XSF Discussion - 2013-10-14

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.

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

A WG chair of which group?

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

Since its based purely on physical meeting attendance.

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

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

And we could have some fun?:)

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

I was going to apply, dwd

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

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

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

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

dwd, Dave has an idea:)

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

There we go.

Ah

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

Dave, we could do it this way

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

oh, I should go for board then

See, we have more candidates

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

Apply, fippo

SM, Deadline's now passed.

Wait, Council is being less interesting now?

Dave, let's check timezones

we can find one where teh deadline is not past

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

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

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

well, how about a debate?

or a chat?

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

It would have to be announced

I'll post a message to the list

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

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

It can be informal

Should we pick a time?

Yes, around now?

Or whatever works for you

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?

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

Dave, don't ask:)

well, if it is UTC, let me see

19:00 UTC?

Kev, do you offer beer?

I only offer heckling Board meetings.

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

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

Provide steak.

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

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

so that's no

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

Dave, heresy, I like that:)

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

I seem to be the only vegetarian in the XMPP community

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

fippo, seriously, these silos are there to stay

SM: that is what i'm afraid of

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

Ah, you spotted the talent:)

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

What is needed is new dog tricks

SM, What do you mean, exactly?

People get tired of routine stuff

Which is why it is good to try something new

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

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

Kev, pushing hard does not work

Sometimes you need a velvet glove

SM: I was asking fippo's meaning.

It is a play on adapt or perish

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

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

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

'We'?

Dave, fine with me

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

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

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

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

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

So, thanks :p

I didn't say that. :-)

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

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

Or Shwmae Day, whatever.

Is it?

Today is International Standards Day, apparently.

right. my designer poked me about that even.

fippo: Your designer wants to speak Welsh? :D

Kev, Da iawn.

Diolch.

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

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

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.

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

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

Something's not right there :)

hrm?

s/recast/cast/

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

That too.

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

Hopefully not.

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

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

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

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

Which will presumably be next session now.

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

[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)

That was last Wednesday.

Last Board meeting was 13th September.

Was that the IoT discussion?

Yes.

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

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

I have no results from you Kev

Fab, thanks.

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' :-)

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

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

Yes

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?

Dave Cridland: Board or also Council candidates?

Everyone?

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.

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

It doesn't entirely smack of due process.

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

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.

Dave, you got mail:)

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, we can have two chats

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

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

Another option would be to find some asynchronous communication mechanism.

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

members with CC for the applicants.

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

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

I think that barrier is not insurmountable.

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

It is:)

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

Grief. How long's the TCP timeout?

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

What TCP timeout?

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

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

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

We have had non-member applicants to Board before.

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

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

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

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

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

That works after the election, yes.

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

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

Rather than them to ask questions about the XSF.

oh

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

It's not interactive

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

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

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

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

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

That's a good idea, bear

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

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

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

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

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

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

mailman configuration updated to give posting privileges to Board candidates

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

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

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

I once saw someone using XMPP like that:)

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

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

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

But I am fine with reading the archive

I already made you work for one day:)

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

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

but folks can reply to all

message to members@ sent

Thanks bear

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

No, I'll just copy and paste the message

oh, poo

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

Copy to Laura

And the other candidates

It's okay with me

thanks

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

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

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

indeed

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

for sure

we could do a session at the summit

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

But I can live without.

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.

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

so it becomes part of the process

That's certainly true.

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

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

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

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

hehe

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

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

Dave :-)

So was I, at one point.

the list has the additional advantage of time to think

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

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

that

ralphm, yes, and time zones

and with that, I'll go sleep now

cheerio

oh, who

's arriving on wednesday?

I arrive thursday

Same

thursday

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

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

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

:)

thursday, 11:35 from amsterdam.

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

Delta hub

It's a hub for that region.

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

Airline scheduling never makes sense:)

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

Hmm, someone bought the software?

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

MattJ, Ouch!

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

MattJ, Where are you headed?

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

That's the part I'm annoyed about

Going via Boston

Righty, scribbled my bit.