== Meeting information == * #ubuntu-meeting Meeting, 03 Sep at 17:00 — 18:11 UTC * Full logs at [[http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/ubuntu-meeting/2015/ubuntu-meeting.2015-09-03-17.00.log.html]] == Meeting summary == ''LINK:'' https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncilAgenda === Catching up with the Canonical Community team === The discussion about "Catching up with the Canonical Community team" started at 17:05. * ''LINK:'' http://reqorts.qa.ubuntu.com/reports/1glance-sponsoring/ * ''LINK:'' http://clsxeurope.com/ looks like it's the end of October === Catching up with the IRC Council === The discussion about "Catching up with the IRC Council" started at 17:55. == Vote results == == Done items == * (none) == People present (lines said) == * dholbach (89) * czajkowski (81) * dpm (47) * popey (44) * hggdh (26) * balloons (24) * mhall119 (19) * Pici (11) * pleia2 (6) * meetingology (4) == Full Log == 17:00 #startmeeting 17:00 Meeting started Thu Sep 3 17:00:47 2015 UTC. The chair is dholbach. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/meetingology. 17:00 17:00 Available commands: action commands idea info link nick 17:00 #chair czajkowski mhall119 pleia2 17:00 Current chairs: czajkowski dholbach mhall119 pleia2 17:00 o/ 17:01 Do we have folks from the IRC Council and Canonical Community team here? 17:01 #link https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncilAgenda 17:02 ^^ agenda 17:02 o/ 17:03 I don't think anyone sent a reminder to the IRC Council 17:03 ok, let's start with the community team then and I'll try to ping the IRC Council folks 17:04 pleia2: a reminder was sent 17:04 hggdh: oh good :) 17:04 dholbach: balloons mhall119 so life on the community team 17:04 is dpm around 17:04 thanks hggdh! 17:05 btw, hi all, long time and all that 17:05 hggdh: welcome :) 17:05 o/ 17:05 popey: howdy 17:05 #topic Catching up with the Canonical Community team 17:05 I have some opinions :) 17:06 so, there's some things I wanted to bring up, but they are mostly based on popey's thoughts. I'll let him speak first if he wishes 17:06 nah, knock yourself out 17:06 balloons: do tell, but please don't injure you're self 17:06 :) 17:06 haha 17:07 :-) Ok, my first thought was bringing up how we deal with contributions. It's the second half of the lifecycle for contributing. We spend time and effort encouraging folks to contribute, but once they do, we sometimes falter 17:08 * dholbach has opinions on that subject too :) 17:08 There are both good examples and bad examples of this. For instance, we do wonderfully on the core apps projects, while we have patches sitting waiting in other places 17:09 yeah... I just raised the subject with the engineering managers for Ubuntu again - sponsoring and patch review for stuff going into the distro sort of went a bit on the backburner for many and patches had been piling up again 17:09 I would be curious how we might be able to close this gap a bit better. Is there something collectively we could do and/or encourage the community to do to insure we are good stewards of people's contributions? 17:09 yeah 17:10 I haven't checked other queues (NEW, SRU, +1 maintenance, MIR, etc.), but I can imagine that these might require more attention too 17:10 I had a ranty email from a community contributor recently who was annoyed that his merge proposals took a long time to be reviewed 17:10 me too 17:10 is it something we can empower the community collectively to do? AKA, are there not enough people to review the work? 17:10 popey: how long was long? 17:11 could be days to weeks 17:11 and is there way we can get more eyeballs on stuff in a more fun way to do it, as I know folks are busy but it's also a necessity 17:11 One issue is many canonical people work closely on irc, and are happy to ping eachother 17:11 the patch pilot programme was supposed to guarantee that everyone within the distro team with upload rights had 4h/month (or one hour per week) to help out 17:11 Joe: "Hey, bob, can you review that merge on your project?" 17:11 Bob: "Sure, I'll get to it in a bit" 17:11 job done 17:11 o/ 17:11 community person contributes and it looks like it disappears into a black hole 17:12 I am guilty of this too, not pointing fingers at others. 