The following are minutes from the general project meeting on Tuesday, January 29, 2019.

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

Props: Morten Rand-Hendriksen and Cathi Bosco.

Agenda

1. Minutes from the last meeting etc…
2. Appointing meeting leader & secretary for this meeting
3. Team reps for different sub-groups
4. Reports from sub-groups by team reps
5. Agenda items for next meeting
6. Open floor

Minutes

• The minutes from last week’s meeting (January 22nd) has been posted on the site. Please submit any amendments to the minutes in the comments.
• Morten Rand-Hendriksen volunteers to run the meeting and Cathi Bosco volunteers to take notes for this meeting today.
• At the last meeting each sub group was mandated with picking team leads, secretaries, and a regular meeting time to be reported in the General meeting today. When asked if any representatives from the different sub-groups present today who can share the results from their group so far: Yes, for Internal-Gov: And roles: Facilitators: @Morten Rand-Hendriksen, @Cathi Bosco, @Joe Hills, @robin.scott Secretary: @Rian Kinney, Esq., @AlexSirota
• Sé Reed repots #wp-research-gov was very quiet and is still getting everyone’s attention to get a meeting together.
• Rian Kinney volunteers to be Secretary for next General meeting,
• Considering the short notice, lack of meeting announcement, etc Morten Rand-Hendriksen proposed we extend the task of appointing reps and picking meeting times etc by a week to be reported in the General meeting one week from now (Tuesday February 5th). Morten Rand-Hendriksen also proposed we move 4. Reports from sub-groups by team reps to next meeting
• Morten Rand-Hendriksen moves attention to “Agenda items for next week.” Sé Reed suggests timeline and milestones and the low representation in #group-presentation moves the conversation to the Open Floor to discuss lack of activity, communication, task definitions, and recruitment
• Raffaella Isidori will connect people in the presentation group and is leading the effort of getting the structure’s draft ready for the next meeting.
• There are people wanting to take part but unsure where to put their efforts. Morten Rand-Hendriksen proposed that someone (can be an individual or a group of people) from each group put together a goals and tasks document for consideration. Example:
  • Goal: Document the existing governance structures in official Make groups
  • Tasks:
    • Make list of make groups
    • Find contact person for each group
    • Research official (posted) governance / leadership documentation for each group
• Creating action items like this makes it easier for people to jump in.
• And set up some Drive docs / sheets / forms for participants to fill in so the data is collected in a central repository Note: The Drive folder should be open and to move things forward anyone can propose a goals and actions list, and then people can chime in. It’ll be a good way to get engagement, and then the facilitator conversation can be bolted onto that conversation.
• Volunteers are needed to take on the task of approaching each sub-group about getting this done over the next 7 days
• Sé Reed volunteers to do so for #research-wp-gov.
• Morten Rand-Hendriksen volunteers to do so for #group-internal-gov.
• James Nylen recommends it would be helpful to put more informative channel topics/purposes in the individual channels and Morten will follow through.
• Pat Lockley recommends it might be handy if someone with @ channel privileges could send a message to each channel re group roles and so on and Morten will follow through.
• Jeffrey Paul recommends @ channel for kicking off meetings too as it helps to get that notification reminder. Morten also points to the calendar: Once meeting times are agreed upon for sub-groups, they’ll go in the joint calendar.
• Joe Hills asks if we have done a general call for feedback from the WordPress community? If we have a form for that, to float it through his local meetup group, because even if folks don’t have the time or energy to participate in something like this in general, it might be nice to know what their concerns are. We may have done something like that, but it’s now closed, is the feedback somewhere we can read and parse them.

Action Items

• Each working group to elect facilitators and secretaries.
• Representatives from each group to create group goals and action items + associated documents to get work started.

Next General meeting

Tuesday February 5th. Refer to the joint calendar for all meeting schedules.

The following are minutes from the general project meeting on Tuesday, January 22, 2019.

