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Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:58:57 +0100
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Subject: Re: [REMINDER] IRC meeting - 2013-04-24 19:00 UTC
From: Noah Slater <nslater@apache.org>
To: "dev@couchdb.apache.org" <dev@couchdb.apache.org>
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Well, I don't like the idea of alternating times. I think it will become
confusing and hard to plan for, and I think we will see less participation
as a result. I also think that meetings held at 13:00 UTC will have very
few participants. This becomes a problem when the meeting is important
because of its proximity to another event (such as a release) because we
have a bunch of people in the US that cannot possibly be expected to attend
at that time.

The current situation is:

Meeting at 20:00 UTC, the optimal amount of people are able to participate.

We're proposing:

Meeting occasionally at 20:00 UTC and occasionally at 13:00 UTC. Many
people unable to participate half the time. Meeting times become irregular
and hard to plan for in general.

This is a sub-optimal solution.

What is the problem we are trying to solve?

I don't think it's "how can we organise an IRC meeting so that everyone can
attend?" (That pre-supposes the solution.)

I think it is more like "how do we get input from everyone?"

I think another avenue for us to explore might be to consider that when we
post the minutes to the list, that's not the end of the conversation.

There are two points at which you can contribute to the meeting, without
actually being there:

1) In reply to the meeting reminder. We have invited this every time, but
only a few people so far have actually added things to the agenda via this
method. I would suggest that if people can't make the 20:00 UTC time, but
they have something they want to add to the agenda, or they have some
information to share with the group (like a status update), then they post
it at this point.

2) In reply to the minutes. As we saw with the action item Benoit brought
up a week or so ago, I jumped right in, and started having a discussion
about it on the mailing list. I had missed that particular meeting, but
read the minutes, and started a discussion.

In my mind, this should be sufficient to ensure that everybody can input
into the meetings.

Perhaps the 20:00 UTC time is not the most optimal solution. (i.e. The time
when most people in the project can participate.) I note that the board
meets at 17:30 UTC. I think that's a valid question, and one we
should examine if it looks like there might be a better time. But I believe
that we should pick one, single optimal time for everybody, and then work
on ways to ensure that people who miss the meeting (either because of life
getting in the way, or timezones) can contribute without impediment.


On 24 April 2013 15:14, Dave Cottlehuber <dch@jsonified.com> wrote:

> On 24 April 2013 16:02, Noah Slater <nslater@apache.org> wrote:
> > What about having two meetings?
>
> Hi Noah,
>
> We previously said we would alternate times "regularly" but I think
> we've only done that twice. For all the obvious reasons I'd prefer not
> to double up. What's the constraint?
>
> A+
> Dave
>


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