Meeting schedule tweaks

[sanjayankur31]

Hi @OCNS/software-wg

Based on #65, here are my proposals to make meetings easier to attend for more folks:

• Instead of alternating between 0800 and 1700 UTC as we currently do, I'll host meetings at both 0800 and 1700 each month. Folks can attend whichever, and we'll have the minutes from one as reference for the other. Since I'll attend both, I'll be able to keep the two meetings linked also.
• Instead of keeping the meetings on the second Monday of each month, we rotate through the days, so second Monday then second Tuesday, then second Wednesday and so on. This will ensure that people who may have standing meetings that clash in one month will not clash in the next.

What do you all think?

[sanjayankur31]

@joewgraham @kernfel @stewart-heitmann : since you're at the time zone extremes---what do you think of this?

[kernfel]

I wonder if the alternative we'd discussed - whenisgood for the particular day, with the time fixed and alternating as previously - wouldn't be less work for you, for more participation. With duplicate meetings, the earlier meeting would likely attract fewer participants, making it less effective than it already is.

[stewart-heitmann]

Hi Ankur,

Your proposal suits me but I am concerned that you will be doubling your work. I really don’t mind alternating the meetings. I could only ever attend the UTC 8:00 slot (Sydney 6pm). It's the GitHub notifications that get me. I tend to skip them and so I miss things.

Stewart

On 22 Apr 2022, at 1:23 am, Ankur Sinha @.***> wrote:

@joewgraham https://github.com/joewgraham @kernfel https://github.com/kernfel @stewart-heitmann https://github.com/stewart-heitmann : since you're at the time zone extremes---what do you think of this?

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/OCNS/SoftwareWG/issues/66#issuecomment-1105375014, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEN6U4UDQEKKFRPYGOMVFCLVGFXH7ANCNFSM5T7TC3LQ. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.

[joewgraham]

Hi all, I agree that two meetings isn't necessary, and that alternating times with a whenisgood for the day would be great.

I also manage to miss GitHub notifications all the time!

[sanjayankur31]

My primary issue with the alternating times is when a meeting has some important agenda items. For example, in the most recent one, we were discussing the CNS satellite tutorials and this is a time sensitive topic that needed input from as many folks as we could manage. Whichever slot it falls in makes is very very hard for some people to attend---for example Joe had to try to wake at 4am to attend the meeting. If it were in the other slot, Felix/Stuart would have to do it.

That's just very hard to do, and I think me hosting an extra hour is easier and less work in total than multiple WG folks having to keep up at odd hours (and then affect their work day etc.). I'm going to be at my computer at these times anyway, so it isn't that much extra work tbh, and I think it'll make meetings accessible to almost every time zone.

---

Happy to do a whenisgood each month to pick a day in the second week to hold the meeting. I thought rotating it allowed us to set a schedule in advance so people could block it out in their calendars early, but if folks prefer a whenisgood, that's fine too.

---

About GitHub notifications---do you folks not get the e-mails about tickets we file? We CC the @OCNS/software-wg in all of them, and the assumption was that this would also send you all an e-mail. Does that not happen?

Now that we have the mailing list set up (please subscribe here: https://lists.incf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/incf-ocns-software-wg ), we'll also send notifications to the mailing list, so that should ensure that everyone gets all this information, even if GItHub notifications aren't working as we thought they would.

[malinINCF]

For the statistics: I get the emails about the tickets.

[kernfel]

Point taken, I'm happy for there to be two meetings with rotating weekdays.

I do get ticket emails, but I don't recall whether I had to fiddle with settings for that.

[sanjayankur31]

OK, cool! I guess with us having so many GitHub projects/repos, we get a tonne of notifications that aren't limited to tickets---CI, PRs, etc. etc., so it's quite a noisy system. What we'll do once we have the mailing list going is we'll also send e-mails about these tickets there, so it should be easier for folks to notice these, even if they are missed on the GitHub side of things.

we published a short blog post announcing the ML:

https://ocns.github.io/SoftwareWG/2022/04/22/new-announcement-mailing-list-for-the-wg.html

Tweet: https://twitter.com/sanjay_ankur/status/1517437858000347137?s=20&t=L8r9Yx92hJosb8vExyNjGQ

[sanjayankur31]

(Leaving this open for a week for everyone else to chime in)

[appukuttan-shailesh]

My initial impression was similar to some others, that it would be quite a bit of additional work to have two meetings (even though I see the value in it). But since Ankur has volunteered to manage them, lets go with it.

I myself feel I would be able to attend only one of these meetings. And on this I was wondering, if it would be useful to ask members to convey (on a per meeting basis; via the tickets we create for each meeting?) which session they would be attending. It could help avoid two sparsely attended meetings, by having those in 'non-extreme' time zones join the one with better attendance.

(I do hope it doesn't complicate things)

[mstimberg]

I don't have a strong opinion on the best solution. In principle I can attend both meeting times (I had reasons why I couldn't attend the last two, but nothing that prevents me from doing it in general), but as @appukuttan-shailesh would probably only attend one of them. If @sanjayankur31 is happy to host two, then I won't stop him from doing it :) I get the point about the important time-sensitive topics, even though I feel we should organize things mostly via the asynchronous channels (github, collaborative docs, etc.).

[sanjayankur31]

Thanks all. Yeh, no one is expected to attend both meetings. That's just to try and make sure everyone, irrespective of time zone, has a chance to attend each monthly meeting. Folks that can attend either can choose whichever one works for them more.

Maybe we can start with this and see how it goes, and then tweak it accordingly. When we file tickets for the meetings, we can request folks to comment noting which session they're going to attend (and if they're not attending at all etc.).

I agree that async discussion will do better---but at the moment, it does not seem to be getting enough responses, probably because GitHub notifications are quite noisy and so are easily missed. So, hopefully the announcements to the mailing lists will ensure more people are aware of bits here and so can participate.

[sanjayankur31]

Hi folks,

To try and make our monthly meetings more interesting, we're experimenting with combining them with a presentation---so, the first part of the meeting will be someone talking about their tool etc., and then in the second half, we'll discuss software wg bits. This way, there'll always be something more than just software wg work to discuss at the meetings.

Since this involves a presentation, we're going back to a single meeting slot instead of the two. If we do hear from folks that they'd like the morning slot too, we can bring it back. We're also going back to a fixed day instead of rotating from Monday---Friday, just because it makes it easier for people to mark their calendars with reminders. Again, if we hear that the chosen slot doesn't work for lots of folks, it can be moved.

The new slot is on the second Tuesday of each month, at 1500/1600 UTC depending on timezone changes.