Re: About the Monday's meetings...

[Kevin Sheehan <kevin sheehan zoom co uk>]

Hi,

Im glad this was brought up perhaps I can give my thoughts :-)

I think you are on to something with the discussions becoming too
technical. I know from my point of view I have found it a much harder
task to understand and contribute to that area than I was expecting
(coming from a windows/visual studio angle)

Im not sure that it is necessary to drop that angle altogether but
perhaps where there are goals/targets to be met if the more technical
contributors find there is a more mundane/basic angle that needs
covering dont be afraid to point it out to us. Also on patch testing I
think I/we would benefit from being asked to try certain tests? It is a
long while since I did any proper testing and Im afraid its a bit rusty.

Also could other non programming goals be included, like producing test
images, documentation, video guides, testing different distributions...
Im sure there are more areas we could take off of those with the ability
to contribute code.

I am not sure that I would like to see the goals dropped as it did mean
I felt I could try and help without having to understand what were the
most important bits. Perhaps just open them up a bit and structure them
for those that don't quite understand how they fit into the bigger
picture.

Also seeing a goal committed to CVS does provide a lot of motivation.

The variable amounts of time is allways going to be a problem but I did
feel perhaps that the goals were getting bigger and bigger. If we have a
slow fortnight then we just need pick a smaller goal till we have caught
up.

On the other hand if it is felt that the cost of structuring the
meetings/goals is more than the resulting extra contributions that come
in I would quite understand. I know that myself I only have a few hours
a week spare to contribute to projects normally.

Anyhow if you have made it to here, thanks for reading :-)

	Kevin

On Mon, 2006-11-13 at 14:19 +0100, Stephane Delcroix wrote:
> To everyone involved in making f-spot better every days, Hi !
> 
> Remember the days, back in July, when we tried to hold bi-weekly
> meetings about f-spot development ? That was fun, very exciting and
> everything but obviously something went wrong since we just had our
> first complete month without any of them.
> 
> Before discussing what went wrong, please let me remember you the great
> things we achieved during/with those meetings:
> 
> In general:
> - We agreed on a code committing policy (MoM 0601), and this policy is
> really in use right now since we reached the critical minimal number of
> committers.
> - We agreed on a mission statement.
> - We built the embryo of an F-Spot community, people knowing each other,
> working together (by pair or small groups) on achieving goals
> 
> At the code level:
> - We reviewed/enhanced/committed a huge amount of very useful patches
> (XMP import, Queries, Picasa, ...)
> - We developed and discussed some patches that are now almost ready to
> be committed (icon size, plugins, rating, last rolls, ...)
> 
> So, why it failed ???
> Here's my humble opinion, and saying that the meetings failed only
> engages me !
> - From very generic conversations in meeting 0601 (in which everyone can
> give his/her opinion) we quickly moved to discussions about specific
> patches (goals) or part of code involving only the small amount of
> people knowing that part of code, i.e. the people who developed the code
> or the ones who reviewed it in deep. This probably drop down the
> interest of the non-developers/people who don't know about the specific
> part of the code.
> - We fixed goals for the next 2 weeks. As a remember, we defined those
> goals as a specific issue people should look at in the time window. The
> problem is, due to professional and personal priorities, almost nobody
> in the people involved can guarantee that he/she will have 5 hours
> available for f-spot. And most of all, in our f-spot time, we all prefer
> working on our patches than reviewing someone else's work. It means that
> just asking people to focus on a subject will not make them focus, at
> least in a community contributed project.
> 
> So, the motivation and the interest dropped down under a critical
> threshold, and we had to postpone sine die the latest meeting.
> 
> What can we do in the future ?
> (still my humble opinion. if you're/want to be involved in f-spot,
> please discuss)
> - if we continue with meetings, don't discuss code there. bgo is
> probably a better place.
> - we probably can't fix goals. if we need attention/reviews/help on some
> particular issue, asking is probably better than imposing goals... on
> the mailing list/IRC/meeting ?
> - if we keep the meetings, we probably need to only hold one by month,
> agree on a topic list and stick to it. We also need to be sure that we
> have something to discuss and that people will attend. If we don't,
> postpone. It's important because due to developers living in different
> timezones, meetings always ends up during the night / lunch time / work
> time / family time for someone, and staying awake or waking up for an
> empty meeting is very frustrating. 
> - a lot of things, please add yours
> 
> 
> Thanks for reading, that was only my thought about the meeting. Please
> share yours so we'll know how to drive all the good will floating around
> in a common direction to make f-spot better !
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Stephane
> 
>