Re: [gentoo-dev] A few questions to our nominees

[Donnie Berkholz]

On 13:41 Sun 08 Jun     , Alex Howells wrote:
> I would like to see Council move towards a more compressed meeting
> format -- people presenting arguments need to work out their stuff
> before bringing it up in the meeting, and to allow for quick
> turn-around of decisions I'd suggest fortnightly meetings which are
> time-limited to 60 minutes each.  A prioritized schedule determines
> which order we deal with issues in and anything not getting attention
> is bumped 2 weeks, with the priority adjusted if necessary to ensure
> it gets attention then.

I generally attempt to prioritize the agenda, based on urgency (how 
soon, even if minor) rather than importance (critical things that can 
wait). I'm glad to see that you agree with my opinion that biweekly 
meetings could speed up the council's progress.

> Each issue should be limited to between 5-20 minutes. If people can't
> get through the politics and debate in the allotted time then it
> should either get bumped 2 weeks and given another 5-20 minutes, or we
> should table a special meeting to allow a full 60-90 minutes *just* to
> decide that one issue and nothing else.

Yes, this is a good point. I've thought about limiting meetings to 2 
hours as a start (at a once-monthly level, this equates to 1 hour every 
2 weeks). This implies that you also might want to set time limits on 
individual topics so you get to all of them. When combined with 
sufficient preparation, it should work.

I think a key to this is making sure the council members get their 
thoughts on the matters posted (to -dev, -council, whatever) in advance 
of the meeting. That ensures that they've both prepared and hopefully 
hashed out many of the details in advance.

Making meetings shorter should also encourage people to pay more active 
attention so we reduce delays from people working on other things at the 
same time.

> Sitting around in #gentoo-council for 3-4 hours every month isn't
> conducive to progress, it's going to make people get tired/bored and
> not pay proper attention and/or not bother to turn up, which just
> leads to elections. Endless cycle?

I agree. Preparation is something worth requiring. For this month's 
meeting, I suggested last week in #gentoo-council that we simply skip 
topics people haven't prepared for rather than waste seemingly endless 
amounts of time.

Thanks,
Donnie
-- 
gentoo-dev@l.g.o mailing list