#252 WG meeting feedback
Closed: Fixed 2 years ago by aday. Opened 2 years ago by aday.

We're at the start of a new development cycle, and I'm taking over from Neal as chair. I want to take this opportunity to ask everyone for feedback about the WG meetings:

  • What do you find useful?
  • What isn't useful?
  • Would you change the format in any way?
  • Do you usually check the agenda before the meeting?
  • Do you read the minutes?
  • What do you think of the frequency - is weekly too much/too little/just right?

1) I don't think there is much value in approving last meeting's minutes. At that point, they have already been sent out as an email and there is nothing to approve any more: They are already out in the public.

2) Yes, I read the minutes, but only when I am not able to attend to the meeting.

3) I personally dislike video meetings and find it hard to contribute there. I'd much rather go back to regular IRC meetings and instead maybe once in a while have a video meeting to be able to see everybody's faces.

My thoughts:

  • In general the calls feel lop-sided - a small number of individuals do a large % of the talking. I'd like to hear more from other contributors.
  • On occasion we slip into bike-shedding.
  • I'd like us to push more more activity to chat and the issue tracker, where it's more visible.
  • I don't find approving minutes very useful.
  • I sometimes check the agenda, but often at the last minute.
  • I do read the minutes, but only if I miss a meeting.
  • I'm not a big fan of "open floor" - feels like talking for talking's sake.
  • The like the status updates topic, but it can easily drift into more general discussion. Feels like there's probably a better way to do this.
  • In general, I think that it's hard to have structured meetings on a weekly basis - there's not enough time to adequately prepare. Makes me wonder if we should:
    a) be explicit about adopting a looser format at times
    b) meet less frequently
    c) aim to have shorter calls as necessary

My thoughts on this:

  • I don't know why we bother to approve minutes if we don't gate that on publishing to the list. Not that it particularly matters since we have no way to edit them since they're submitted to meetbot after the meeting anyway.
  • I think we culturally make "open floor" very awkward. Ideally, this would be the place that any guests and other folks would get the opportunity to talk to us. However, I've felt we make it awkward enough that nobody wants to do it.
  • I think our meetings are too structured. The status updates + agenda items + open floor makes it difficult for us to be flexible with meetings. And there are weeks where it has been a struggle to fill out the agenda. And the one time I didn't, I got complaints that "we aren't doing enough".
  • I like the weekly meetings, because it keeps us focused on iteration and keeping everyone in the loop.
  • I vastly prefer the video meetings because it forces us to be engaged. The SIGs/WGs I'm involved in that do text based meetings have a serious engagement problem. Heck, we had the same problem before we switched. And the quality of recent Fedora Workstation releases reflects that.

Tomáš has mentioned a couple times that the lead time for assigning resources is about a year. It's a lot easier to steer a ship farther out from a point than closer to the point.

I think the working group should spend more time planning the Fedora release after the next one, i.e. Fedora 37 and maybe some of 38. I think we've gotten a little bit better at future planning but we should get even better. How do we do that?

The summary meetbot produces from hashtags are not what's being approved, but the entire transcript log that the secretary wrote. The summary is what gets emailed to the desktop list, and it contains a link at the top to the actual minutes. The approval makes everyone responsible and accountable for what the secretary wrote. That way no one gets to say "I didn't say or vote that way" down the road. Everyone has a chance to correct the record. And in fact we have had this happen in Workstation WG meetings a couple of times. The record was corrected, the wrong minutes were expunged by request to Fedora infrastructure, and the corrected and approved minutes are the ones found in meetbot search.

We can absolutely dispense with manually kept meeting minutes and approval, if votes only happen in the agreed upon issue tracker, or IRC meetings. Just keep in mind that if binding votes don't ever happen in video meetings, then there's also no point in video meetings having a quorum. Voting and quorum are tied together. You can still have a meeting without quorum, you just can't have a binding vote.

When I was chair, all the guest speakers overwhelmingly preferred video as a venue over IRC, so I think it's a format well suited for communicating a large volume of material, in particular when it benefits from interaction.

Status updates probably should be limited to specific features, goals or milestones. And instead of voluntary, they should be compulsory in order to avoid missing things. If we voluntarily do a status update, by definition we aren't missing it. The idea of status updates is to avoid missing things on our checklist. Announcements can be for less structured things that are still relevant to the group.

I could do without the open floor. Any issues not on the agenda that someone thinks should be on the agenda need a ticket and tagged with meeting-request, and then it's up to the chair. And also find a way to get better at including members of the community to join in the discussion, rather than just voting members. In some sense every meeting should have a recruitment component.

Status updates probably should be limited to specific features, goals or milestones. And instead of voluntary, they should be compulsory in order to avoid missing things.

Interesting idea! How would the topics of those status updates be determined? (By the chair?) And how would they be different from a regular agenda item?

I could do without the open floor. Any issues not on the agenda that someone thinks should be on the agenda need a ticket and tagged with meeting-request, and then it's up to the chair.

One question that's been on my mind is how easy it is for people to raise topics for discussion. I don't see many people tagging issues with meeting-request and, while it seems appropriate for a chair to set the agenda, there's also maybe an issue with important topics being missed.

What do you find useful?

I overwhelmingly prefer the video meeting format. I think we've been significantly more effective and engaged during the past two years since we adopted this format.

However, waiting for the right moment to inject yourself into the conversation can be difficult for some, and I notice that not all of us have been getting the same opportunity to speak. Nowadays Red Hat prefers Google Meet for video meetings, which has a hand raising queue feature that is pretty useful to ensure everyone gets a fair chance to speak, but Google Meet also makes it difficult for people outside Red Hat to join the meeting, so it's probably not suitable for us. I'm not sure if Bluejeans has an equivalent hand raising feature or not. Maybe? If so, we should aim to aggressively defer to people who use it to ensure everyone gets a chance to speak.

