XSF Discussion - 2013-10-14


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  62. dwd

    If we ever do a mentoring programme at the XSF, remind me never to pick such delightful criteria for those who need a mentor as the IETF does.

  63. dwd

    Turns out I qualify for a mentor, despite around a decade of IETF activity and being a WG chair. :-)

  64. fsteinel has left

  65. SM

    A WG chair of which group?

  66. dwd

    qresync. I'm pretty sure that you qualify for a mentor as well.

  67. dwd

    Since its based purely on physical meeting attendance.

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  71. SM

    Oh, I would be a bad example as a mentor :-)

  72. dwd

    No, no. I mean we qualify to be mentored, not mentor someone else...

  73. SM

    And we could have some fun?:)

  74. dwd

    If I were going to Vancouver, I might even apply, to prove a point about criteria based purely on physical meeting attendence.

  75. SM

    I was going to apply, dwd

  76. SM

    But people would figure out that I was being, err, myself:)

  77. fippo has joined

  78. dwd

    So someone just said to me that this was the most interesting set of elections we've had in years.

  79. dwd

    I have no clue who I'll be voting for yet. :-)

  80. fippo raises his hand

  81. dwd

    I think it's more a case of deciding who I could live without, not that it makes it any easier.

  82. SM

    dwd, Dave has an idea:)

  83. dwd

    Hmmm. I just realised I'm more than usually opaque. Let me fix that.

  84. Dave Cridland has joined

  85. Dave Cridland

    There we go.

  86. SM

    Ah

  87. Kev has joined

  88. Dave Cridland

    Sorry, I'm used to people knowing that one. :-)

  89. SM

    Dave, we could do it this way

  90. SM

    The one who gets to annoy the st peter the most is voted in?

  91. fippo

    oh, I should go for board then

  92. SM

    See, we have more candidates

  93. Dave Cridland

    fippo, You're already standing for Council...

  94. SM

    Apply, fippo

  95. Dave Cridland

    SM, Deadline's now passed.

  96. SM

    Wait, Council is being less interesting now?

  97. SM

    Dave, let's check timezones

  98. SM

    we can find one where teh deadline is not past

  99. Dave Cridland

    No, I think it's the 14th everywhere, now.

  100. Lance

    and voting has already started, so can't change the ballots now

  101. Dave Cridland

    Lance, Although we did one year. Caused a hell of a mess.

  102. SM

    well, how about a debate?

  103. SM

    or a chat?

  104. Dave Cridland

    Heh. I think the candidates might outnumber the non-candidates here at the moment.

  105. SM

    It would have to be announced

  106. SM

    I'll post a message to the list

  107. Dave Cridland

    7 candidates in the room, out of 12 total. :-)

  108. fippo needs to ask for more buttons. 20 won't be enough for portland probably

  109. Dave Cridland

    It really needs to go to members@ as well. And technically it can't be an official meeting.

  110. SM

    It can be informal

  111. Dave Cridland

    Should we pick a time?

  112. SM

    Yes, around now?

  113. SM

    Or whatever works for you

  114. Dave Cridland

    I'm trying to think of the candidate's timezones. Mostly UK to PST. I think you're the outlier - what time is it for you now?

  115. Kev

    I think a sensible criterion for Board is whether people will do what I want :)

  116. SM

    Dave, don't ask:)

  117. SM

    well, if it is UTC, let me see

  118. SM

    19:00 UTC?

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  120. SM

    Kev, do you offer beer?

  121. Kev

    I only offer heckling Board meetings.

  122. Dave Cridland

    So 20:00 UK, 21:00 CET, 12:00 PST, 15:00 EST.

  123. Dave Cridland

    Kev, But here's a question for you - what is it you want Board to do?

  124. Kev

    Provide steak.

  125. Dave Cridland

    Right, I did check Florian was still going to be available to do that in Belgium.

  126. SM

    Kev, we only do veggies, something to do with PETA

  127. SM

    so that's no

  128. Dave Cridland

    SM, The FOSDEM co-located Summit in Belgium has already dispelled that one - plenty of steak there.

