Minutes of the GNOME-2.0 Coordination meeting 11 September 2001

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

      Minutes of the GNOME-2.0 Coordination meeting 11 September 2001
      ===============================================================

 The meeting initially planned at 5pm GMT on the phone actually occured on
IRC due to difficulties with international phone calls.

Presents:
=========

    Daniel Veillard  (chairing, minutes) (dropped 6:11)
    Sander Vesik
    Maciej Stachowiak (chaired once DV got disconnected)
    Dan Mueth
    Gregory Leblanc
    Calum Benson
    Jamin Gray
    Jeff Waugh
    Telsa Gwynne
    Kjartan Maraas   (joined 5:39)
    Michael Meeks    (joined 6:21)


Regrets or missing:
===================
    Seth Nickell (represented by Calum Benson)
    Karl Gaffney

Decisions:
==========
    - The main goal of that meeting was to build a team and split task
      identified by Maciej in a mail before the call.
    - The team has been defined, the task have been split between members
    - The meeting schedule has been defined, every week at least on Fridays

New Actions:
============

  ACTION: Jeff to send the full IRC logs to DV for the minutes
    => done

  ACTION: Sander to set up weekly phone conferences 

  ACTION: Dan to ask John Fleck about Docs coordinator duties

Discussion:
===========

 - collecting people on IRC after a short phone debacle

 - getting a temporary chair and minute taker for this first meeting
   => DV

 - presentation of the people and motivation for working on the Gnome-2.0
   coordination, the following miss presentations from the people who joined
   late or were missing the meeting:

   Daniel Veillard (DV): 
     primarilly interested in making sure that we have a process to
     get Gnome-2.0 out in a reasonable time frame. I can commit to
     administrative tasks like chairing or taking minutes, not that I feel
     urged to do them but to make sure there will be someone doing
     them. Will happilly work on other stuff if I'm confident my help is
     not needed

   Maciej Stachowiak (mjs):
     As far as motivation, I'd like to help get things organized and
     carry over some of the lessons from GNOME 1.4 and other large-scale
     release efforts I have seen

   Sander Vesik (sander):
     Got picked as one of two Gnome2 release co-coordinators, interested
     to see that there is a Gnome2 that is relatively timely, bugfree
     and actually works

   Jamin Gray (Jamin):
     I was one of the GNOME 1.4 Fifth Toe coordinators, and volunteered
     to do the same for GNOME 2.  I'm interested in making it a very
     solid release.

   Jeff Waugh (jdub):
     Would like to assist with bugs, outreach, doing the dirty work for
     better developers so GNOME 2.0 rocks very hard.

   Greg Leblanc (greg):
     trying to make sure that we have binaries for GNOME, so that we can test

   Jody Goldberg (jody): 
     I maintain Gnumeric and would like to help with GNOME Office and 5th Toe.

   Calum Benson (calum):
     deputising for Seth Nickell... who's hoping to beat up people about
     usability bugs and prioritise the ones that need fixing before
     we'll allow a release...

   Dan Mueth (muet):
     I plan to help out coordinating the docs and hope to help carry
     over some of the experience learned by GNOME 1.4 release team,
     along with mjs.

   Though not strictly minutes from the meeting, we noted at that point that
   Michael volunteered for the "Technical Coordinator" role and Karl for
   "QA Coordinator"

  - The list of roles identified by Maciej are available from the the release
    list archive them associated with their description [1], I will enclose
    a copy below since access to the archive is not public.

    There is 15 roles identified, and the goal is to allocate people to
    them accoding to:
      - their willingness to do it
      - time available
      - previous experience

  - Most of the following discussion was to check and allocate each role
    ending up with the following composition of the Gnome-2.0 Release Team:

      - Chair: Maciej Stachowiak
      - Secretary: Jeff Waugh
      - Bugmeister: Kjartan Marass and Telsa Gwynne
      - Project Manager: Maciej Stachowiak
      - Release Engineer: Sander Vesik
      - QA Coordinator: Karl Gaffney
      - Docs Coordinator: Dan Mueth (unless John Fleck want to step in)
      - L10N Coordinator: Kjartan Marass
      - Packaging Coordinator: Greg Leblanc
      - HI Coordinator: Seth Nickell
      - Technical Coordinator: Michael Meeks
      - Apps Coordinator: Sander Vesik
      - Fifth Toe Coordinator: Jamin Gray
      - GNOME Office Coordinator: Jody Golberg
      - PR Coordinator: Jeff Waugh (possibly backed up with a more
                        formal contact)

  - Deciding the date/time for the next meetings, which tend to be hard
    considering there are people in Europe, USA (both coasts) and Australia.
    Those will be phone meeting hosted by Sun Microsystem and likely to be
    becked up by an IRC log.