17:12 I hope that we can get more energy into this again 17:12 * dpm and mhall119 I were having a really interesting call with the Mycroft folks 17:12 popey: aye I think at times the IRC ping often doesnt help folks not on irc 17:12 who may be working 17:12 and some of the engineering managers are discussing the subject right now 17:12 and taking things to a public mailing list to show how easy it is to get feedback ina constructive manner 17:13 czajkowski: indeed, and not knowing that people are approachable 17:13 czajkowski: and some people actually _not_ being approachable 17:13 popey: exactly 17:13 yeah, you can't say on a wiki page "ping popey to get your patch reviewed and included" :) 17:13 nail on the head :) 17:13 (e.g. berating someone for pinging them which disturbs them, contributors should ask in public so as not to disturb individuals) 17:13 that's why we had current patch pilots in the topic in #u-devel 17:13 exactly! 17:14 It may be better to encoureage people when they see people being pinged on irc, to suggest can we move this to the ML so others can see how it's done 17:15 popey: balloons dholbach which ml would this go to ? 17:15 a request for a review of a patch? 17:15 devel- devel-discuss, elsewhere? 17:15 dholbach: aye 17:15 both should work 17:15 not sure 17:15 I hope that with support from management we can at least have Canonical engineers help out more regularly again 17:16 could we try for the next few weeks to push to -devel-discuss - I know moderation can be an issue ? 17:16 I'd leave the mailing list as last resort for the urgent cases 17:16 yeah 17:16 we shouldn't ask people to mail the mailing list for everything 17:16 irc is way easier / faster 17:16 but we shouldn't have to go round poking people 17:16 I would also like to think about a way to monitor this and be proactive on our end a bit. Especially since things are backlogged now 17:17 people who are upstream for a project should act like one 17:17 popey: hmm but what about the people who want to contribute that aren't on IRC 17:17 I would rather see us gently nudging upstreams to be more receptive. An MP should be enough to get the contact going 17:17 http://reqorts.qa.ubuntu.com/reports/1glance-sponsoring/ 17:17 if you click on "year" 17:18 you can see that the last call for help seems to have done something 17:18 yea, you can see when you issue the calls :-) 17:18 czajkowski: why arent they on irc? everyone is on irc. 17:18 popey: that whole work thing :) 17:18 dholbach: nods 17:19 popey, there are upstream developers and debian folks and others who just want to do a drive by contribiution 17:19 * hggdh respectully disagrees from popey 17:19 it was somewhat tongue in cheek 17:19 * hggdh removes disagreement 17:19 dholbach: i agree, and we should pick those up and not let them languish 17:19 yep, agreed 17:19 ok 17:19 so you mentioned other issues? 17:19 what are they ? 17:20 maybe we can review in a couple of weeks again and see if the recent discussions helped change something 17:20 balloons, popey: was your point mostly just about sponsoring? 17:20 mine wasnt 17:20 ok, then I'll get out of the way now :) 17:20 mine was a cultural change, more of an observation 17:20 I think it's about MPs and upstreams too 17:21 popey: do tell 17:21 Are we done with the other topic though? 17:21 my point was about us collectively encouraging a better culture in our upstreams as well. But the boots on the ground work from dholbach is part of it 17:21 balloons: cool can we try encouraging more people to review over the next few weeks 17:21 I wonder if most developers in an upstream project are signed up for mails about new MPs... 17:22 see if it makes a difference and if not lets come back and see if we need to take to ML or what we need to do 17:22 yes, and given the changes to LP, we should encourage people to review filtering. I'm guiltly of this. I filtered out those mails 17:22 because it was hard to get the right mix without getting overwhelemd 17:23 the lp team just redid this (I for instance often miss important mails, like renewing in a team) 17:23 maybe it'd be good to write up best-practices "how to be a good upstream" with a few paragraphs on "how to set up your project in LP"? 17:23 yeah, me too 17:23 my gmail has thousands of mails, this is why i rely on web pages with lists of things to do 17:23 +1, dholbach. That's the action I'd like to see, and I think we could do 17:23 rather than email 17:24 dholbach: brilliant idea 17:24 I'm not sure if that'd solve all problems - you still need to do your reviews 17:24 dholbach: I see a to do AI for you then :) 17:24 but it could be a first good step 17:24 czajkowski, erm....... I'm convinced :) 17:25 but yeah, I can have a look around and see what the current LP docs offer 17:25 and bring that up for renewed discussion 17:25 nods 17:25 happy to do that 17:25 lovely jubbly thanks 17:25 popey: so back over to you. 17:25 okay 17:26 this is an observation about our team, and not an opinion or conclusion 17:26 Since jono left things have been a bit different. 