Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf organization working group and next steps
HI, On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Tassia tas...@acaia.ca wrote: We agreed that the chairs would take on the administrative task of facilitating the teams' composition, so I'll explain in a bit more detail how we are going to proceed. As soon as we have agreed on a list of subteams, we are going to publish a call for help, inviting people for a long-term commitment to a specific team. We are also going to send individual invitations for people who have already helped in specific tasks in previous years and are no longer involved with DebConf organization. As this has already started for the fundraising team (with extra urgency due to time pressure), I'd like to point out a couple of things that I consider might be done better for future teams. I consider it a mistake to mail the current members of a team, telling them that they are past members (personally, I found this very very troubling). I think that the process of figuring out the teams should include: 1 - Talking with the current members of the team, asking them if they want to continue working on it in the future (but not telling them that they are past members). 2 - Inviting past members to join the current members. 3 - Inviting some people that are local to the next year DebConf to join the team, already asking them for a longer term commitment. I think it also makes sense to send more personalized mails. i.e. You worked on the talks team in DC10 and you made such a great job, would you be interested in joining the team once again? instead of just you are a past member of the talks team... And all this work should be work done in agreement and together with the current team members, not a complete reboot pretending that they don't have any say in what happens next. When the base groups are formed, the lead and shadow positions will emerge by answers to these questions: Who would make good leaders for those teams? and If you see yourself as a team leader, who would be good alongside you?. I think these questions can be improved, particularly because you are asking for nominations for shadow and wizard only if one nominates oneself. I would prefer to be able to nominate leads, shadows and wizards even if I don't nominate myself. The second question as worded here is fine and makes sense, a lead and a shadow should be able to work together. But in the email it had the addition of being the only point of including shadows and wizards, which I think was a mistake. -- Besos, Marga ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf organization working group and next steps
Hi Marga, On 09/14/2014 07:55 AM, Margarita Manterola wrote: HI, As this has already started for the fundraising team (with extra urgency due to time pressure), I'd like to point out a couple of things that I consider might be done better for future teams. I consider it a mistake to mail the current members of a team, telling them that they are past members (personally, I found this very very troubling). We hadn't realized that saying you have helped in the past could sound as you are a past member. You are right, this can definitely be expressed in a better way so that it's clear that current members are also being invited to participate. It will be fixed in future messages. I think that the process of figuring out the teams should include: 1 - Talking with the current members of the team, asking them if they want to continue working on it in the future (but not telling them that they are past members). 2 - Inviting past members to join the current members. 3 - Inviting some people that are local to the next year DebConf to join the team, already asking them for a longer term commitment. As I understand, you are mainly addressing communication issues with this proposal, and I agree that things can improved. We hope the FAQ will alleviate the misunderstandings and help us move forward. I'm pretty confident that we can soon reach a common ground for action. I think it also makes sense to send more personalized mails. i.e. You worked on the talks team in DC10 and you made such a great job, would you be interested in joining the team once again? instead of just you are a past member of the talks team... And all this work should be work done in agreement and together with the current team members, not a complete reboot pretending that they don't have any say in what happens next. Sure, that's what we aim, we are sorry if it was not clear since the beginning. I think these questions can be improved, particularly because you are asking for nominations for shadow and wizard only if one nominates oneself. I would prefer to be able to nominate leads, shadows and wizards even if I don't nominate myself. The second question as worded here is fine and makes sense, a lead and a shadow should be able to work together. But in the email it had the addition of being the only point of including shadows and wizards, which I think was a mistake. Thanks again for all your comments. We are taking everything in consideration and will take special care to the wording of future messages. Please let us know it anything still seems weird to you. Best regards, Tassia. ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf organization working group and next steps
Dear chairs, Do you already have a list of teams and rough timeline of when they will be instantiated? Richard Sent by mobile; excuse my brevity. ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Debconf organization working group
I felt during DC12 that we didn't have such things like global and local team, and we worked as one DebConf Team, with local people working on DC subteams, asking how things were done before, keeping some things and changing others (IIRC), for me that was great or at least I felt that way. Having new people every year it could be a problem if they has to think how to do things (already done in previous DC) and not ask how to do it or read how to proceed. I remember to read some wiki pages darst created under a DebConf manual category, I read almost all final reports located in media.dc.o, I asked people (I asked lot of things to darst, gwolf, moray, holger) and it helped me a lot in how to understand how DC works and not to reinvent the wheel. That said, one of thing we need to do is to define clear roles, powers of that roles and procedures on how teams should work (throug manuals), we have lot of people doing DC a long time ago so this should not be so difficult. I found this lost in wikipage from 2013[0], did you check it? Having just a DebConf team and not things like global and local team should allow us to work better, to know that we are just one team with people living in the Debian Conference city and people around the world and not two different teams (because that's what it could happen), both (local + global people) should have experience organizing. Is a must for DebConfN+1 and new people to join DebConfN team and learn how things works in DC organization, we don't need to reinvent things, we need to ask people from previous years, dig