On 04/10/2017 04:41 PM, Chris Dent wrote:
On Mon, 10 Apr 2017, Matt Riedemann wrote:
This might also tie back in with what cdent was mentioning, and if the
flurry of conversation during a TC meeting throws people off, maybe
the minutes should be digested after the meeting in the mailing list.
I know the meeting is logged, but it can be hard to read through that
without one's eyes glazing over due to the cross-talk and locker-room
towel whipping going on.
Aw, you beat me to it. This is part of what I was going to say in
response to your earlier message. I think there are at least three
things to do, all of which you've touched on:
* Alternating the meetings, despite the issues with quorum, probably
ought to happen. If the issues with quorum are insurmountable that
may say something important about the TC's choice to be dependent
on IRC meetings. Is it habit? Doesn't most of the real voting
happen in gerrit? Can more of the discussion happen in email? I
think we (by we I mean all of OpenStack) can and should rely on
email more than we do expressly for the purpose of enabling people
to include themselves according to their own schedules and their
own speeds of comprehension.
Oh god. I feel like I'm going to start a vi-vs-emacs here ...
(Before I do - I agree with alternating meetings)
Email has similar but opposite problems- in that in email the lag is
often too long, rather than too short. This can lead to:
- person A says a thing, then goes to sleep, because it's 1AM in their
timezone.
- 1000 people start a flame war based on a poor choice of phrase in the
original email while person A sleeps
- person A wakes up and is horrified to see what their simple sentence
has done, begins day drinking
Now, as you might imagine the specifics might vary slightly - but I say
the above to actually suggest that rather than it being an either/or -
_both_ are important, and must be balanced over time.
Email allows someone to compose an actual structured narrative, and for
replies to do the same. Some of us are loquatious and I imagine can be
hard to follow even with time to read.
IRC allows someone to respond quickly, and for someone to be like "yo,
totes sorry, I didn't mean that at all LOL" and to walk things back
before a pile of people become mortally insulted.
Like now - hopefully you'll give me a smiley in IRC ... but you might
not, and I'm stuck worrying that my tone came across wrong. Then if you
just don't respond because ZOMG-EMAIL, I might start day drinking.
Email and writing in general is by no means a panacea. We don't
want any of email, IRC, voice or expensive international
gatherings to be the sole mode of interaction.
Blast. I argued against the first part of your email before I realized
there was a second part that agreed with me already.
* People who are participating in the TC meetings can be much more
considerate, at least during critical parts of the meeting, about
who has the speaking stick and what the current topic happens to
be. Sometimes the cross-talk and the towel whipping is exactly
what needs to be happening, but much of the time it is not and
makes it all very hard to follow and frustrating. We see a lot of
behavior in the channel that if we were in person or on the phone
would be completely unacceptable. Each communication medium
affords different behaviors, but we still want to manage to
understand one another. As you say, Alex does a great job of
making the nova api subteam meeting work so there's probably
something we can learn from there.
While I'm blathering - I'll just go ahead and apologize for my frequent
distribution of pies, wet animals and other similar virtual gifts. I do
have a problem shutting my mouth, even when I'm not using it. If it's
any consolation, I also make inopportune jokes in serious business
meetings in person too.
* Digested minutes of the meeting and any pending business
in gerrit can give an additional way to stay in the loop but they
are more about providing an invitation or encouragement to
participate. It shouldn't be a substitute that's there because the
real grind of participation is inaccessible. Participation needs
to be more accessible.
+1000
At the heart of all of this I could not possibly be more in support of
making all of these things accessible.
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