17:26 So when things went "wrong" outside canonical jono would typically swoop in wearing a cape and write a blog post 17:26 nod 17:26 s 17:27 we tend not to do that now 17:27 we don't have as quite a public figure as jono 17:27 the role changed 17:28 It did 17:28 the result of this (IMO) is that sometimes a long time goes between adverse things happening and us responding 17:28 some would say thats actually a good thing 17:28 because we're not knee-jerk responding 17:28 but taking more time and considering things rather than jumping on the PR train and writing rapid replies 17:29 popey: I think the other thing that has happened, in that some on the team are a lot more vocal online and then get picked up as the "canonical community manager said X" but dont add the name to the role and that adds confusion, at least imo 17:29 my observation is that this means we (more) often go "silent" on the community about particular topics 17:29 I don't know how I feel about this, whether it's good or bad, whether it's seen as good or bad from outside. 17:29 so I think taking a step back 17:29 I would agree folks are a bit more gunshy on joining a topic, which leads to the banter being set for the community by others 17:29 I just see it more often now than in the past 17:29 taking time to respond is a good thing 17:30 I'm just worried that being too slow to reply leads to too much fud and not enough clearning things up in a manner I guess we're used to 17:30 it can feel cut off and not knowing what's going on - unless you pop on irc and ask :) 17:31 so for me and I've said this , not having one focal main manager had been confusing especially on topics like you've just raised popey . 17:31 mh, I'm not sure 17:31 popey: part of me feels others are waiting for someone else to step in and reply and that leave it down to one or not at all. 17:31 I think it's good in the sense, we are mindful about what we say. However, we are ending up being reactionary in conversations and being dragged into side conversations 17:31 I mean many of us have been around for ages in the project and their voice should have relevance too 17:32 balloons: +1 17:32 whatever their job title is 17:32 +1 17:32 and by that I don't just mean members of our team in Canonical 17:33 and I don't think that relying on a single person to respond to all online discussions via blog will scale - but I have to admit that I often feel "too busy" to write a long blog post responding to whatever the discussion of the day is 17:33 and I know I could blog more 17:33 yes, the downside of having a single mouthpiece is all other voices have a tendency to be silent 17:34 I think the takeaway is also that we should all blog more, not only in reaction to a particular topic, and I am to blame on that too 17:35 jono is one of a kind. But he is not here anymore. You cannot expect to keep on with his style, pretty much only he could. But you can keep on as a group 17:35 hggdh: true 17:35 and we all have to find our own voice 17:35 and our own way of doing things 17:35 just a quick note: the CC also is meeting the IRC Council today ... can we maybe make a list of subjects we still want to talk about? 17:36 it looks like we need way more time to get through all of this, or am I wrong? 17:36 but as popey pointed out culture changes means what we're used to is not what's happening so it was more of a discussion 17:36 yes. And be vocal on it. And try to present a coherent, consistent view 17:36 I will say that having dpm post the community team updates is brilliant! 17:36 please do keep that up :D I love to read it 17:36 thanks 17:36 I would also love to see more blogging of what the Community team is doing as I know I personally idle in the irc channel and can see you guys are busy 17:36 I've not been keeping up after travels and holidays too 17:36 dpm: BTW, never said it -- thank you for the updates. 17:37 but I'm sure others would love to see a day in the life a community team member 17:37 summertime has taken a bit of a toll on things 17:37 so when the next sprint is over expect a new update 17:37 if we have more to talk about, we could have a hangout on air and take more time to get through the issues together 17:37 kind of a pre-UOS u-community-team get-together :) 17:37 dholbach: blog perhaps ? 