pages tagged communityzack's home pagehttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/tags/community/zack's home pageikiwiki2011-07-22T16:06:13Zdebian meeting guidelines RFChttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/06/debian_meeting_guidelines_RFC/2011-07-22T16:06:13Z2010-06-20T20:58:02Z
<h1>How to have a (Debian) summit without turning into a secret
cabal</h1>
<p>It seems rather uncontroversial that sponsoring various kinds of
Debian <strong>meetings</strong> (conferences, <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon#Sprints">sprints</a>, BSPs,
etc.) is a good way to spend, actually <strong>invest</strong>,
<strong>Debian money</strong>.</p>
<p>Historically, that has not always saved the Debian community
from muttering about "cabal-ish" meetings in very few specific
occasions. (No, there is no cabal, in case you wonder.) I've always
believed in the good faith of people and I don't think that we have
ever had "secret meetings" <em>on purpose</em>. Nevertheless the
question of <strong>how to have meetings in a community-compatible
way</strong> is a sound one. Answering properly to such a question
is something that it's harder than what it might seem at first
sight (at least for me).</p>
<p>In particular, organizers have to carefully balance the high
efficiency that meetings offer (e.g.: communication bandwidth is
higher than when working remotely, people have less distractions,
more enthusiasm, more fun!, etc.) with the <strong>risk of cutting
out the rest of the community</strong> which cannot attend the
meeting, for whatever reason. Note also that since Debian is not a
company, we cannot just <em>require</em> that everybody who is
interested attend the meeting.</p>
<p>As DPL, I'm starting to get quite some requests for meeting
sponsorship, and that's just wonderful: it means that we have
thrilling groups of people that are eager to get together and hack
to improve Debian! Still, in doing so, we should all try to
minimize the above risk; that's why I've started to apply the
following <strong>Debian meeting guidelines</strong>, as a kind of
<a href="http://xkcd.com/754/">prerequisite</a> for sponsoring.</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p><strong>Before the meeting</strong>: the meeting should be
<strong>announced</strong> to the most relevant public mailing
list(s); ideally, the tentative agenda of the meeting should be
included in the announcement.<br />
That will enable people interested in the meeting topics to provide
their inputs and more generally to know what is going on.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>During the meeting</strong> (preparation): expenses
should be minimized, as a form of respect for all people that
donate to Debian. Since we value their contributions, we do our
best not to waste them. <small>(TTBOMK, we've always done that, but
making it explicit won't hurt.)</small></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>After the meeting</strong>: meeting
<strong>minutes</strong> should be sent to the most relevant public
mailing list(s), usually to <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce"><code>d-d-a</code></a>
for meetings that cover topics of general development
interest.<br />
As an obvious consequence, minutes should be <em>taken</em> during
the meeting; it <em>is</em> a bit of extra burden, but the risk of
leaving the rest of the community in the dark is just not
acceptable a community as wide and diverse as ours.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In general, <strong>think about communication</strong>, e.g.:
(micro)blog about the meeting, contact press/<a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity">-publicity</a> to
prepare a news item about it, enable others to attend virtually on
IRC or other media, etc.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>For now, the above is just a brain dump.<br />
Now, <strong>what do you think?</strong> Are the above reasonable
demands? What else should we ask for?<br />
Feel free to leave a comment or <a href=
"mailto:leader@debian.org">mail me</a> about that.</p>