[IAEP] Sugar Lab Meeting

[Greg Dekoenigsberg]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, David Farning wrote:

> This week Simon opined on the status of Sugar meetings.
> 
>> I think that our dev meetings have not been accepted as much as i have 
>> hoped they would have been. With accepted I mean for example that 
>> people don't suggest topics themselves. Maybe this was not the right 
>> approach and we have to set the topics our self (at least for now).
>
> It would be good to get Mako's input on this.  If my memory does not 
> fail me, he ran some effective meetings at Ubuntu.
>
>> I just wonder what I really expect from the meetings. (points don't 
>> have to be exclusive)
>> 
>> a) an update what happened this week, who is working on what (in
>> development, process change)
>> b) discussion of new features
>> c) bug triage - give out little tasks to people(opportunity/sugar
>> love)
>> d) introduce new people
>> e) people ask questions - like activity developers
>> f) maybe this is not developers only and we start to discuss education
>> topics, deployments as well
>
> It seems time to split the sugar meeting into developers and Sugar Labs. 
> Would this be a good time to start booting up the Oversight board?
>
> Maybe a Weekly Sugar Labs meeting with the Oversight board taking part 
> once per month.

My experience:

In Fedora, there are two kind of meetings: Strategic meetings, where 
everyone wrestles with Large Policy Issues (copyright, licensing, roadmap) 
and Tactical meetings, where a leader keeps a list of Stuff To Get Done.

Both are important, but they operate very differently.

The Strategic meetings have one or two agenda items at most.  Why? 
Because they are usually hard, and require lots of discussion to come to 
consensus.

The Tactical meetings focus on a tasklist.  Prioritizing, getting people 
to take work items, and having a forum where people have to say, in front 
of their friends, "yes I did this, hurrah!" or "no, I didn't do this, 
sigh."  These are best when they are *incredibly* focused on action items, 
and occur weekly.  These meetings are the closest thing that Fedora has to 
"management".

A lot of the hard work can be figuring out which is which.  :)

--g