[OpenStack-Infra] Proposed changes to how we run our meeting

[Clark Boylan]

Hello everyone,

In Berlin there was a forum session on dealing with timezones and language 
barriers. There were a couple related ideas that came out of that session. In 
particular that having meetings only when there is a strong agenda helps people 
avoid staying up all night for nothing and that listing an agenda ahead of time 
can help non english speakers better prepare for the meeting.

Both ideas seem sound to me and I think we should try to implement them for the 
Infra team. I propose that we require agenda updates 24 hours prior to the 
meeting start time and if there are no agenda updates we cancel the meeting. 
Curious to hear if others think this will be helpful and if 24 hours is enough 
lead time to be helpful.

We'll have our meeting this Tuesday (with this item on the agenda), but it 
would probably also be good to use the mailing list for feedback as I think 
that gives us a broader set of potential feedback.

Thank you,
Clark

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Re: [OpenStack-Infra] Proposed changes to how we run our meeting

[Jeremy Stanley]

On 2018-11-18 11:09:29 -0800 (-0800), Clark Boylan wrote:
[...]
> I propose that we require agenda updates 24 hours prior to the
> meeting start time and if there are no agenda updates we cancel
> the meeting. Curious to hear if others think this will be helpful
> and if 24 hours is enough lead time to be helpful.
[...]

Sounds great to me, thanks for considering putting these ideas into
practice!
-- 
Jeremy Stanley


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Re: [OpenStack-Infra] Proposed changes to how we run our meeting

[Melvin Hillsman]

++

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 2:32 PM Jeremy Stanley  wrote:

> On 2018-11-18 11:09:29 -0800 (-0800), Clark Boylan wrote:
> [...]
> > I propose that we require agenda updates 24 hours prior to the
> > meeting start time and if there are no agenda updates we cancel
> > the meeting. Curious to hear if others think this will be helpful
> > and if 24 hours is enough lead time to be helpful.
> [...]
>
> Sounds great to me, thanks for considering putting these ideas into
> practice!
> --
> Jeremy Stanley
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-- 
Kind regards,

Melvin Hillsman
mrhills...@gmail.com
mobile: (832) 264-2646
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Re: [OpenStack-Infra] Proposed changes to how we run our meeting

[Jimmy Mcarthur]

Clark Boylan 
November 18, 2018 at 1:09 PM
Hello everyone,

In Berlin there was a forum session on dealing with timezones and 
language barriers. There were a couple related ideas that came out of 
that session. In particular that having meetings only when there is a 
strong agenda helps people avoid staying up all night for nothing and 
that listing an agenda ahead of time can help non english speakers 
better prepare for the meeting.
This is a GREAT idea.  Not just for English speakers, but for everyone. 
I'm a big fan of not having meetings just to fill time.


Both ideas seem sound to me and I think we should try to implement 
them for the Infra team. I propose that we require agenda updates 24 
hours prior to the meeting start time and if there are no agenda 
updates we cancel the meeting. Curious to hear if others think this 
will be helpful and if 24 hours is enough lead time to be helpful.
Love the 24 hour lead time. Looking forward to seeing how this works and 
hope it can be adopted across other projects.


We'll have our meeting this Tuesday (with this item on the agenda), 
but it would probably also be good to use the mailing list for 
feedback as I think that gives us a broader set of potential feedback.


Thanks for taking the lead on this Clark!  Nice work :)


Thank you,
Clark

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Re: [OpenStack-Infra] Proposed changes to how we run our meeting

[Ian Wienand]

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 11:09:29AM -0800, Clark Boylan wrote:
> Both ideas seem sound to me and I think we should try to implement
> them for the Infra team. I propose that we require agenda updates 24
> hours prior to the meeting start time and if there are no agenda
> updates we cancel the meeting. Curious to hear if others think this
> will be helpful and if 24 hours is enough lead time to be helpful.

My concern here is that we have standing items of priority tasks
updates that are essentially always there, and action item follow-up
from the prior meeting.  Personally I often find them very useful.

