Re: whether to have (IRC or otherwise) regular meetings

olivier Thereaux <ot@w3.org> wrote:

>I have been wondering for a while whether to give these meetings another
>try.

I think we should, and I think we should have the meetings weekly rather than at
some other interval so it's easy to remember and establish a rhythm for them.

Things that happen every other week leads to confusion over “Is this the week
that has the meeting?” and things that happen less often than every other week
leads to “Which date was the meeting on again?”. Every week avoids this.

I'd also propose the main gist of the meetings be AIs. Start by quickly running
through every open AI to check status — even if, or perhaps even particularly
if, there is no progress on it — to provide (gentle) pressure to close AIs. Then
a quick pass on any new AIs to be opened.

This ought to take all of 15-30 minutes after which the meeting can be
adjourned.

Issues which do not fit in that time slot — too big, too complicated, etc. —
should probably be done via email instead; or they can be done on IRC outside
the meeting or in a scheduled expanded meeting for the purpose.


We've had a tendency to go off on tangents or large issues which lack common
context in the IRC meets. This just leads to boring the crap out of everyone
else on the meeting unless we have a common reference for the issue in some more
suitable form (i.e. email or a WikiPage) to avoid expounding on an issue as
we're in the process of arguing (typically, an obscure detail of) it.


>the other hand, looking at minutes in [2] shows that regular meetings are
>a good motivation for regular progress, however small.

Agreed!


>times of the day, where we would know that a number of us will be on IRC

Unless I'm explicitly busy — which usually means I wouldn't be able to attend
even a scheduled meeting — I usually have half an eye on #validator and will
catch mail sent to me or qa-dev fairly quickly in the normal daytime hours of
CET. Feel free to ping me if you want to put together something ad hoc.


-- 
  «I also need a longer attention sp- Ooh! Feet!» — Loz Pycock

Received on Sunday, 26 February 2006 10:02:36 UTC