openstack-poc team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Bryce <jbryce@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks John for bringing this up and everyone for the input. This is good feedback. Here are a couple of my thoughts on it:

1) I agree that the meetings get rather chaotic at times. I would say that most of the time that situation is less related to non-PPB users and more related to those of us who are PPB members talking over each other. I can easily be more proactive about quieting down community members who might be drawing us off track. I don't think muting is actually a requirement for that. Thierry's suggestion around +v for those who want to have input may be a good implementation if just asking for cooperation doesn't solve it for community feedback. I'd also ask that we try to have more orderly discussions among ourselves and not just a speed-typing death battle royale.

2) I will start sending out a summary note to the full OpenStack list after meetings to try to have everyone be more informed and aware of what we're discussing.

3) Along the lines of getting community feedback, do you all think that we should move to a two-part process where we discuss, send to a summary to the community requesting comments and then vote? Should we just try to gather feedback before we ever discuss?

Jonathan.


On Sep 12, 2011, at 3:11 AM, Thierry Carrez wrote:

> John Dickinson wrote:
>> I have found the PPB meetings to be very disjointed and hard to follow. A classic example is from our last meeting where 3 votes were proposed and only 2 were voted on. At times we have several conversations going on at once. Sometimes we vote, someone continues the discussion, and then we revote. It's possible that people offering support for an idea (with a +1) may be counted in a vote, even if that person is not on the PPB. These sorts of things tend to push the PPB meetings toward chaos.
> 
> Yes, I agree. It's the meeting chair's job to keep it focused and on
> track, but that can be very difficult when the discussion gets out of
> hand (and it often does in the PPB meeting).
> 
>> 1) What if during the PPB meetings only those people on the PPB were voiced and could speak? I absolutely do not want to discourage valuable input from people not on the PPB, so I think this would require meaningful time allowed for "public commentary" where anyone and everyone can speak. One implementation would be to mute all non-PPB members in the channel during a vote. Another implementation would be to have designated non-PPB time about each topic, perhaps after initial PPB member discussion. I think a more moderated discussion could perhaps make better use of our limited meeting time and help everyone be more clear on what is being discussed and voted on.
> 
> That's difficult, because switching from public to private is always
> seen by people that want to comment as a way to silence them and shut
> down discussion. I've seen different IRC ways of working around that: a
> side "chat" channel that can be used to get direct community feedback,
> or temporary +v for people "with an opinion" suggested by members and
> granted by the chair, so that they can contribute to the discussion in a
> limited and controlled way.
> 
>> 2) Can we have an official summary of the meetings published after each of the meetings? The notes that the meetbot provides are sparse (at best) and the raw IRC logs are voluminous and hard to read.
> 
> Yes, communicating the decisions that were made to the people impacted
> by them seems to be a bare minimum.
> 
> I would add that we should not vote or discuss on things that were not
> raised on the mailing-list first. We are a group of smart individuals
> but we can still miss a critical aspect on a given issue, getting
> general feedback from the list would (1) give us more data to decide on
> and (2) limit the critics of PPB taking decisions disconnected from reality.
> 
> As an example, the "API Coordinator" topic we've had in the recent
> meetings is a proposed solution to a problem that was raised (at length)
> on the mailing-list. Not discussing the proposed solution there sounds
> like a big mistake to me. We should discuss problems *and* solutions
> with the rest of the community, and not allow people to bypass community
> discussion by going to the PPB directly.
> 
> PPB members are still empowered to make hard decisions and we don't need
> consensus on the ML before deciding, but not giving the community a
> chance to raise concerns about a given proposal is unfair (and in some
> cases unproductive).
> 
> -- 
> Thierry Carrez (ttx)
> Release Manager, OpenStack
> 
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