Merge "Drop Technical Committee meetings"

resolutions/20170425-drop-tc-weekly-meetings.rst

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+===============================================
+2017-04-25 Replace Technical Committee meetings
+===============================================
+
+The Technical Committee meetings have become a barrier for some folks in the
+community (TC and non-TC members) to participate in some discussions. Below is a
+list with some positive and negative aspects of the current format:
+
+Positive aspects of the current format:
+
+* A quorum of the TC is required to hold the meeting
+* The meeting agenda is a reasonable concise summary of what the TC is doing
+* The IRC logs of the meeting, read alongside Gerrit, are a reasonable
+  record of the debate
+* The meeting can be a quick way to reach out to members of the TC to discuss
+  how to move a particular proposal or idea forward.
+* The meeting is used to make time to resolve disagreements and build
+  consensus around the particular topics that need progressing.
+* The meeting provides a weekly rhythm that forces TC members to regularly pay
+  attention to TC initiatives, and therefore keeps efforts progressing.
+* It's a known time when other parts of the community can show up and interact
+  with the TC
+
+Negative aspects of the current format:
+
+* It takes place a specific time of day, even if we have rotating time slots,
+  we are always excluding someone.
+* The fast paced nature of the IRC meetings can exclude many for the
+  conversation. Many native English speakers struggle to keep track of the
+  conversation and get their point across. It is even worse for non-native
+  English speakers.
+* Feels like many conversations happen outside the meeting in non-open ways,
+  we should make it easy to have more open conversations.
+
+All of this is fighting the goals laid out in the TC 2019 vision around
+diversity of OpenStack leadership and in particular in the TC. We must
+do better.
+
+Global Sensitivity
+------------------
+
+As we quickly evolve our process, we need to be mindful of the challenges
+non-native English speakers and teams spread across the globe. Success is
+when all in our community feel able to contribute to the best of their
+ability within our community.
+
+Keeping a rhythm
+----------------
+
+The weekly meeting gives us a good regular cadence to keep progress moving
+forward. When we loose the regular meeting, we really need to keep this
+cadence. This should not be merely be a summary of what has happened, but
+rather should include a call to action and priority setting, much like the
+existing meeting agenda that is sent 24 hours before the current meeting.
+
+The TC chair will be responsible for sending a weekly status update to the
+development mailing list, which includes:
+
+* Highlights of what the TC has got done over the last week
+* Gerrit patches and email threads that need attention over the coming week
+* List of reviews that have enough support to be merged. They will be merged
+  after a 48 hour period of waiting for any final objections. This can be
+  accelerated, as normal, using the existing house rules.
+
+It is likely the above will be built in a collaborative way using tools such
+as gerrit, wiki pages and etherpads that track the TC's work.
+
+When needing to discuss and debate what is currently the highest priority,
+replying to the weekly checkpoint email can be a good starting point for
+that debate.
+
+Office hours
+------------
+
+The weekly meeting is a good time for non-TC members to interact with TC
+members. However the timing is very poor for many members of the community.
+We can replace this part of the weekly meeting with office hours.
+
+Schedule a set of slots so there are current members of the TC present in the
+#openstack-tc IRC channel and there is a good time for folks from any timezone
+to drop in and ask questions.
+
+Debating
+--------
+
+Currently, the weekly meeting is used to debate topics that are currently
+in review and possibly close to getting merged. Doing this in the meeting
+makes it clear when something will be debated so people can join in that
+debate, and the debate is clearly recorded in the meeting logs.
+
+Using the current meeting format and agendas for debate artificially limits the
+bandwidth to what can be agreed within one hour a week. Loosing this restriction
+should allow for much higher bandwidth, if we are successful.
+
+While email and gerrit conversations provide a good asynchronous mechanism to
+debate, sometimes it is more efficient to have a synchronous conversation to
+build understanding and consensus on a particular topic. Therefore, In case of
+standing disagreements on some topics, the TC chair can call for a meeting to
+discuss that specific topic. The meeting would be chaired by the TC chair or any
+other member of the TC (hopefully neutral on the topic).
+
+Any synchronous conversation (be they ad-hoc or during office hours) should be
+summarised on the relevant gerrit review, or if not available, the relevant ML
+thread. If the debated happened on IRC, a link to the IRC logs must be included.
+These ad-hoc conversations should happen in logged mediums that can be easily
+referenced in the summaries that will be provided.
+
+Every decision should happen on asynchronous means, following the voting
+process, regardless of whether there was a synchronous discussion or not.
+
+Shared Language
+---------------
+
+As things are debated in the current IRC meeting, we often go off track
+and discover interesting things that need to be defined for us to make
+progress. Such as what do we mean by "upstream support", or what do we
+mean by "deprecated". With tags and resolutions we can build up this
+common set of definitions, so we all start talking about the same thing.
+
+This free flowing conversation should be continued even without the regular
+weekly meetings. Adhoc IRC conversations are likely to lead to interesting
+ideas that should be debated more formally in their own right.
+We have succeeded if we continue to refine our shared language in a way
+that makes it easier to join in the debates.