General meeting minutes: 03/26/2019

The following are minutes from the general project meeting on Tuesday, March 26, 2019.

All documents for The WordPress Governance Project can be accessed on the project’s Google Drive.

Props: Pat Lockley and Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Agenda

  1. Minutes from last meeting
  2. Meeting leader and secretary
  3. Anything to add to the agenda?
  4. Review action items from March 19th meeting.
  5. New: Trello board.
  6. New: Twitter handle.
  7. Update on Stakeholders document.
  8. Moving governance research forward (recruiting etc)
  9. Open floor

Minutes

  • On minutes from last meeting, only dissent on the agenda was about reducing agenda items, Morten commented that today’s agenda was mostly announcements.
  • Morten facilitated the meeting, Pat took minutes
  • Morten asked if there was anything we needed to add to the agenda
    • Pat pointed to reducing agenda item discussion. Item was punted to Open Floor
  • Morten asked about Action Item updates:
    • Setup TeamDrive
      • In progress.
    • Setup Trello
      • Done. Access required.
    • Set up automated tweets from bank of tweets
      • In progress.
    • Share the word about getting involved and what we’re working on
      • Ongoing.
    • Setup automated tweets when blog posts are published
      • In progress.
    • Set up automated tweets for meeting reminders
      • In progress.
    • Remkus is gonna help find our “what governance means” messages
      • Punted to next meeting
    • Cathi is gonna tidy up our logo and create a Twitter header image
      • Done. Everyone applaud Cathi for a job well done.
    • Push the recruitment for research help
      • Ongoing.
    • Everyone sign up for at least one of the research items and do the research
      • Ongoing.
  • A Trello board for the project has been created. Find it and contribute at https://trello.com/b/UhHUYOUf/the-wordpress-governance-project.
    • Pat asked about joining, board status needs to be confirmed
    • Cathi suggested the board would be a good idea to maintain a series of links to resources
    • Morten asked for a volunteer to manage the board, Pat volunteered.
  • A new Twitter handle for the project has been created. Follow it and share its tweets at https://twitter.com/wpgovernance.
    • Morten said the twitter handle would soon auto tweet and asked people to retweet and share tweets from the project
    • ACTION everyone share tweets
    • Pat suggested having a channel for tweet ideas, Morten suggested that as an agenda item for the next meeting
    • ACTION Morten / Rachel add to agenda for next meeting
  • Morten asked Cathi for an update on the Stakeholder document.
    • Cathi said we are collecting input, edits and comments on 3 new Stakeholder entries – please check out Enterprise, Frellancers, & Publishers
    • once we finalize our work we can update the website by adding these 3 …
    • We’d like to get them updated by Friday.
    • Morten asked Cathi if she could write a small blog post about it so it could be shared. Cathi agreed.
    • ACTION Cathi to write blog post
    • ACTION Everyone – feedback to Cathi on the document
  • Morten moved onto recruitment for the governance work
    • Morten asked for ideas and suggestions for this issue as it’s a persistent problem
    • Everyone discussed lack of time as a key issue for lack of progress
    • Morten suggested creating a Governance Hypothesis and then testing models against that
    • Morten suggested using a blog post to create conversation
    • ACTION Morten write a blog post
    • Cathi will make accompanying graphic for blog post
  • Morten turned to open floor
    • Morten acknowledged the request for shorter agendas.
    • Pat raised that the form belongs to him, Morten said we’d deal with it once we had a team drive.
  • Morten closed the meeting at 16:55UTC

Action items

  • Morten / Rachel work on getting people access to Trello board.
  • Everyone join the WP Governance Project Trello board.
  • Everyone follow and share Tweets from @WPGovernance.
  • Morten / Rachel discuss adding #tweet-suggestions or similar channel in Slack.
  • Cathi to write short blog post to recruit input on new stakeholder personas.
  • Everyone provide feedback on new stakeholders.
  • Morten to write blog post about Governance Hypothesis.

General meeting minutes: 03/19/2019

The following are minutes from the general project meeting on Tuesday, March 19, 2019.

All documents for The WordPress Governance Project can be accessed on the project’s Google Drive.

Props: Pat Lockley and Rachel Cherry

Agenda

  1. Minutes from last meeting
  2. Meeting facilitator and secretary
  3. Project communication
  4. Open floor

Minutes

  • Rachel Cherry started the meeting. Pat Lockley took minutes.
  • Discussed the need to recruit people for the governance models research
    • Discussed road blocks, raised the issue of communicating calls to action
  • Remkus de Vries commented that most of us are on Twitter and so a Twitter account would help
    • Discussed who would run the account. Remkus and Cathi Bosco volunteered.
  • Rachel suggested @wpgovernance for the Twitter handle – account created
  • Discussed content to tweet
  • Brief discussion over best WP to Twitter tool
  • We liked one of Cathi’s logos and one was added to the Twitter page
  • Some work was needed to aggregate replies to the governance tweet for the new Twitter account
    • Rachel asked for Twitter volunteers, Pat and Remkus volunteered

Action items

  • Setup TeamDrive
  • Setup Trello
  • Set up automated tweets from bank of tweets
    • Share the word about getting involved and what we’re working on
  • Setup automated tweets when blog posts are published
  • Set up automated tweets for meeting reminders
  • Remkus is gonna help find our “what governance means” messages
  • Cathi is gonna tidy up our logo and create a Twitter header image
  • Push the recruitment for research help
  • Everyone sign up for at least one of the research items and do the research

Change in general meeting time

Going forward, our weekly general meetings will continue to take place Tuesdays at 4 p.m. UTC. If you just went through Daylight Saving then your meeting time will move back an hour.

For example, if you’re located in Eastern Time in the United States, your meeting time went from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. You can use World Time Buddy to confirm your local time.

