I spoke with Ernest a few weeks ago about how www.python.org could
become a better home for public minutes of meetings. So here is my
current thinking - this is long, but I want to share it in public in
case it helps others understand the work.
Context:
Right now, www.python.org hosts the board meeting minutes
https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/ . We talked about
maybe also making space for working group/project meeting minutes, like
the ones I write up and currently host on the wiki (example:
https://wiki.python.org/psf/PackagingWG#Dependency_resolver_and_user_experience_improvements_for_pip
).
In the call, Ernest asked me to list what would be important in a
minuting package for www.python.org, distinguishing "required" from
"heavily encouraged" to "dream features".
Current workflow:
Right now, in order to minute meetings of Packaging WG-funded projects, I:
* use an Etherpad at pad.sfconservancy.org (just because it's a public
and reliable EtherPad instance) and take notes with bullet points
* after the meeting, use its Export function to export to plain text
* mess with the formatting to adjust to MoinMoin wiki syntax
* go to https://wiki.python.org/psf/PackagingWG and create a new
placeholder link in the table of meeting notes, annotating with the
description, type (meeting notes), and date
* copy the text into that page, fix formatting, and hit Save
* erase the meeting notes from the Etherpad and hyperlink to the
archived notes
What I want:
For the process in general, I have 3 core values:
* Ease of writing: it should be easy for me and for other meeting
attendees to collaborate on writing minutes, live, during the meeting,
in a reasonably lightweight syntax (such as Markdown)
* Privacy: as we write the minutes, they should be private to meeting
attendees, so we can discuss things we then redact before sharing
(vacations, burnout, criticism of other people or projects)
* Transparency: the final minutes should be public where anyone can read
them, without having to log in anywhere, and linkable
As I understand it, a minuting system on www.python.org would have a
hierarchy like PSF -> Working Group -> Project. Example: PSF ->
Packaging WG -> Pip dependency resolver & UX improvements.
Required:
* Discoverability: the public minutes should be easy to find from a
central project info hub, and show up in search engine results.
* Linkability: each meeting should have some unique URL or anchor tag,
so that it's easy to link to minutes within an issue or mailing list post.
* Ease of formatting: some subset of HTML, Markdown, and
reStructuredText should be supported.
Heavily encouraged:
* Automated table of contents on the Project page. Should include (by
default) date and title of meeting, and it should be possible for me to
also manually append (maybe in a separate list) links to relevant blog
posts, reports, podcasts, etc.
* Automated table of contents on the Working Group page to all Projects
underneath it.
* Finding aid/intro: A structure on each Project page that includes a
freeform text field but also encourages certain fields (project name,
list of participants, estimated start and end dates).
* Ease of formatting: Markdown support.
* Ease of import: a batch process to import old minutes from
wiki.python.org, even if I then have to mess with formatting.
* Granular privileges: I'd like to let all my team members add minutes
within our chunk of the site hierarchy.
* Ease of sign-on: Single sign-on with other PSF systems.
* Minutes structure: Structured text fields for meeting title, list of
participants, discussion, and Next Steps/TODOs/Commitments.
Dream:
* Ease of navigation: from a particular minutes entry, I'd love to be
able to click Next or Previous to go to the next/previous entry within
that project chronologically.
* Ease of import: take an HTML import from Etherpad and strip the colors
and other unnecessary syntax.
* Ease of import: On some note-taking platform (could be HackMD,
Etherpad, Dropbox Paper, Google Docs, Nextcloud, or something else), I
could choose an option to export to a new www.python.org minute. The new
draft would autopopulate, so I could make changes and click Publish, and
then it would show up at the right URL and be present in a Table of
Contents automagically.
* Ease of formatting: support MoinMoin wiki syntax (so I can copy old
stuff easily).
* Ease of reporting: this is really out-there, but if I could use some
feature to automatically pull out the top-level discussion headings from
each minute, and make a list of "here's what we discussed", then I could
use that when publicizing the meeting notes, and it would make people
more likely to read them.
* Analytics: so I could see who is linking to those notes and where
they're being referred to.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Changeset Consulting
https://changeset.nyc
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