Having attended many in-person waffling weekly "status update"
meetings etc. I feel the infra one *is* very agenda focused.  I also
think there is never an expectation anyone is in the meeting; in fact
more so that we actively understand and expect people aren't there.

So I think it would be fine to send out the agenda 24 hours in
advance, and make a rule that new items post that will skip to the
next week, so that if there's nothing of particular interest people
can plan to skip.

This would involve managing the wiki page better IMO.  I always try to
tag my items with my name and date for discussion because clearing it
out is an asychronous operation.  What if we made the final thing in
the meeting after general discussion "reset agenda" so we have a
synchronisation point, and then clearly mark on the wiki page that
it's now for the next meeting date?

But I don't like that infra in general skips the meeting.  Apart from
the aforementioned standing items, people start thinking "oh my thing
is just little, I don't want to call a meeting for it" which is the
opposite of what we want to keep communication flowing.  For people
actively involved but remote like myself, it's a loss of a very
valuable hour to catch up on what's happening even with just the
regular updates.

-i

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Re: [OpenStack-Infra] Proposed changes to how we run our meeting

[Clark Boylan]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2018, at 11:49 AM, Ian Wienand wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 11:09:29AM -0800, Clark Boylan wrote:
> > Both ideas seem sound to me and I think we should try to implement
> > them for the Infra team. I propose that we require agenda updates 24
> > hours prior to the meeting start time and if there are no agenda
> > updates we cancel the meeting. Curious to hear if others think this
> > will be helpful and if 24 hours is enough lead time to be helpful.
> 
> My concern here is that we have standing items of priority tasks
> updates that are essentially always there, and action item follow-up
> from the prior meeting.  Personally I often find them very useful.
> 
> Having attended many in-person waffling weekly "status update"
> meetings etc. I feel the infra one *is* very agenda focused.  I also
> think there is never an expectation anyone is in the meeting; in fact
> more so that we actively understand and expect people aren't there.
> 
> So I think it would be fine to send out the agenda 24 hours in
> advance, and make a rule that new items post that will skip to the
> next week, so that if there's nothing of particular interest people
> can plan to skip.
> 
> This would involve managing the wiki page better IMO.  I always try to
> tag my items with my name and date for discussion because clearing it
> out is an asychronous operation.  What if we made the final thing in
> the meeting after general discussion "reset agenda" so we have a
> synchronisation point, and then clearly mark on the wiki page that
> it's now for the next meeting date?
> 
> But I don't like that infra in general skips the meeting.  Apart from
> the aforementioned standing items, people start thinking "oh my thing
> is just little, I don't want to call a meeting for it" which is the
> opposite of what we want to keep communication flowing.  For people
> actively involved but remote like myself, it's a loss of a very
> valuable hour to catch up on what's happening even with just the
> regular updates.
> 
> -i

Given that the goal here is to better accommodate those in timezones where the 
meeting may not be the easiest to attend I think this feedback is important.

What if instead of canceling meetings we allowed for standing agenda items with 
the expectation that the meeting continues to be weekly, but ask that any new 
agenda items be in place 24 hours before the meeting start time. Anything that 
comes in after that can be deferred to the next meeting.

This allows people to prepare as necessary and skip the meeting if it doesn't 
directly impact them.

To summarize: "Meeting agenda items should be in place 24 hours prior to 
meeting start. We will continue to have standing items for priority efforts and 
meetings will occur weekly. If a specific agenda doesn't directly affect you, 
you should feel free to skip the meeting and eat dinner or get some rest"

Clark

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Re: [OpenStack-Infra] Proposed changes to how we run our meeting

[Jeremy Stanley]

On 2018-11-21 06:49:31 +1100 (+1100), Ian Wienand wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 11:09:29AM -0800, Clark Boylan wrote:
> > Both ideas seem sound to me and I think we should try to implement
> > them for the Infra team. I propose that we require agenda updates 24
> > hours prior to the meeting start time and if there are no agenda
> > updates we cancel the meeting. Curious to hear if others think this
> > will be helpful and if 24 hours is enough lead time to be helpful.
> 
> My concern here is that we have standing items of priority tasks
> updates that are essentially always there, and action item follow-up
> from the prior meeting.  Personally I often find them very useful.
[...]