  129. SM

    Dave, heresy, I like that:)

  130. fippo

    a more concrete vision that "federate or die" (given that those silos are sprouting) would probably be helpful

  131. MattJ

    I seem to be the only vegetarian in the XMPP community

  132. Lance

    What I want board to do is put more effort/resources behind marketing for xmpp

  133. SM

    fippo, seriously, these silos are there to stay

  134. fippo

    SM: that is what i'm afraid of

  135. Dave Cridland

    Lance, Totally. I'm unashamedly hoping Laura Gill will get in and take charge of precisely that.

  136. SM

    Ah, you spotted the talent:)

  137. Dave Cridland

    MattJ, Not true. There's Diana, too.

  138. SM

    What is needed is new dog tricks

  139. Dave Cridland

    SM, What do you mean, exactly?

  140. SM

    People get tired of routine stuff

  141. SM

    Which is why it is good to try something new

  142. SM

    Dog tricks is a term of art to mean stuff to get things done:)

  143. Kev

    fippo: You're suggesting that "Federate or die" is unhelpful and we should facilitate silos, or that we need to pushharder against silos?

  144. SM

    Kev, pushing hard does not work

  145. SM

    Sometimes you need a velvet glove

  146. SouL has joined

  147. Kev

    SM: I was asking fippo's meaning.

  148. SM

    It is a play on adapt or perish

  149. fippo

    kev: the silos are beating us in terms of features and agility. because standardization is a slow process.

  150. Kev

    SM: I'm familiar with the saying. I just wasn't clear if fippo was pro or against it.

  151. Dave Cridland

    So if we say we'll be around at 1900 UTC tomorrow, is that good? Or Wednesday?

  152. Kev

    'We'?

  153. SM

    Dave, fine with me

  154. Kev

    I certainly can't do any evening this week, UK time.

  155. Dave Cridland

    Kev, We in the loosest term of "anyone who wants to be about".

  156. Dave Cridland

    Kev, You're in the office this week, right?

  157. fippo

    kev: I do think there is alot of value in interop + federation. as demonstrated with lance :-)

  158. Kev

    Dave Cridland: Yes, but I don't ever say in a public venue that I'm not at home.

  159. Kev

    So, thanks :p

  160. Dave Cridland

    I didn't say that. :-)

  161. Kev

    Dave Cridland: Also remember that if you're having some meeting thing tomorrow you have to do so in Welsh.

  162. Kev

    What with it being start-a-conversation-in-Welsh day.

  163. Kev

    Or Shwmae Day, whatever.

  164. Dave Cridland

    Is it?

  165. Dave Cridland

    Today is International Standards Day, apparently.

  166. fippo

    right. my designer poked me about that even.

  167. Kev

    fippo: Your designer wants to speak Welsh? :D

  168. Dave Cridland

    Kev, Da iawn.

  169. Kev

    Diolch.

  170. Kev

    http://learnwelsh.coleggwent.ac.uk/news/item?id=278

  171. SM

    Ah, they could not even translate that email sign?:)

  172. Dave Cridland

    Actually, I wonder if there's a Board meeting this week? I've not seen anything about one, but if not, we could use that slot.

  173. Kev

    Lance: You're responsible for the new memberbot aren't you?

  174. Kev

    Would you like to cast your votes now? (yes/no) 20:58 no me @ 20:58 Thank you for voting, Kevin Smith! If you wish to recast your votes later, just start a new voting session. memberbot@xmpp.org @ 20:58

  175. Kev

    Something's not right there :)

  176. Lance

    hrm?

  177. Dave Cridland

    s/recast/cast/

  178. Kev

    "Would you like to vote?" "no" "Thanks for voting!"

  179. Dave Cridland

    That too.

  180. Dave Cridland

    I wonder if you'll be on the voting list now?

  181. Kev

    Hopefully not.

  182. Dave Cridland

    Kev, Any idea if there's a Board meeting?