17:37 czajkowski, sorry I meant subjects popey and others wanted to bring up now 17:37 dholbach: ahh gotcha 17:38 btw, so we've got ~20 mins left? 17:38 dpm: aye 17:38 * hggdh warms hands 17:38 I know dpm had a topic to bring up 17:38 indeed 17:38 czajkowski, dpm: right, but we're also still meeting up with the IRC Council 17:39 but sure... bring it up - it looks like the meeting will run over today anyway 17:39 I think I don't need the whole 20 mins 17:39 I want to introduce the topic and follow up in the next few days anyway 17:39 in any case... 17:40 ... this is a follow-up of a discussion we had at the Community Leadership Summit 17:40 * balloons feels anticipation building 17:40 lol 17:40 dpm: no pressure 17:40 the suspense is killing me :) 17:40 ... 17:40 ... 17:40 j/k 17:41 so, we talked about more effective ways for teams/locos/individuals to meet up and get visibility and more attendees to their physical meetings 17:41 While we have the LoCo portal for event organization 17:42 it seems not all teams use it and also that it's a very Ubuntu-specific thing 17:42 so we don't get all the discoverability we could get 17:42 nods, it's a nice home for all the info on teams when you're searching about a loco. 17:42 dpm: that's also true 17:43 indeed, and to be clear, this is not about changing the LoCo portal 17:43 however, since we created the LP, things have changed 17:43 One of the nice things about CLS was to get feedback from other open source communities 17:44 so really this is about engaging folks where they already are? 17:44 on the infrastructure/tools they use 17:44 for events 17:44 one of the ones that came up was meetup.com 17:44 I know for example czajkowski uses it over at CouchBase 17:44 nods this is true I do. 17:45 and that was someting that came up at CLS, was more and more groups using meet up. 17:45 and how best we could tie it into LTP 17:45 and I got convinced it could be a good thing to try 17:45 * dpm nods 17:46 so I think it's a good idea, and I'd love to see loco teams embrace it 17:46 and if they don't want to also, that's equally fine, 17:46 I think opt in would be good, looping in the LC into the discussion and dpm the funds for this will come via the community fund or canonical ? 17:46 The thing that I particularly attracts me to it is that it opens the door to other open source communities that are using it to more easily see the Ubuntu events, so that we'd be no longer in our Ubuntu bubble 17:46 By all means 17:47 I think this is a discussion that needs to happen with the CC 17:47 err LC 17:47 nods i think it would open more doors for other groups to learn about ubuntu 17:47 * mhall119 is here now 17:47 and I think it's a postive step in understanding how our community is changing and adapting to it 17:48 dpm: so we do have a lmited CC here :) 17:48 :) 17:48 :-) 17:48 I haven't used meetup much yet, but I think it's worth a try 17:48 I think the best thing as a stepping stone would be meet with the LC and involve them in this discussion if not done so already 17:48 meet wtih meet up and then trial it with some teams 17:49 yeah 17:49 and I'd love to see this plan being blogged so others can see how you guys are working with the community and loco teams 17:49 I think opening ourselves up a bit more is a good thing. Things have changed and are changing. It would be best if we could empower those using other platforms to take ownership of them also. In other words, I don't want us to try and be all things to all people 17:49 :) 17:49 and I think you can play with the API and intergrate it into the LTP 17:49 so you could still have visibilty under one location 17:49 but that's a dev issue :) 17:50 I will take an action to put together a doc to drive the discussion with the LC 17:50 brilliant 17:51 nice 17:51 dpm: will the community team be at CLS Europe in case folks at ubuntu want to meet up with the team ? 17:52 We're not planning to atm 17:52 But will look into it 17:52 dpm: another action item :) 17:52 http://clsxeurope.com/ looks like it's the end of October 17:52 :) 17:52 ah, it's a CLSx event 17:52 would be great to see the team at CLS and maybe this is something we could get some of the Ubuntu loco teams to come to and take part in ? 