KDE/Meetings/Managing

From openSUSE

Managing the KDE community openSUSE IRC meetings

Introduction

There are three important tasks for the openSUSE KDE community IRC meetings:

• announce the meeting
• running the meeting
• taking notes

The first task should be done in advance, the other two tasks should be assigned to (preferably two) volunteers when starting a meeting.

Announce the meeting

The day before the meeting a mail should be sent to opensuse-announce@opensuse.org and opensuse-kde@opensuse.org announcing the meeting.

Example (for April 2nd):

Subject: openSUSE KDE Team Meeting - Thursday 2nd April, 17:00 UTC

The next openSUSE KDE Team meeting will be held tomorrow, 
Thursday 2nd April, at 17:00 UTC.

The current list of scheduled topics is: 

* old action items 
* status report 
* calls for testing 
* Q&A, misc

Further items are welcome; please add them http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Meetings 

Please use 
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=2&month=4&year=2009&hour=17&min=0&sec=0&p1=0
to get the time of the meeting in your time zone.

The meeting will happen in #opensuse-kde IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

You are welcome to join and participate!

Do not forget to change all the dates and times before sending the mail (several places, including the URL). The list of scheduled topics is from KDE/Meetings.

Running the meeting

This person should lead the meeting and ensure it flows smoothly (for example, make sure discussion does not go into too many details or to unrelated issues, help to reach conclusion when discussing topics and so on). Additionally, the person should do these tasks:

• obtain operator priviledge on #opensuse-kde ('/msg chanserv op #opensuse-kde' or ask those that can give the priviledge)
• save the current topic (if the IRC client doesn't keep a history of them, such as Konversation does)
• set the topic to 'Welcome to the openSUSE KDE community IRC meeting! Please wait with other discussion until the meeting is over. This meeting is logged.'
• announce the meeting is starting
• list the agenda (from KDE/Meetings)
• process each item on the agenda:
  • 'old action items' should be first (KDE/Meetings archive has them in the summary for the previous meeting, i.e. the first column, listed at the bottom of the page as 'action items')
  • 'status report' should be second
  • 'new items' should be third
  • announce it, starting with '*' (e.g. '* old action items')
  • if the item has subitems, such as old action items, process each of them one after one, use '-' instead of '*' when announcing them
  • if there is a person who suggested the item or is related to it in any other way, ask the person to discuss/propose/whatever the item
  • watch the discussion (try to keep it on topic, etc.)
  • when the discussion should be finished, make sure there is a conclusion
  • if there is a new action item resulting, announce it as a separate line starting with 'AI:' and the person responsible (e.g. 'AI: fix bug #xyz (llunak)' )
• the last item on the agenda should be 'Q&A, misc' (questions, miscelaneous)
  • handle it like other items
  • watch for when all the discussion seems to be over, in order to conclude the meeting
• announce the meeting is over
• restore the original saved topic and make sure to update the date for the next meeting
• drop operator priviledge on #opensuse-kde ('/msg chanserv deop #opensuse-kde')

Taking notes

This person should record the meeting and provide results from it. It is possible to do most of these tasks during the meeting or afterwards using the transcript (which needs to be created either way).

• a transcript of the whole meeting needs to be saved, can be copy&pasted from the IRC window or the IRC client's log (usually the whole part between the person changing the channel topic to the meeting topic and back)
  • if you don't have the whole session e.g. because of a disconnect, ask somebody to provide it to you
• record the action items from the meeting (lines containing 'AI:'), including pending action items from the previous meeting
• record discussed topics (items from agenda starting with '*' or '-'), including the conclusion and any important details
• add a new line to the archive of meetings in KDE/Meetings - just copy&pasting the previous line and changing dates is enough
• update the date/time of the next meeting in KDE/Meetings
• paste the transcript into the transcript wiki page in the archive in KDE/Meetings, surrounded by "<div class="minutes"><nowiki>" and "</nowiki></div>"
• create meeting minutes
  • add them to the archive in KDE/Meetings (the first column)
  • you can copy&paste the format from the page for the previous meeting
  • include every discussed item as a group, with conclusion or any other important detail listed in it
  • list new action items as the last group
  • send the meeting minutes to opensuse-kde@opensuse.org and results@suse.de
    • subject e.g. 'openSUSE KDE meeting 20090218'
    • 'See http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Meetings/ for futher details.' as the first line
    • and paste the minutes in the wiki markup format used for editting (it is nicely readable as a plain text too)