What isn't useful?

We've recently veered towards spending too much time on status reports and miscellaneous discussion before we get to our regular agenda items. Sometimes we cover important/useful stuff during this time, but other times we can get pretty out into the weeds, and I'm not sure it's really advancing specific goals. We should aim to regulate this time better.

Would you change the format in any way?

When I was chair, I enforced a fairly hard cutoff at 10:20 Eastern to ensure the meeting didn't exceed 50 minutes. I think that was useful since nobody likes long meetings. ;) I think I would suggest aiming for even shorter than that. Perhaps 40 minutes would be sufficient.

I might also suggest a 15 minute time limit for the pre-agenda status reports.

And perhaps we could add a regular reminder that guests are welcome to participate in the meeting, since we now have a handful of people outside the WG who regularly attend but do not regularly participate.

Do you usually check the agenda before the meeting?

I read the agenda when I notice it in my inbox. If it's sent the night before the meeting, I'm unlikely to notice it until after we've already finished the meeting. If it's sent earlier, then yes I'll read it.

Do you read the minutes?

I know the meeting minutes are important, but I never read them, so I won't notice if something is wrong there. The approval seems like unnecessary formality to me, since anybody who notices something wrong could bring that up at any point. But I won't argue too much about this, since this step requires maybe 10 seconds per meeting -- not very much time -- and if it keeps Chris happy, it's worth it. Especially since he manages the Meetbot step. ;)

What do you think of the frequency - is weekly too much/too little/just right?

I think the frequency is just right. I would favor reducing the duration of the meetings, though.

Interesting idea! How would the topics of those status updates be determined?

Maybe base it on some combination of the release schedule checklist #250 and the issues tagged as features for the current milestone in pagure. Also, pagure has a lightweight kanban that could help find them.

I'm not sure if Bluejeans has an equivalent hand raising feature or not.

The native application does. I'm not sure about the web version.

and if it keeps Chris happy, it's worth it. Especially since he manages the Meetbot step. ;)

I prefer not voting in video meetings, then no one needs to manage the Meetbot step. Do it in IRC even concurrent with the video meeting; or do it in Pagure. These are unambiguous because the nick/account is directly tied to the recorded vote. It's self approving, unless someone is going to argue they've lost control of their nick/account.

If a vote has not occurred in a meeting, we don't need minutes, let alone approving them.

I think I would suggest aiming for even shorter than that. Perhaps 40 minutes would be sufficient.

I will get on board with a shorter meeting. I'm a fan of the 20-25 minute meeting. If there's a guest speaker, 55 minutes is OK.

25 minutes should generally be enough IMO if we keep the agenda light: no more than one or at most two issues per meeting.

Another thought is that since we generally work by consensus, any question about decisions is uncommon. If we aren't at consensus, and need to vote, we can do it in IRC or Pagure. I'd give an extra nod to Pagure because it's easier to search+find issues for the decision, compared to piles of meeting minutes.

Of course to have consensus decision making, we still need quorum.

Nowadays Red Hat prefers Google Meet for video meetings, which has a hand raising queue feature that is pretty useful to ensure everyone gets a fair chance to speak, but Google Meet also makes it difficult for people outside Red Hat to join the meeting, so it's probably not suitable for us.

Yes, I'd be in favour of using a hand raise feature! I think that Bluejeans does have one, though the button isn't as easy to access, and there's no queuing like in Google Meet.

Maybe we should experiment with Google Meet for a couple of meetings, and see if we can make it work?

Nowadays Red Hat prefers Google Meet for video meetings, which has a hand raising queue feature that is pretty useful to ensure everyone gets a fair chance to speak, but Google Meet also makes it difficult for people outside Red Hat to join the meeting, so it's probably not suitable for us.

Yes, I'd be in favour of using a hand raise feature! I think that Bluejeans does have one, though the button isn't as easy to access, and there's no queuing like in Google Meet.

Maybe we should experiment with Google Meet for a couple of meetings, and see if we can make it work?

Note that Red Hat/Fedora pays for the Fedora Matrix server, which comes with integration for Jitsi included. We could use Jitsi, and I think it also has the hand-raise feature.

Note that Red Hat/Fedora pays for the Fedora Matrix server, which comes with integration for Jitsi included. We could use Jitsi, and I think it also has the hand-raise feature.

Jitsi Meet may or may not work well, depends on version lottery and also on how Element has configured it. I agree that we should give that a go and see if it works well for us. Especially makes sense to try since it is integrated into our shiny new chat service.

If we were to use Google Meet, I think we would need a way to disable the feature that requires Red Hatters to approve each time somebody from outside Red Hat attempts to join the meeting. That especially doesn't make sense when the meeting host is not a Red Hatter, as was the case for the F32, F33, and F35 release cycles. And I don't think we actually have a way to disable that.

  • What do you find useful?

Video meetings.

  • What isn't useful?

We are sidetracking too much?

  • Would you change the format in any way?

No, I'm fine with the current state.

  • Do you usually check the agenda before the meeting?

Yes - I check the email on the fedora-desktop. If anything is added to the meeting after that email is sent, then I will most likely miss it.

  • Do you read the minutes?

If I'm not attending the meeting, then yes.

  • What do you think of the frequency - is weekly too much/too little/just right?

Just right.

Thanks for the feedback everyone - very useful!

Metadata Update from @aday:
- Issue close_status updated to: Fixed
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

2 years ago

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: meeting

23 days ago

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