into wiki page, repositories, that's why we keep everything in git and wiki. IMO those procedures already exists in DC orga, we just need to write them down. I do believe some DebConf Chairs, DebConf elders team is needed, not by telling DebConf team what and how to do things, but to check things are done in time under standard procedures already stablished, to be the communication between DebConf orga and the Debian Project. Don't think this team needs to be formed by people from 3 past DebConf, but for people with experience organizing DebConf and desirable with a organizing events experience background, and this team should not have the power to remove someone from DebConf team, this is automatically done by the same problematic member, and I don't think new people needs approval from DebConf chairs, elders or something. Most of the process and proposals made by madduck[1] in wiki, to me looks like the same way DebConf has been working until now. Regards, [0] https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DecisionMaking [1] https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/GovernanceProposal14++ -- Norman García nor...@riseup.net ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Debconf organization working group
On 25.08.2014 04:21, Martín Ferrari wrote: Hello again, We had a very productive session this morning. We had the chance to hear individual accounts of past DebConf experience, and I think everybody learned something from it. You can read the meeting minutes in the wiki page: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebconfOrganizationWorkingGroup We want to invite you again for another session tomorrow, so we can continue talking about past experiences. We want to hear more people, and give the chance to today's participants to talk again, if they want to. After this session, we will be able to produce a list of some concrete problems to solve, and hopefully some inspiration for solutions. Again, every person will talk for at most 5 minutes, without interruptions or responses. So my remote talk (about things not yet in wiki): I had some discussion with Vorlon about network and video team. I confess that some parts were to me really surprises (I'm also following video-team as video-team volunteer). He told me: We wrote to the list about requirements, leadership, etc., we had no answer and so we put local people in charge, etc. I see two problems: One: we should be more active on looking replies from past/local teams (repeat pings/ messages). I think it could help avoiding misunderstanding and possibly double work. But the real problem is the missing replies. For this reason I was convinced by vorlon that we need people in charge for specific tasks/teams, so that team will look minutes, ev. attend meeting and provide smooth information exchanges between teams. Note: the active part is also difficult, it needs a person who know many details of debconf (previously this task was done informally by moray [and his comments]). So I think we should be more active on finding reply, but we should work a lot harder on getting replies But this is also a global problem in communications. We had clear discussion about Le Camp type (and agreed to do the experiment) and no-DebCamp in this DC, but also such information was lost by many members. How to pass important communications? ciao cate Note: the problem with lack of replies happens also no local team: the detailed planing phase is done very early, but the execution is done near a year after such planing (so many locals will skip most of interim communication) The second meeting is scheduled on Monday, at 13:30 in room 338. Notes will be taken in the wiki again. Tincho, on behalf of the DebConf Chairs. ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Debconf organization working group
also sprach Giacomo Catenazzi c...@debian.org [2014-08-25 05:56 -0700]: But the real problem is the missing replies. For this reason I was convinced by vorlon that we need people in charge for specific tasks/teams, so that team will look minutes, ev. attend meeting and provide smooth information exchanges between teams. DC15 has two ideas for this: First, our legal entity allows us to delegate tasks, which gives this a bit of a formal spin. Second, we are going to discuss an idea by marga coming out of her experience with DC8, wherein one team member's job is to poke the others regularly. This person's contribution to DebConf is to keep on top of things that need to get done and see them through. How to pass important communications? Another idea is to have regular, short meetings. These are soft deadlines, but if decisions are being made that way, it becomes a motivation for people to follow what's happening. -- .''`. martin f. krafft madd...@debconf.org @martinkrafft : :' : DebConf orga team `. `'` `- DebConf14: Portland, OR, USA: http://debconf14.debconf.org DebConf15: Heidelberg, Germany: http://debconf15.debconf.org digital_signature_gpg.asc Description: Digital signature (see http://martin-krafft.net/gpg/sig-policy/999bbcc4/current) ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Debconf organization working group
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 7:34 PM, martin f krafft madd...@debconf.org wrote: Second, we are going to discuss an idea by marga coming out of her experience with DC8, wherein one team member's job is to poke the others regularly. This person's contribution to DebConf is to keep on top of things that need to get done and see them through. A ceremonial buttock-prodder is a good thing indeed. Also, if a few people work closely, asking each other for a status regularly forces everyone to keep on working. Another idea is to have regular, short meetings. These are soft deadlines, but if decisions are being made that way, it becomes a motivation for people to follow what's happening. This works well for us (DC15). Even if we agree to not meet on IRC as there's not much to say, we make that dependent on people with open tasks writing a summary in time for the meeting. Again, this forces everyone to keep on working. Richard ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Debconf organization working group
Hello again, We had a very productive session this morning. We had the chance to hear individual accounts of past DebConf experience, and I think everybody learned something from it. You can read the meeting minutes in the wiki page: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebconfOrganizationWorkingGroup We want to invite you again for another session tomorrow, so we can continue talking about past experiences. We want to hear more people, and give the chance to today's participants to talk again, if they want to. After this session, we will be able to produce a list of some concrete problems to solve, and hopefully some inspiration for solutions. Again, every person will talk for at most 5 minutes, without interruptions or responses. The second meeting is scheduled on Monday, at 13:30 in room 338. Notes will be taken in the wiki again. Tincho, on behalf of the DebConf Chairs. ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
