Steering Council meeting, 17 Feb 2025

Agenda

• GSoC Update
• Teams to Working Groups
• Third-party / community page
• Meeting cadence
• Contributor experience for new features

GSoC Update

• Djangopackages.org was submitted under their own org
• Need to make Emma officially a GSoC admin
• Note for next year: Make sure the leader knows they’re in charge, and needs (and is encouraged) to herd others.

Teams to Working Groups

• Created a document with existing information
• Tim and Jeff will be discussing the details and how it impacts DEP 10/12 (there’s a lot of overlap)
• Steering Council could potentially be converted over too for standardization
  • The elected basis may be a problem here
  • We could list elections as the future membership process
  • Working groups function by the board delegating some of its power to the working group. It is seemingly a similar but different dynamic in the Steering Council.
  • Note: “A WG must have, at a minimum, two members (Chair and Co-Chair), and one Board member. “ (Catherine found the documentation to back up memory of a board member being required)

Third-party / community page

• It’d be great to have this in a demo-able place for DjangoCon Europe
• Targeting a the draft for middle of March, which has 4 weeks before DjangoCon Europe
• Carlton to schedule time on Frank’s Calendly to collaborate

Meeting cadence

• Do we want to slow down meetings a bit?
  • Perhaps there can be weekly meetings, but if some members have tasks and don’t have capacity for more tasks, they can skip some meetings. Or async catch-ups.
  • Suggested to keep this time slot open, so if there is a needed meeting, enough members could join.
  • Suggestion to consider meeting every two weeks with the whole board.
• Reminder that there was a plan for the fellows to come for half an hour every other week. If that is happening on that schedule, there probably needs to be more time for other matters without the fellows.
  • Perhaps it can be evaluated what the fellows need and when they need it ahead of time, so that perhaps they do not need to meet as often. In consideration of their time and the council’s.
• Currently, Carlton and Frank focused on the Third-Party/ community page, and Lily, Emma, and Tim concerned with contributor experience.
• Next week’s meeting is going to be largely discussing contributor experience, and hearing from Sarah if she would still like to attend. Carlton and Frank might not attend.
• Frank will try to set up a meeting with each past steering council member separately. There is not much time urgency in these meetings, perhaps once a month. See below.

Meeting with previous steering council

• Worthwhile tring to connect with previous SC members to capture any lingering insights
• Try to arrange over the upcoming months

Contributor experience for new features

• Review Steering Council Forum thread and proposed high-level flow for new features (private to Steering Council)
• Forum was suggested because we’re already pointing people there
• Could include list of ideas that won’t happen. Like we won’t rewrite the core in Rust. This list can change over time.
  • Concerns that things change over time which make a “no” list difficult
  • Would require proper wording
  • Perhaps a solid time frame stated that it is “no for now”
• Need to be clear about how much effort the council expects the person suggesting an idea to put in first in a write up.
  • Currently, we may not be able to require a large amount of effort before suggesting an idea
  • Could use ‘if the idea is small, the write up can be small. But, if the idea is large, you might want to check to make sure to check in on if it’s viable before putting a lot of effort into it. The council values and appreciates your time.’
• Can the documentation be adapted and more useful and visible on this sort of topic?
  • Ideally we’d avoid the process complication hindering the work getting done.
• Pushback if we choose the Forum for how to handle new ideas
  • A problem with the Forum is that some ideas go stale which requires tracking and closure
• New feature tracking would be for new ideas, old ideas won’t be transferred
  • Could use bots for messaging and establishing time frames
  • The Steering Council is going to have to do the majority of the new feature review
  • Ideally this process would be community run though
• While Trac is perfectly designed for this, but the current system in Trac is not an option because the goal is to get it out of sight of the fellows, because it clogs their workflow
• It’s possible that discussion can start in one place (like the forum), and then move to the issue tracker when it has support and is solidified.
  • Perhaps using the tags in the Forum can be a quick win.
• Discussion of if a significant number of people are moving away from GitHub should we continue to build systems ontop of it?
  • The movement seems small at this time

Action items

• Lily and Carlton to update their GSoC project information on the wiki.
• Tim to check that Emma is listed as a GSoC admin.
• Carlton to schedule time with Frank about the Third-party/Community page
• Tim will communicate with the Fellows that the steering council is going to have fewer meetings.
• Tim will establish if Sarah has something pressing that she needs to discuss, and any agenda if so.
• Frank to try to set up meetings with previous Steering Council.
• Next week’s meeting is going to be largely discussing contributor experience, and hearing from Sarah if she would still like to attend. Carlton and Frank might not attend.