Daniel

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/private/gnome2-release-team/2001-September/msg00004.html 

----------- Maciej description of the Roles ------------
Some of these roles involve performing a specific function in
meetings. Others cover a project-wide aspect of project
management. Still others involve focusing on specific modules or
groups of modules. Anyway, here are some of the roles I think are
useful:


Chair      - Runs meetings; sends out agenda prior to meetings;
	     makes sure agenda is covered.

Secretary  - Takes minutes at meetings; Makes sure they get sent out
	     in a timely fashion.

Bugmeister - Keeps track of all critical bugs for release; makes sure
             bugs get filed as needed; does regular bugzilla queries
	     to identify problem areas; works with various area
	     coordinators to ensure that specific critical bug lists
	     are appropriately tagged in bugzilla; goes over bug lists
	     to close duplicates and other noise bugs; keeps
	     bugzilla's nose clean in general.

Project Manager - Sends out schedule announcements and reminders;
		  reminds maintainers to upload packages for releases;
		  makes sure maintainers are on top of key bugs, with
		  the assistance of the bugmeister and QA coordinator;
		  works with maintainers of packages that are at risk of
		  delay to ensure problems are resolved; works with
		  release engineer to enforce freezes.

Release Engineer - Does the footwork of actually staging the release
                   packages (could be a different person for fifth toe
		   and core release); may also write or maintain tools
		   to help with the release project (library status
                   web pages, tinderbox, etc); works with project
		   manager to enforce freezes.

QA Coordinator - Organizes the testing effort by providing test plans,
                 recruiting testers, etc; ensures adequate time for QA
		 in the schedule; reports problem areas to release
                 team; works with bugmeister to make sure critical bugs
		 are in bugzilla; works with project manager to ensure
		 key bugs are given attention.

Docs Coordinator - Organizes documentation effort; ensures adequate
		   time for documentation in the schedule; works with
		   bugmeister and project manager in the area of bugs
		   that block the documentation effort; works to
		   ensure libraries have complete developer docs.

L10N Coordinator - Organizes localization / translation effort;
		   ensures adequate time for localization in schedule;
		   works with bugmeister and project manager to ensure
		   localizability bugs are recorded and given adequate
		   visibility.

Packaging Coordinator - Organizes binary packaging effort; ensures
                        availability of binaries for test releases;
			coordinates with third-party packagers.

HI Coordinator - Works with maintainers, developers and the community
		 to determine the critical release-blocking
		 technical/infrastructure problems; works with bugmeister
		 and project manager to ensure bugs are tagged
		 appropriately and given appropriate visibility.

Technical Coordiator - Works with maintainers and developers
		       to determine the critical release-blocking
		       technical / infrastructure problems with the
		       platform; works with bugmeister to ensure these
		       are accurately reflected in bugzilla; works
		       with project manager to ensure they are given
		       appropriate attention.

Apps Coordinator - Like the technical coordinator but focuses on core
		   desktop apps (especially file manager, help
		   browser, panel, window manager and control center)
		   and integration issues among them.

Fifth Toe Coordinator - Reponsible for overall organization of fifth
			toe release.

GNOME Office Coordinator - Reponsible for overall organization of
			   GNOME Office release, if we decide to have
			   one.

PR Coordinator - Coordinates press releases, press coverage, etc for
	         the release; not really needed until close to the end
		 of the cycle.


We don't necessarily need all of these roles filled, and as I said
previously, people could double or triple up. I think the likely
toughest role is Bugmeister so we should make sure not to overload
whoever does that. Also, the area coordinators don't necessarily have
to be the same as the person who is leader of the corresponding
project, but should be in good communication with the project leader
and have a good working knowledge of the issues.

Maciej
---------------------------



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