See you Tuesdays at 4 p.m. UTC!

Researching Governance Models: A Call to Action

The core purpose of the WordPress Governance Project is to illuminate existing and ad hoc governance models within the WordPress Open Source project and provide input on how to create an official governance platform for the project. A crucial component of this work is discovering and evaluating existing governance models both within the Open Source Software space and in other comparable organizations and communities. For this we need all hands on deck.

To start the work, we have created a list of relevant governance models in need of research. To get the work done, we ask contributors to claim a model (by adding their name to the sheet in the correct column) and perform some preliminary research using a form.

Current list

  • AMP Project
  • Apache
  • Cloud Foundry
  • Debian
  • Drupal
  • Eclipse
  • Fedora
  • FreeBSD
  • IETF RFC2418
  • Joomla
  • Moodle
  • Mozilla Foundation
  • Node.js
  • OpenStack
  • QGIS
  • Python Foundation
  • Ubuntu
  • VVVS (Varying Vagrant Vagrants)
  • WP-CLI

If you are familiar with the governance models of any of these groups, or you want to learn more about them, or you know of a relevant governance model worth adding to the list, add your info to the spreadsheet and capture your research in the form.

Our goal is to have every governance model claimed by Tuesday March 12 and the forms filled out for each model by Tuesday March 19.

General meeting minutes: 03/05/2019

The following are minutes from the general project meeting on Tuesday, March 05, 2019.

All documents for The WordPress Governance Project can be accessed on the project’s Google Drive.

Props: Pat Lockley and Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Agenda

  1. Minutes from last meeting
  2. Meeting facilitator and secretary
  3. Personas document
  4. Form for researching governance models
  5. Recruitment to do research (who takes what model, etc)
  6. 5.0 release retrospective
  7. Open floor

Minutes

  • Review of Identifying the Stakeholders of WordPress document rollout.
    • The document has been picked up by some WordPress people and Post Status sparking discussion.
    • The group discussed adding further personas to the document. Hosting Companies and Publishers were among the suggested items. Discussion continues #group-communication.
  • Pat Lockley has finalized the research form for investigating governance models. This form will be used to gather consistent data about relevant governance models.
  • Review of the Relevant Governance Models spreadsheet
    • The above mentioned form should be used to gather data about each of the models featured in this sheet.
    • Some discussion of how best to do the work, and avoid burn out and so on. Proposal: Each team member takes on one (1) model.
    • Further recruitment is necessary to complete this work.
    • A blog post will be written for recruitment purposes.
    • Non-software models are welcome to be added to the sheet
    • Justin M suggested doing video interviews with people who work on governance projects. Morten suggested this as part of phase 2.
    • A timeline was proposed:
      • Get all models in spreadsheet claimed by next Tuesday (March 12)
      • Finish filling out the form for each model by the following Tuesday (March 19)
      • Discussion about marking models for “need more time” and “not sufficient info”
      • Discussion of post-research triage for further deep-dives.
  • Morten suggested everyone take part in the WordPress 5.0 Release Retrospective.
  • Pat L suggested a twitter account
  • Alex S suggested capping meeting agenda items to allow time for discussion. Morten agreed to limiting, if it was possible
  • Raffaella and Morten discussed the purpose and goal of the communication document, agreed it was
  • Morten said that it was a backbone and research would help to create content for it
  • Morten closed the meeting

Action items

  • Justin M to create publishers personas.
  • Everyone share Identifying the Stakeholders of WordPress document and ask for feedback.
  • Everyone claim a research model by next week (March 12) and fill out the form by the week thereafter (March 19).
  • Morten to write blog post as outreach to the wider WordPress and Open Source community to get input, reviewers, and other interested parties involved in governance model research.
  • Morten to look into getting a twitter account. Name suggestions welcome.

General meeting minutes: 2/19/2019

The following are minutes from the general project meeting on Tuesday, February 19, 2019.

All documents for The WordPress Governance Project can be accessed on the project’s Google Drive.

Props: Rachel Cherry and Pat Lockley

Agenda

Minutes

Action Items

Questions about existing WordPress governance

In order to define what governance can look like for WordPress, we must first understand its existing structure.

The WordPress Governance Project is researching existing WordPress governance and asking a lot of questions.

For example:

  • How are project decisions made?
  • Who do the WordPress teams report to?
  • Who decides what users have core commit access and how?
  • What process is used to determine whether and when a version of core is ready for release?

We want to know what questions you have.

What areas of existing WordPress governance would you like to know more about? What parts confuse you? Are there any parts that are unclear?

Leave your questions in the comments.

General meeting minutes: 2/12/2019

The following are minutes from the general project meeting on Tuesday, February 12, 2019. Apologies for the late posting.

All documents for The WordPress Governance Project can be accessed on the project’s Google Drive.

Props: Rachel Cherry and Pat Lockley

General meeting minutes: 2/5/2019

The following are minutes from the general project meeting on Tuesday, February 5, 2019. Apologies for the late posting.

All documents for The WordPress Governance Project can be accessed on the project’s Google Drive.

Props: Rachel Cherry and Pat Lockley

  • #group-presentation was renamed to #group-communication. Discussed the broadness of the new term and whether this was positive or negative.
  • Discussed how to highlight action items
  • Discussed task management software
    • Rachel to look into preferences/options
  • Discussion of group activity in channels and progress
  • Discussion over how to raise items for meeting agendas.
    • Suggestion of comments on previous minutes with a cut off date
  • Discussion over of tasks and recording community member’s skills
  • Rachel asked about adding groups to Mailchimp so people can opt into a group’s email.

Action items

  • Add group-communication name discussion to next week’s agenda
  • Rachel to look into task management options