Subplot → Subplot meetings

Policy

  1. The Subplot project holds regular meetings
  2. These meetings are arranged by a core developer (one of Daniel or Lars)
  3. These meetings are held regularly and are open to anyone who wishes to attend
  4. Meeting logs are recorded into this website
  5. If any of this policy changes, this web page will be updated. Changes to this policy are managed as per project governance
  6. Subsequent content on this page is to be considered informative, not normative.

Why have meetings?

Subplot is primarily developed by people who live in different countries. As such it’s important that we stay in touch and coordinate our efforts. Also, we do not want to be in a situation where decisions are made in back channels or secret conversations and thus are not properly recorded and communicated to those contributors to the project who are not able to make it to meetings.

Who attends meetings?

Currently Subplot meetings require only one of the core contributors to attend in order for them to be quorate; though in general at least Daniel and Lars will be at them. Anyone else who is interested in Subplot, even if they are not yet a contributor, is welcome to attend the meetings.

When are the meetings?

The Subplot meetings are currently scheduled every two weeks, on Saturdays, at approximately 15:30 Finnish local time. This translates to 13:30 UK local time, or 08:30 Eastern Standard Time.

If a quorum of core developers is not available, then the meeting will be deferred. Communication of this deferral will only happen to those who have expressed an interest in attending meetings, and the decision to defer will typically be made on the Subplot matrix channel.

The meetings typically fall at the end of a development iteration (two weeks of development assuming the meeting is not deferred).

What is on the agenda?

The full agenda for a meeting will be shared among those who express an interest in attending the meeting. For now, the agenda is managed in a mechanism private to Daniel and Lars; though there is a standing item to consider changing this if there are others interested in the meetings.

In any Subplot meeting, we always have the following agenda items:

  • Review any minuted action items from the last meeting
  • Discuss the iteration which is ending
  • Review the status of any outstanding MRs in the Subplot repositories
  • Review the status of any non-main branches in the Subplot repositories
  • Review all pipelines
  • Review the current goal statement, making any adjustments if needed
  • Review open issues in all of the Subplot repositories
    • We tend to alternate between recently-updated issues and all non-someday-maybe issues.
    • Whenever a goal changes, we also review all someday-maybe issues
  • Review the ‘recurring agenda items’ issues.
  • Plan the next iteration, including whether or not we want to make a release in the iteration.
  • Review the reach-out list for the current goal, ready for goal completion
  • Review the hosting situation
    • This includes status of website hosting, repository hosting, etc.
    • Gitlab has a free software program where we benefit from extra features, this has to be reviewed every year at least.
  • Any other business brought up during the iteration

How are meetings held?

Before the meeting, someone is selected to take the minutes. Commonly this will rotate among the regular attendees of the meeting. In addition someone will be selected to chair the meeting (run the agenda) and that person will typically not be the person who is taking the minutes since it’s hard to do both at once.

Again, in advance of the meeting, the minute-taker will typically draft the minutes and prepare a branch in subplot-web to show them. If appropriate they will even open a draft MR ready for comments.

When it is time for the meeting, one of the core developers will paste a link to a video chat in the Subplot matrix channel. Once attendees are present, the agenda will be followed, and the outcomes and details recorded into the minutes. Depending on the set of meeting attendees, there may be other discussion, though that is outside the purview of this process.

How are the minutes published?

When the meeting is over, the person who took the notes will tidy them up, and file an MR on the subplot-web repository to submit the minutes to the blog section of the site. The MR will be linked on the matrix channel and review and merge will occur from there in a normal way.