Thanks for suggesting this Andrew. I just uploaded a blog post with my thoughts in long form [1]. Here are some suggestions pulled from that:
Continue: I hope we will continue prioritizing updating the spec for new array formats. [2] I think this is very important for avoiding fragmentation and may even open opportunities for consolidation in the C++ ecosystem. +1 on additional improvements for documentation, examples, no-invite chats. I am particularly keen on seeing evangelism for our protocols; existing ones like C Data Interface aren't nearly as widely known as they ought to be and I'm excited for new ones like ADBC. Start: Find ways for each subproject to publicly develop a clear roadmap. Otherwise by default these discussions happen in private, either between individual ICs or within corporate environments. Some subprojects, such as Acero could likely use their own sync call to help facilitate this, even if on a slower cadence than the main biweekly call. Also, other sync calls might consider adapting to the sync call note style used in the Rust projects, where all notes are in one google doc [3] rather than spread across main mailing list threads. That seems like a format that would make it easy for new contributors to catch up on the major focuses of the project. Stop: Don't create end-user (e.g. data scientist) facing tools under the name Arrow; prefer keeping separate brand identities for those tools and keeping arrow libraries as developer-facing libraries. [1] https://www.datawill.io/posts/apache-arrow-2022-reflection/ [2] https://lists.apache.org/thread/49qzofswg1r5z7zh39pjvd1m2ggz2kdq [3] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1atCVnoff5SR4eM4Lwf2M1BBJTY6g3_HUNR6qswYJW_U/edit#heading=h.qkuvi08gk4qa On Mon, Dec 26, 2022 at 10:12 AM Andrew Lamb <al...@influxdata.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > I am very excited and honored to help steer the Arrow Project this year as > Arrow PMC Chair. > > Something Kou suggested, and the PMC thought would be valuable, is to have > a small retrospective about the state of the project and where we want to > take it. I would like to try doing so via a “state of the project” type > discussion on this mailing list, inspired by an example from Apache Calcite > [1]. > > I welcome any / all comments on the following topics: What things / > activities, if any, do you you think the Apache Arrow Community should: > > 1. Continue > 2. Start > 3. Stop > > My thoughts are below. > > Andrew > > [1] https://lists.apache.org/thread/tx8gw3vxc4kwfzjs6q2gqwgywnsm1zbf > > Continue: > > I hope we can continue to encourage and support community growth, focused > especially on supporting the sub projects and their leadership. I also > would like to continue and grow the outward facing evangelism about the > project with blog posts and presentations. > > Start: > > Lower the barrier to contributors and accepting those contributions even > more, especially for casual contributors. The move to github issues from > JIRA I see as one example of lowering this barrier (by reducing the > required account maintenance). I would love to see additional improvements > in areas like documentation, examples, no-invite-needed chat, etc. > > Stop: > > It would be nice to stop (reduce) the reliance on the relatively small > number of core contributors for code review. I don’t have any particular > insight on how to accomplish this, and suspect we will always have less > review capacity than we would like, but it would be nice to encourage the > growth. >