  183. Kev

    Otherwise I won't remember to vote when Alex sends the reminders.

  184. Kev

    Dave Cridland: I haven't heard about a Board meeting in some time.

  185. Dave Cridland

    I think I saw somewhere that Mike wasn't planning another until he heard back about the IoT stuff.

  186. Dave Cridland

    Which will presumably be next session now.

  187. Dave Cridland

    So that slot is 15:30 UTC on Wednesday, I think.

  188. Kev

    [17:03:23] <Kev> I don't know when the next Board meeting is, but discussing GSoC seems sensible. [17:10:41] <MattJ> +1 [17:25:06] <bear> next board meeting is the one after peter delivers the answer about the IoT liason thingy IIRC [17:25:26] <bear> but with GSoC now, I think we need to bump that up (or just punt and wait for voting to be done)

  189. Kev

    That was last Wednesday.

  190. stpeter has left

  191. Kev

    Last Board meeting was 13th September.

  192. Dave Cridland

    Was that the IoT discussion?

  193. Kev

    Yes.

  194. Alex

    sorry guys was in a long meeting. Any problems with the bot?

  195. Kev

    Alex: Are you able to check whether it thinks I've voted, please?

  196. Alex

    I have no results from you Kev

  197. Kev

    Fab, thanks.

  198. fippo

    https://github.com/legastero/memberbot/blob/master/memberbot/chat_voting.py#L51 <-- lance, I think you should check the number of votes before showing 'end' :-)

  199. Lance

    Kev: I'll tweak the message it sends at the end to make that clearer. I've got four startup messages, but only the one ending right now

  200. Kev

    Lance: It greeted me by name. Does that mean "Hi, Kevin Smith!" is one of the four greetings :)

  201. Lance

    Yes

  202. Dave Cridland

    So I'm going to suggest people gather to discuss the XSF, and ask questions of candidates if they're about, on Wednesday 1530 UTC (1930 for SM, 1730 CET, 1630 BST, 1130 EST, 0830 PST). Sounds good?

  203. Kev

    Dave Cridland: Board or also Council candidates?

  204. SM

    Everyone?

  205. Dave Cridland

    I was going to suggest everyone. But make it clear that this is not an official meeting, and has not been discussed with all candidates prior to this announcement.

  206. Kev

    I'm not entirely overjoyed with the idea of doing such a thing with ~= no notice and without discussing it with the candidates.

  207. Kev

    It doesn't entirely smack of due process.

  208. Kev

    But I'll try and remember to turn up if you send a note to members.

  209. Dave Cridland

    No, it's not. The alternative is to either not hold the meeting or else hold it much later in the voting period. Neither of those seems useful either.

  210. SM

    Dave, you got mail:)

  211. fippo

    doing this as part of the summit might be a way to avoid this. while not an official meeting either, everyone who is interested knows when it happens.

  212. Kev

    fippo: Which is great for those people who'll be at the summit.

  213. Kev

    But it's also true that this isn't helpful when it's late in the voting period.

  214. Kev

    It basically needs to happen after applications close and before voting begins :)

  215. Dave Cridland

    Right. So we can either pick a different time, or else simply declare an open discussion.

  216. fippo

    kev: right. but having a vote so close to the summit is probably going to add bias in any case

  217. Kev

    It'll bias in favour of anyone at the summit, yes.

  218. SM

    Well, we can have two chats

  219. Kev

    fippo: Having the chat during the summit makes this much worse.

  220. Dave Cridland

    Kev, Yes, i agree. Plus it's not good use of the summit.

  221. fippo nods

  222. Kev

    Another option would be to find some asynchronous communication mechanism.

  223. Dave Cridland

    Kev, yeah, we could do this entirely on a mailing list, but which one?

  224. Kev

    members with CC for the applicants.

  225. fippo

    we have this wiki thing where each candidate has a discussion page.

  226. Dave Cridland

    Two of the Board candidates (I think) cannot post to members@

  227. Kev

    I think that barrier is not insurmountable.

  228. Dave Cridland

    Perhaps not, but I think it'll nevertheless disadvantage them.