Back when I was chairing these meetings regularly, I urged
participants to add info within each priority effort (or added some
myself) in advance of the meeting. If there was nothing called out
in our agenda under a given priority effort entry, I skipped over
it. Going back to something like that could help us figure out when
a meeting is warranted rather than ending up as a series of "nothing
new here" comments.

But this aside, I think the frequency with which we'd end up
skipping meetings (based on history of our agenda updates) will be
low enough that we shouldn't really focus on that part of the
proposal. I agree what's important is having our agenda nailed down
in advance so people can decide whether or not it's important for
them to attend. We do sometimes skip meetings for various reasons
anyway, so rarely announcing we won't hold one because nobody has
any updates or topics on the agenda feels like an incentive for
people to find relevant topics so that doesn't happen often.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley


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Re: [OpenStack-Infra] Proposed changes to how we run our meeting

[Joshua Hesketh]

I admit that I rarely attend the meeting these days but I do generally keep
an eye on the agenda and minutes. So for me I really appreciate that we
have an agenda and generally follow it. Being more structured and prepared
with it though would allow me to see which meetings I should make an effort
to attend. I have no objection to the meeting being held each week with any
standing items or even items from the floor, but clearly those that are
published with enough notice are more likely to get attendance.

Cheers,
Josh

On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 7:55 AM Clark Boylan  wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 20, 2018, at 11:49 AM, Ian Wienand wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 11:09:29AM -0800, Clark Boylan wrote:
> > > Both ideas seem sound to me and I think we should try to implement
> > > them for the Infra team. I propose that we require agenda updates 24
> > > hours prior to the meeting start time and if there are no agenda
> > > updates we cancel the meeting. Curious to hear if others think this
> > > will be helpful and if 24 hours is enough lead time to be helpful.
> >
> > My concern here is that we have standing items of priority tasks
> > updates that are essentially always there, and action item follow-up
> > from the prior meeting.  Personally I often find them very useful.
> >
> > Having attended many in-person waffling weekly "status update"
> > meetings etc. I feel the infra one *is* very agenda focused.  I also
> > think there is never an expectation anyone is in the meeting; in fact
> > more so that we actively understand and expect people aren't there.
> >
> > So I think it would be fine to send out the agenda 24 hours in
> > advance, and make a rule that new items post that will skip to the
> > next week, so that if there's nothing of particular interest people
> > can plan to skip.
> >
> > This would involve managing the wiki page better IMO.  I always try to
> > tag my items with my name and date for discussion because clearing it
> > out is an asychronous operation.  What if we made the final thing in
> > the meeting after general discussion "reset agenda" so we have a
> > synchronisation point, and then clearly mark on the wiki page that
> > it's now for the next meeting date?
> >
> > But I don't like that infra in general skips the meeting.  Apart from
> > the aforementioned standing items, people start thinking "oh my thing
> > is just little, I don't want to call a meeting for it" which is the
> > opposite of what we want to keep communication flowing.  For people
> > actively involved but remote like myself, it's a loss of a very
> > valuable hour to catch up on what's happening even with just the
> > regular updates.
> >
> > -i
>
> Given that the goal here is to better accommodate those in timezones where
> the meeting may not be the easiest to attend I think this feedback is
> important.
>
> What if instead of canceling meetings we allowed for standing agenda items
> with the expectation that the meeting continues to be weekly, but ask that
> any new agenda items be in place 24 hours before the meeting start time.
> Anything that comes in after that can be deferred to the next meeting.
>
> This allows people to prepare as necessary and skip the meeting if it
> doesn't directly impact them.
>
> To summarize: "Meeting agenda items should be in place 24 hours prior to
> meeting start. We will continue to have standing items for priority efforts
> and meetings will occur weekly. If a specific agenda doesn't directly
> affect you, you should feel free to skip the meeting and eat dinner or get
> some rest"
>
> Clark
>
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