Re: Contributor Summit planning

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Aug 27, 2018, 13:22 UTC
Message-ID: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.1808271458450.73@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>
In-Reply-To: <20180813171535.GA8476@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Hi Peff & everybody,

On Mon, 13 Aug 2018, Jeff King wrote:

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> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 12:58:54PM -0400, Derrick Stolee wrote:
> 
> > I would be up for two meetings a year. I would expect that the variety of
> > locations would allow a larger set of contributors to make at least one
> > meeting a year. This may come at a cost of a smaller group in each summit.
> 
> Yeah, I do worry about it splitting the attendance. It could also be a
> thing we do _this_ year (if we care about having something in North
> America), and then try to make different plans in a future year.

While I think it is a great thing to have Git contributors so close to Git users every year, I could imagine that a good compromise would be to have a Git Contributor Summit the day before GitMerge, as we already have it, and then roughly half a year later an "online-only" Virtual Summit.

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> > The one thing I found missing that could be good is to have a remote
> > option.  Not everyone can travel or can afford to do so. I wonder if a
> > simple Google Hangout could allow more participation from the
> > community, even in a passive sense (those still at their day jobs
> > listening in). It could even facilitate remote presenters, if
> > applicable.
> 
> One year we had Dscho remote on a laptop sitting on a stool. I'm not
> sure how great that was for him. ;)

It was great. It was truly great. Thanks again for letting me do that!

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> I agree it would be nice to include remote people, but I think it would
> be very important to have a good A/V setup. Passive involvement is not
> too hard, but I would love a setup where they could actually participate
> in discussions. I've seen that work in 5-10 people conferences, but I'm
> not sure how well even good A/V scales to 20-30.

Speaking from personal experience in my day job, I agree that it is easy to have a discussion with a few remotes when you have only 5-10 team members, and it gets pretty difficult when there are 20-30 people or more.

However, I found that those problems are rooted more in lack of discipline, such as the people with physical presence simply talking over the remote ones, seemingly without noticing what they are doing there.

Having said that, I believe that we core contributors can learn to have a fruitful online meeting. With 30+ participants, too.

Learning from my past life in academia (it is hard for me to imagine a less disciplined crowd than a bunch of white, male, old scientists), we would need a moderator, and some forum that allows to "give somebody the mic". That software/platform should exist somewhere.

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> One other thought on remote folks: IMHO one of the most valuable things
> about these kinds of events (especially the first ones I attended) is
> the informal interactions. The hallway talks and meals provide a venue
> for spontaneous conversation, but they also just help us understand in a
> visceral way that the people on the other end of our emails are actual
> humans. Which I think can help smooth subsequent online interactions.
> I'm not sure how much of that can be gained remotely.

Indeed. That part is almost lost online. But not quite.

> (I don't think that's an argument against remote inclusion, just an
> opinion that we should continue to encourage in-person interaction).

I would love to have the best of both worlds. For example, it is an annual annoyance that we are discussion all kinds of things regarding Git, trying to steer the direction, to form collaborations on certain features, and the person at the helm is not even there.

Maybe *two* meetings per year, one attached to GitMerge, and one purely online, would help.

Point in favor of the pure-online meeting: the informal standup on IRC every second Friday. I really try to attend it (it is a bit awkward because it is on a Friday evening in my timezone, right at the time when I want to unwind from the work week), as it does have a similar effect to in-person standups: surprising collaborations spring up, unexpected help, and a general sense of belonging.

Of course, the value of these standups comes from the makeup of the participants: Stefan, Brandon, Stolee, JeffH, Jonathan and other *very* active core contributors hang out for roughly half an hour, sharing what they are working on, exchanging ideas, etc.

Such an online summit as I suggested above would really only work if enough frequent contributors would attend. If enough people like you, Junio, and the standup regulars would say: yep, we're willing to plan and attend an online summit, where we try to have a timezone-friendly "unconference"-style meeting on one day (on which we would of course try to free ourselves from our regular work obligations).

I guess I am asking for a "raise your hands", with mine high up in the air.

Ciao, Dscho