making, and didn't > say that > either.
I also meant "pick a long newsgroup thread" as an example. I still disagree with using the platform meeting for decision-making. > However, if a particular topic is announced as "we've exchanged e-mails over > two weeks > on the topic X and we think we should now make a decision", then only the > people > interested would show up. The idea that the people in timezones which allow them to attend the meeting are privileged to participate directly in decisions made there, and anyone else who wants to participate in these decisions needs a proxy, is antithetical to how Mozilla works and ought to work, I think. > So, just by showing up, you're claiming to have interest in the particular > topic. Well, you're claiming to have interest in /a/ particular topic, which might be just one of many discussed at the meeting. Even in the event that the agenda is announced ahead of time (good luck with that), you may have to wait through an hour-long meeting just to talk for sixty seconds. Maybe we're solving a problem here that we don't have. I think we're perfectly capable of debating and deciding things over e-mail. Do you disagree, and do you have evidence for this? It seems to me that decisions that need in-depth, live debate are poorly suited for a meeting that nominally involves all of engineering. I have difficulty fathoming a decision which is simple enough to be decided in a few minutes on a conference call involving hundreds of engineers, but is so complex that we can't decide it effectively over e-mail. Perhaps you could provide an example of something that you think would have been decided much better in the paradigm that you're suggesting. > The time zone mess is, well, a mess. Not much that can be done about it in > general. This is begging the question. Of course something can be done about the timezone mess: Asynchronous communication works around the problem entirely. On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Milan Sreckovic <msrecko...@mozilla.com> wrote: > Justin pointed out his earlier post and the apparent disagreement I had with > it with the "pick a long thread topic" example - and he has a point. I meant > it as an example, and didn't say as much, and I meant more to focus on > decision making, and didn't say that either. > > I agree the general engineering meeting is a good place to discuss particular > issues, as they may not be of interest to everybody. That would be like > telling everybody to show up for a movie at 2pm, and not actually tell them > what movie is being shown. However, if a particular topic is announced as > "we've exchanged e-mails over two weeks on the topic X and we think we should > now make a decision", then only the people interested would show up. So, > just by showing up, you're claiming to have interest in the particular topic. > > The time zone mess is, well, a mess. Not much that can be done about it in > general. When there is a decision making meeting that you can't attend, get > yourself a proxy, make sure somebody understands your stand, and hopefully > they can make the meeting and represent you. > > Not that in person meetings solve all the problems, but at least you know who > was there when a decision was made. > > > On 2013-04-24, at 3:13 PM, Justin Lebar <justin.le...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> ... >> On a related note, I think the engineering meeting is a bad place for >> having discussions or debating decisions. Inevitably, many of the >> people in attendance won't care about this particular issue, so we're >> just wasting their time. And similarly, at our current numeric and >> geographic scale it's inevitable that people who do care about the >> issue won't be in attendance at the meeting and thus won't be able to >> participate. I think therefore that discussions / debates are >> better-suited for our newsgroups or for smaller meetings. >> >> -Justin > > > > Milan > > On 2013-04-25, at 1:03 PM, Milan Sreckovic <msrecko...@mozilla.com> wrote: > >> >> Every good meeting needs a conflict - a meeting about whether we should >> have the platform meeting would be a great meeting. If we are too large to >> actually have a meeting where something could be argued or decided, we >> probably don't need that meeting. >> >> Status meetings are useful, but as was pointed out, reading the notes is a >> good way to get that status. >> >> So, in my mind, the question is - what kinds of topics/decisions/conflicts >> could we have in the platform meeting, which would make it entertaining and >> more useful to more people? We could certainly pick a "topics with > 20 >> e-mails in a thread on dev-platform" and have them as an agenda item to >> "resolve" during the call. >> >> Milan >> >> On 2013-04-25, at 11:59 AM, Doug Turner <doug.tur...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Lawrence Mandel wrote: >>>> However, I have had people tell me that they do get some value from this >>>> meeting. >>> >>> >>> >>> What value did they get and what role did they have at mozilla? I am >>> wondering if the audience for this meeting is no longer mozilla platform >>> engineers. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> dev-platform mailing list >>> dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org >>> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dev-platform mailing list >> dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org >> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