  229. SM

    It is:)

  230. fippo pokes bear

  231. bear has joined

  232. bear

    grrr, i've had my laptop open for hours and swift was off in zombie socket land

  233. Kev

    Grief. How long's the TCP timeout?

  234. bear

    it's made worse by me closing the laptop lid often

  235. Dave Cridland

    What TCP timeout?

  236. Dave Cridland

    Though i'd expect Swift to update presence and kick in the ack timeout.

  237. bear finishes reading backscroll

  238. Kev

    We send whings, which should trigger the timeout sooner than the idle presence, even.

  239. bear

    i don't know that this one edge case of someone wanting to discuss something without being an XSF member has come up before

  240. Kev

    We have had non-member applicants to Board before.

  241. Kev

    Just that Board applicants aren't generally as keen to make themselves available for questions.

  242. bear

    right, for the most part the board is not the busy part of the XSF

  243. bear

    and I thought that issue was solved by the muc rooms being public

  244. bear

    my solution for the communication would be to ensure that who ever adds their name to the board list that they poke someone to get on the members@ list

  245. Kev

    I may have misunderstood, but I think Dave and SM were suggesting a session for them to be asked questions about their applications.

  246. Dave Cridland

    That works after the election, yes.

  247. bear

    it's the one list we know everyone has access to and watches

  248. stpeter

    BTW it is easy enough for us to modify the allowed senders for the members@ list

  249. Kev

    Rather than them to ask questions about the XSF.

  250. bear

    oh

  251. bear

    isn't that what the Talk page on the wiki is for?

  252. SM

    It's not interactive

  253. Kev

    It is. Although to the best of my knowledge that's never been used.

  254. Dave Cridland

    Actually, more a way for the existing members and candidates to generally discuss together, rather than a Q&A session.

  255. Kev

    So either People don't know about it, People don't want to converse, or People don't want to converse in that way.

  256. bear

    adding candidates to the members@ list seems the simplest way to get everyone onto the same channel

  257. stpeter nods to bear

  258. bear

    what could be a good thing to add to the election process is a set of "office hours" - block out two sessions of an hour where the candidates are available

  259. SM

    That's a good idea, bear

  260. Dave Cridland

    Right, that's kind of what we were discussing, I think.

  261. bear

    one block would be EU centric and the other not-EU centric

  262. SM

    See, it is faster to resolve things over XMPP, good selling point for the protocol :-)

  263. bear

    XMPP is all about communication regardless of what the humans running it try to do ;)

  264. Dave Cridland

    I'm actually both EU and non-EU, at the moment. ;-)

  265. bear looks in the dictionary under "thorn" and sees Dave smiling back

  266. Dave Cridland

    bear, FWIW, candidates run from UTC-7 to UTC+4 if that helps pick times.

  267. stpeter

    mailman configuration updated to give posting privileges to Board candidates

  268. Kev

    I'm not sure not being able to tell what continent you're on is a good selling point :p

  269. SM

    stepeter, and I have to click refresh on the archive?

  270. Dave Cridland

    Kev, I know which I'm on now. But during the voting period I'll be in three different timezones.

  271. SM

    I once saw someone using XMPP like that:)

  272. fippo

    stpeter: maybe mention that in http://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/members as well

  273. stpeter

    SM: for all the back messages, yes -- but people will need to cc you and Laura in the new thread, which I suggest that bear starts as the current chair

  274. SM

    stpeter, you have a reply-to in mailman to the list only

  275. SM

    But I am fine with reading the archive

  276. SM

    I already made you work for one day:)

  277. bear

    I will post to the members list saying that the candidates for board and council should be considered available for questions by anyone in the XSF

  278. bear has left

  279. stpeter

    SM: ah yes, the old reply-to flame war -- I haven't seen that arise on the IETF lists in at least a few months

  280. stpeter

    but folks can reply to all

  281. bear

    message to members@ sent

  282. SM

    Thanks bear

  283. Dave Cridland

    bear, Did you copy that to SM and Laura Gill?

