Rescheduling regular DMB meeting day/time

[Dan Streetman]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 4:52 AM Iain Lane <laney at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 05:37:32PM -0500, Dan Streetman wrote:
> > With the intention of this thread being to come up with days/times
> > that will allow the most number of board members to attend, I propose
> > we eliminate the "alternating time" meetings and just stick to a
> > single day/time that works best for the board. That also implies that
> > we're placing additional burden on candidates who don't normally
> > overlap with whatever time slot we choose, meaning we should make the
> > board more available to by-request meeting times and/or mailing list
> > applications.
>
> I'm mostly lurking these days, but I want to say that this last part is
> critical to get right.  The DMB is a super important part of the pathway
> that new developers take when getting involved in the community, and
> it's really critical that you don't end up favouring people who are for
> whatever reason able to be available when you all are. (Most obviously
> by living in similar timezones to enough DMB members.) If you're going
> to end up pushing them to asynchronous meetings then this needs to be
> made a proper first class option, in documentation and the actual
> candidate experience (timely, good quality interactions as you get on
> IRC).
>
> To this end, I want to throw this option out: for maximum fairness when
> there is only one meeting slot provided, consider moving *all*
> applications to the same asynchronous method and keep the meetings only
> for administrative DMB matters which you feel need to be discussed
> synchronously.

I completely agree, with one addition - I think candidates should have
the option of requesting a synchronous meeting if they want one.

I also think the DMB needs to try hard in the future to represent a
wider range of timezones; and I would also like the DMB's general
perception of its role in Ubuntu to be one of nurturing candidates,
not simply accepting or rejecting them. We should encourage
contributors to apply even if they don't think they are ready, and we
should provide feedback to help them grow and follow up with them
until they're ready to reapply. I don't think it's fair to all
contributors, especially those from the community, to expect their
sponsors to take the time guiding them; many times it's hard for
contributors to get sponsors to even provide an endorsement (and
sometimes for new contributors it can be hard to even find a sponsor
to simply sponsor their upload).

>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Iain Lane                                  [ iain at orangesquash.org.uk ]
> Debian Developer                                   [ laney at debian.org ]
> Ubuntu Developer                                   [ laney at ubuntu.com ]
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