[RFC] meeting minutes

Thierry Carrez thierry.carrez at ubuntu.com
Fri Apr 23 20:55:01 UTC 2010


Mathias Gug wrote:
>> Steps 1a-1c are fine.  But step 1d can take a very long time.  It takes me
>> at least 1 hour to write the minutes for a 1 hour meeting.  I've
>> confirmed that it takes Thierry about the same as well.
>
> Ok - seems like a worthwhile goal: reduce the amount of time it takes to write
> the minutes.
>
> I'd also mention that the target audience of the minutes are people not
> attending the meeting.

I think the definition of the target audience is the key issue. So I'll
expand a bit.

I would define the target audience, in descending order of priority:

1/ Server core team members that missed this particular meeting
2/ Peripheral server team members that often miss the meeting
3/ Server core team members that attended the meeting and need to
remember their ACTION points
4/ The ubuntu-devel community
5/ The global Ubuntu community

We can address 1-3 with Dustin's proposed ACTION/Resolution highlighting.

Addressing category 5 is much more costly, since we need to romance a
little and edit content so that it makes sense and is understandable.
I'd also argue that this is what has the less value. As an Ubuntu
community member, I don't think I'd get anything useful (or even
interesting to read) from last two months's worth of weekly meeting minutes.

To be part of the solution, I'd suggest we do two things:

Weekly address 1-3 by roughly highlighting actions and decisions from
the meeting log, as proposed by Dustin, and do not post it on the blog.

Monthly address 5 by expanding the "monthly status" posted on the team
blog, making sure everyone can contribute content in there on
what we've been doing.

This leaves one issue, category 4. Most other Ubuntu teams are
publishing rough minutes on ubuntu-devel, and the solution I propose
does not care for such an intermediate format. Should we consider it's
covered for those who care by the weekly edit, and for those who care 
less by the monthly report ?

-- 
Thierry Carrez
Ubuntu server team




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