  284. SM

    No, I'll just copy and paste the message

  285. bear

    oh, poo

  286. Dave Cridland

    SM, I'm thinking Laura Gill might not see it unless Lloyd or Ashley point it out to her.

  287. SM

    Copy to Laura

  288. SM

    And the other candidates

  289. SM

    It's okay with me

  290. bear

    thanks

  291. ralphm

    I am in the Netherlands, but traveling the coming two weeks.

  292. bear

    I don't think we can really schedule the office hours with this short of notice

  293. bear

    that's why I like the members@ solution for this time

  294. ralphm

    indeed

  295. bear

    I know I will soon be mostly AFK due to realtimeconf stuff

  296. ralphm

    for sure

  297. ralphm

    we could do a session at the summit

  298. Dave Cridland

    I'd like to have office hours just to encourage conversation.

  299. Dave Cridland

    But I can live without.

  300. Dave Cridland

    ralphm, I'd rather not spend time on this at the summit. As Kev pointed out, it's rather in favour of summit attendees, plus it's not the best use of time for the summit anyway.

  301. bear

    adding office hours is something the new board can consider and get into the charter

  302. bear

    so it becomes part of the process

  303. Dave Cridland

    That's certainly true.

  304. Kev

    I'm really quite heavily opposed of doing things about this at the summit.

  305. bear

    summits work better when the task list is focused - and there is nothing like a discussion about how to do discussions that will unfocus people

  306. Kev

    I'm not at all opposed to arranging things so this is (semi?)formalised next year.

  307. bear

    so I would veto anything to do about this in the summit to be blunt

  308. ralphm

    hehe

  309. Dave Cridland

    I'm glad we have the "problem" of a well-contested election, too. :-)

  310. bear

    yes, I was worried the board would have 3 or 4 members this year

  311. SM

    Dave :-)

  312. Dave Cridland

    So was I, at one point.

  313. ralphm

    the list has the additional advantage of time to think

  314. Dave Cridland

    Don't we want to make sure people can think on their feet? ;-)

  315. bear

    the list has the advantage for us non-native english speakers of being able to get a good paragraph written that isn't rushed into a muc entry line

  316. ralphm

    that

  317. SM

    ralphm, yes, and time zones

  318. ralphm

    and with that, I'll go sleep now

  319. ralphm

    cheerio

  320. bear waves

  321. ralphm

    oh, who

  322. ralphm

    's arriving on wednesday?

  323. bear

    I arrive thursday

  324. MattJ

    Same

  325. Lance

    thursday

  326. Dave Cridland

    Same here, quite late (land at 21:35)

  327. Kev has left

  328. Dave Cridland

    So I guess I'll get to the hotel around 22:30 or so.

  329. ralphm

    oh, you'll all miss the celebration of life and death of databases

  330. bear

    :)

  331. fippo

    thursday, 11:35 from amsterdam.

  332. Dave Cridland

    Oddly, I'm being routed via Atlanta. I have no clue why.

  333. ralphm

    Delta hub

  334. SM

    It's a hub for that region.

  335. Dave Cridland

    Yeah, true, but i'd have thought Minneapolis would have made more sense.

  336. SM

    Airline scheduling never makes sense:)

  337. Dave Cridland

    True. I've heard horror stories about it now, given my boss founded ITA, which basically did airline searches.

  338. ralphm goes non-stop

  339. SM

    Hmm, someone bought the software?

  340. MattJ

    I was due to leave today (I'm doing a tour on my way to the conference), and missed my flight

  341. Dave Cridland

    MattJ, Ouch!

  342. MattJ

    The flight I was on is once a day, and they offered to reschedule for free till tomorrow

  343. Dave Cridland

    MattJ, Where are you headed?

  344. MattJ

    and that if I didn't accept the offer, all my flights in the itinerary would be cancelled

  345. MattJ

    That's the part I'm annoyed about

  346. MattJ

    Going via Boston

  347. Dave Cridland

    Righty, scribbled my bit.

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