17:53 * dholbach is at UbuConDE at the time 17:53 yeah, it's right on that date 17:53 ^^ indeed, that would be the focus 17:53 I'm at UbuConDE as well 17:53 * mhall119 will be sitting around here in Florida 17:53 But perhaps we can send others who didn't make it to the last CLS 17:54 dpm: guess you need to get the team to Texas next year :) 17:54 :) 17:54 right are there any other topics before we wrap up 17:54 hum........ 17:54 the IRC Council? 17:54 popey: dholbach balloons dpm any other issues? 17:54 yes? 17:54 yes, sponsoring community leaders to go to CLS Europe would be ieal 17:54 \o 17:54 dholbach: you can run that bit of the meeting I need to run for a train :) 17:54 I'm good for today 17:55 same, we've taken enough time for now 17:55 thanks a lot everyone 17:55 let's move on then :) 17:55 o/ 17:55 #topic Catching up with the IRC Council 17:55 sorry for keeping you waiting for so long 17:55 how are things? 17:56 how are you doing? 17:56 quiet. 17:56 oh? 17:56 too quiet, methinks 17:56 I wouldn't have expected that answer from the fast-world-of-IRC :) 17:56 bad quiet or good quiet? 17:57 since the election we have not had much done. We will be holding a IRC meeting next week, off the schedule to try to catch up 17:57 but the irc world is as busy as always, right? 17:58 Well, we had some issues with the server that ubottu and co was hosted on, so that was a bit frantic, but we've gotten things back together now. 17:58 Pici: are there any outstanding issues now that the CC might help with? 17:58 mhall119: I don't think so. 17:58 I do not think so 17:58 who is mostly taking care of the bots these days? 17:59 pici 17:59 I am. 17:59 just you? 17:59 he is the only one, I think with the necessary access. Which is good, otherwise we would have lost the bots for a bit longer 17:59 is there a way to share that access, so it's not all on Pici? 18:00 oh yeah... I have full trust in Pici - I was just asking if anyone else was helping out :) 18:00 so do I :-) 18:01 it's not a question of trust, I trust Pici too, but he should have a backup who can take over for him when he needs it 18:01 No one else is helping at the moment, but I'd need to get something setup so that others could easily admin that part of the server in case I'm away. 18:01 Just a weekend project I should put in my to-do list. 18:01 Pici: is this server yours or something Canonical-hosted? 18:01 nice :) 18:01 mhall119: its a small Linode instance I'm running. 18:02 and speaking of helping out... are there enough folks helping out generally as ops and helpers? 18:02 Pici: the community donations fund could be used to reimburse you for the cost of running it, just a reminder 18:03 * Pici notes 18:03 the meeting next week should take care of most of the pending applications. -ops, though, probably needs a bit more of coverage 18:04 I think we had one or two applications for that, if not we can just hand it out to folks. 18:04 brilliant 18:04 thanks a lot for taking care of that 18:04 how is morale generally among helpers and ops? 18:04 I know that was a concern in the past 18:05 haven't heard of many complaints lately; I would venture it is better than it was before 18:05 *I* think that our operators are a lot better now. Things in general have calmed down a lot, not as many serial-trolls pushing their buttons lately. 18:06 Pici: good explanation. +1 18:06 that's good tohear 18:06 phew 18:06 I'm super happy to hear that :) 18:06 so are we :-) 18:06 it's not just the trolls, but also always a matter of how the atmosphere in the team is 18:07 so it looks like you're doing something right :) 18:07 * hggdh wonders about that... 18:07 mh? 18:08 I think the atmosphere got less polluted, not really what we did (for the most part I, for example, did not really do much) 18:08 oh... I meant you as a whole team 18:08 hggdh: leadership can do a lot to clean up the atmosphere without doing anything directly, just by setting the example 18:08 atmosphere is something everyone contributes to :) 18:09 indeed 18:09 alright, we've used up our allotted time in this channel 18:09 but, apart from that things look good. 18:09 anything else you guys want to bring up? 18:09 nope, we are good. 18:09 sorry again for keeping you waiting earlier :) 18:09 * dholbach hugs you all 18:10 thanks hggdh and Pici 18:10 * hggdh hugs all 18:10 thanks a lot for keeping #ubuntu-* so well organised! 18:10 yes, +1 what dholbach said 18:10 any other topics for the CC? 18:10 from anybody 18:10 * dholbach doesn't 18:11 * mhall119 either 18:11 have a great rest of your day everyone - dinner is waiting for me :) 18:11 thanks everyone 18:11 thanks! 18:11 #endmeeting Generated by MeetBot 0.1.5 (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/meetingology)