[CentOS-devel] Storage SIG Moving Forward

Thu Mar 20 18:27:11 UTC 2014
Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com>

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On 03/20/2014 08:35 AM, Patrick McGarry wrote:
> Our current plan is to just keep it simple w/ a Google Hangout (not
> on-air) so if we grow beyond 10 we'll need to know beforehand.

While I love me some video conferencing, I just wanted to provide the
warnings and caveats.

Similar to the idea of keeping discussions on centos-devel for now,
having meetings on a low-barrier medium such as IRC has many benefits
that continue to outweigh the downsides.[0]

I totally get the value of seeing each other in meeting, but it's not
a great way to keep the community involved. (Video has high bandwidth
requirements, is hard to translate, harder to understand speakers esp.
if not a native English speaker, etc.) I'll be advocating at the Board
level that we at least include IRC-only meetings as part of our open
public meeting roadmap.

Could it work to have an initial "social meetup" to get to know each
other a bit via video, then have the real discussion/decision work on IRC?

If we're feeling like #centos-devel is too crowded or this is OT, we
can use a #centos-meeting channel. Regardless, using centbot is a key
tool.

I'd be happy to attend the meeting if I can and help facilitate the
IRC usage and meetbot, if that helps. I know other CentOS folks have
meetbot and IRC-meeting-moderator experience as well.

- - Karsten

[0] Long version of this topic ...

The trick about the open source way and radical transparency is that
it is a PITA. You have to drop a bit of convenience of the 'doers' in
order to keep things highly visible to the 'watchers', partly so some
of them can and desire to become doers.

http://www.theopensourceway.org/wiki/Stuff_everyone_knows_and_forgets_anyway#Take_extra_extra_extra_care_to_have_all_discussions_in_the_open

Open discussion before decisions done in a low-barrier medium
(text-based, asynchronous) is also key to getting understanding and
buy-in from everyone. The reasoning behind each decision is in the
public record, so it's easier for people to understand a design
decision during and after it's decided.

> http://www.theopensourceway.org/wiki/Stuff_everyone_knows_and_forgets_anyway#Take_even_more_care_to_do_all_design_decisions_in_the_open

(Also,
> 
defaulting to open means that the work to be transparent is
built-in to what you are doing already, e.g. using meetbot, so you get
all the artifacts and don't have to spend time later explaining
over-and-over a decision made in a hallway by two people.)

- -- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade        .^\          CentOS Doer of Stuff
http://TheOpenSourceWay.org    \  http://community.redhat.com
@quaid (identi.ca/twitter/IRC)  \v'             gpg: AD0E0C41
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