maurolepore
commented
4 years ago Following the meet up I discussed further some items and here are some resolutions.
Label each meetup's issue as "must have" or "nice to have"
The issue associated to each meetup should have either the label "must have" or the label "nice to have" (except when not applicable, e.g. this meetup). The decision should be discussed during the meetup, but that who makes the last call should be the leader. The difference between labels may be blurry. That's okay. This is only a way to clarify how strongly the meetup's leader believes that you and your colleagues would benefit if you practice what the meetup recommends.
Thanks @pranavpandya84, @cjyetman, @2diiKlaus, @jdhoffa.
Update 2020-01-13: I have just labeled the previous meetups I led. I labeled all sessions on PR requests as "must-have". Just to clarify, I don't think you have to use the usethis package. What I do think is that you should use the GitHub workflow that usethis implements. Feel free to use whatever tool you like (I use the usethis PR-helpers most of the time because it automates what can be automated, and frees my brain for more interesting tasks).
Schedule the ds-incubator as a recurring meeting
The ds-incubator is now a recurring meeting.
Thanks @Clare2D, @2diiKlaus.
Find a way for everyone to benefit from code reviews
See https://github.com/2DegreesInvesting/ds-incubator/issues/11#issuecomment-571657567
Thanks @cjyetman, @pranavpandya84, @jdhoffa
Allow one out-of-scope meetup per month
You may propose and up-vote topics at https://github.com/2DegreesInvesting/ds-incubator/issues/11
Thanks @2diiKlaus for liking this idea. Thanks @pranavpandya84, @Clare2D, @vintented for proposing topics.
Evaluate how useful is the ds-incubator
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This retrospective was our first formal attempt to gather feedback and we'll do it again, e.g. at the coding workshop on March, 2020 in Berlin.
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We regularly see the impact of the ds-incubator when folks submit code for review.
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We considered more focused ways to gather feedback (e.g. mining code from GitHub, and surveys) but they cost time and effort that for now we prefer to avoid.
Thanks @vintented, @2diiKlaus
Develop templates to minimize the time to prepare presentations
Preparing presentations take time and one way to save some time is to create and reuse templates for the files that you need for producing the slides.
Here I share my approach to prepare presentations for the ds-incubator: https://github.com/2DegreesInvesting/resources/issues/77
Thanks @cjyetman for motivating this post
WIP
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This session was a discussion. I did not record to make people feel more comfortable during the discussion. But we did capture out thoughts in a collaborative document that I copy-paste next.
About scope
The goal of the ds-incubator is to share best practices in coding.
Are we on target? (list of previous meetups)
(Klaus) I believe so as well, with one session per week it takes some time, but I have the feeling I learnt quite a bit in the ds-incubator sessions
(Klaus) considering the coding workshop is in March, I think we are on target to cover the basics for writing clean code
(Mauro) I believe so, but I may be wrong and thus I value your opinion today :)
What crucial topics are we missing? (list of proposed topics)
[Pranav] Developing and interacting with APIs (plumber), docker framework etc.
(Mauro) Some basic understanding on testing, checking, and continuoust integration -- just enough so anyone can contribute to a project that has such infrastructure.
What should we do about cool topics that fall out of scope (i.e. topics not strictly focused on best practices
In general
What went well?
(Klaus) Documentation of the session to go back to content
(Klaus) Time-keeping of each session & scope of content (digestible pieces)
MAuros’ live examples I think were really helpful
Clear and simply examples that were easy to follow
(Mauro) I’m learning a lot.
What did not go so well?
(Klaus) Weekly tasks (not sure they are needed but could increase the training effect)
We didn’t start on time or end on time usually (partially tech problems [my fault], partially 15 minutes may not be long enough?)
Preparing each meetup is taking longer than we originally thought (~ 3h/week versus ~1h/week)
Question of to what extent learnings are integrated into peoples’ workflows.
How can we improve?
predetermine and pre-create the presentations so it’s not a rush (mostly my fault, amd we have done this a bit, but could be better)
Maybe you RStudio Cloud so we can get everyone on a universal platform?
Can we block the time in the calendars earlier - even if the topic is not yet defined. (plus one by Klaus)
[Pranav] Code review could be a good method to evaluate overall improvements
[Pranav] we should categorize best practices approaches into "must have" and "nice to have" with dedicated code reviews on regular interval
(CJ, Jackson) Reflect at the end of each session on how important it is to implement the practice discussed in that session.
(Klaus) Add a label to the meetup-issue: “nice-to-have”, “must-have”, or so.