Call for nominations: Developer Membership Board

[Thomas Ward]

On 3/9/22 09:18, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> Hey Robie and DMB members,
>
> Le 01/03/2022 à 16:51, Robie Basak a écrit :
>> Candidates must expect to be able to attend the majority of DMB
>> meetings. Currently these take place on IRC, are scheduled on alternate
>> Mondays with each meeting alternating between 1600 UTC and 1900 UTC, and
>> last around an hour.
>
> Following the recent emails stating that we don't have enough 
> candidate I'm going to drop a note about ^
>
> I was pondering sending my application, I'm busy but I think it's 
> important that we have a function DMB, but that 'must expect' 
> statement convinced me to not.
> I try to lock the 17h30-20h to be able to have some family time and 
> that's not something I'm wanting to compromise on at this point.
>
> I might not be the only one in that situation, since we are short on 
> candidate maybe it would help to try to be less rigid on that 
> requirement? (being open to different times? allow members to skip and 
> vote via email? ...)
>
With my DMB hat on:

There is no 'requirement' on those time slots - we are capable of 
adjusting our meeting times according to our availability in the DMB by 
simple vote, and we've done this before.

 From my insight into the structure of DMB and how things're delegated, 
the DMB can change the timing to make sure we can all meet at least one 
of the meeting times every week.

Currently, the DMB attempts to use real-time interviews where possible 
because sometimes we have questions that we can ask and then let people 
respond to those questions.  The standard case - backed by me as well - 
is that real-time meetings where possible is preferred as we can get a 
better idea of someone's statements and opinions and knowledge more 
easily because it's real-time. While we have the occasional cases we 
need to get people into an email based process - usually due to 
timezones or other obligations - we usually prefer the real-time 
approach, because we can ask real-time questions without providing any 
extra time to 'research' the proper answer just to get things right.

I agree with the general consensus that we have a problem with 
attendance - either because we're busy or because of other things.  When 
those cases come up, with logical reasons for not attending it can be 
made sense why we might not be in the meetings.  When people are not in 
the meeting and we aren't quorate, the issue we've had in the past is 
nobody responding in a timely manner to those messages - therefore a 
lack of participation.  However, going email-only is going to be 
problematic because there's no guarantee for this to get handled. 
Similarly, with IRC meetings, if we are not available for a meeting, we 
usually do not have it and have to reschedule.

The DMB in the past has experimented with email-only processes, and 
again timely responses have never been received so an application hung 
for way too long.  Which is why we have a general rule on attendance and 
participation.  It's insufficient to require just email votes on an 
application, in my opinion, and it's more effective to discuss items in 
a meeting that we carve an hour of time out for, rather than overwhelm 
everyone with just emails.

This shouldn't block you, Sebastien, on the application process. In 
fact, I would strongly recommend you apply for the position regardless 
of the current time slots, the DMB when it's fully staffed can bring up 
the meeting change times itself, and we've done it before multiple times.


> Cheers,
> Sebastien Bacher
>
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