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

Props: Rachel Cherry and Pat Lockley

Agenda

• Open call for leadership
  • Project leadership structure
• Project timeline
• Scheduling project meetings
• Open floor

Minutes

• Rachel Cherry discussed the #internal-gov first meeting (Friday 18th) and shared the decided provisional group leadership structure.
• Morten proposed a timeline for working groups to elect facilitators and secretaries by the next general meeting.
• The group discussed the merits of using emojis as an initial voting system. Decided it was fine but a mechanism would be needed for larger policy decisions and this was an issue for #internal-gov to solve.
• Discussed project timeline. The goal is have something to present at WordCamp Europe (June 20-22).
• Se Reed raised the possibility we need to know the form the presentation will take before working groups can create a timeline.
• Decided to create Presentation Working Group whose job it would be to manage the final proposed project document.
• Decided each working group would sort out their own meeting time(s).
• Pat Lockley proposed an outreach group to identify stake holders and under-represented groups.
• Group briefly discussed a possible logo for the project.

Action Items

• Each working group needs to elect facilitators and secretaries.

The following are minutes from the general project meeting on Tuesday, January 15, 2019.

The next meeting of The WordPress Governance Project will take place Tuesday, January 22, 2019 at 1600 UTC (11 am EST).

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

Props: Rachel Cherry, Pat Lockley, and Ahmad Awais

Agenda

• Intro to project
  • WordPress Governance Project Launch
• Project governance
• Project goals
• What is phase 1 of this project?
• Schedule future meetings

Minutes

• We established initial meeting rules:
  • Please refrain from distracting conversation/comments.
  • Stay constructive. No bashing allowed.
  • Treat others with respect.
  • Do not thread conversations as they are not accessible.
• We created an #introductions channel in our Slack account for members to introduce themselves.
  • Members were encouraged to tell us about themselves, share their background and skill set, and place their info in their Slack bio.
• A Google Drive account was created for the project.
  • Rachel Cherry is the owner of the account.
  • View the main document/table of contents
• A brainstorming document was created.
  • Members are encouraged to use this document to store ideas they have about the project.
• Three working groups were created to begin research and management of the project. Each group has a channel within the Slack account.
  • #internal-gov – Will discuss/research how to best manage the project. They will research project management models and the code of conduct, among other things.
    • View their planning document
    • Their Slack channel: #internal-gov
  • #research-wp-gov – Will focus on research and documentation of existing WordPress governance.
    • View their planning document
    • Their Slack channel: #research-wp-gov
  • #research-gov-models – Will focus on research and documentation of existing governance models.
    • View their planning document
    • Their Slack channel: #research-gov-models
  • A research group to gather feedback from the WordPress community at large on existing governance was proposed but not finalized.
• A blog post was proposed to research existing project leadership models for the project’s internal governance.
  • If you would like to help, join the #internal-gov working group in our Slack account.
• After the meeting, the #internal-gov group discussed options to archive discussions since Slack is a free account and limits message archives.
  • Ryan Marks (@rmarks) volunteered to explore this topic and submit a write-up for the group.

Future meetings

You can view all meetings on the project calendar.

• General project
  • The time was set for the project’s next general meeting: Tuesday, January 22, 2019 at 1600 UTC (11 am EST)
    • A discussion was had on the possibility of having multiple meetings or meetings with varying times to accommodate schedules and time zones.
    • It was also suggested that, instead of alternating meeting times, we could provide an asynchronous way for people to contribute to discussions and decisions.
    • The discussion was tabled.
  • You may suggest items for the 1/22 meeting agenda.
• Working groups
  • Internal Governance
    • After the general meeting, the #internal-gov working group set the time for their first meeting: Friday, January 18, 2019 at 17:30 pm UTC (12:30 EST)
    • You may suggest items for the 1/18 meeting agenda.

Action Items

• #internal-gov: Publish agenda for next general project meeting
• #internal-gov: Publish agenda for first Internal Governance meeting
• #internal-gov: Publish blog post with researching on project leadership models
• #internal-gov: Submit write-up/proposal on options to archive discussions
• #internal-gov: Choose team leader(s), schedule recurring group meeting(s), and define group objective(s)
• #research-wp-gov: Choose team leader(s), schedule group meeting(s), and define group objective(s)
• #research-gov-models: Choose team leader(s), schedule group meeting(s), and define group objective(s)