Minutes of Plone Steering Circle Meeting Sept. 22, 2020
First meeting!
Attendees (may have missed some - apologies)
Chrissy Wainwright, Maik Derstappen, Jens Vagelpohl, Timo Stollenwerk, Alexander Loechel, Eric Bréhault, Eric Steele, Jens Klein, Kim Paulissen, Maurits Van Rees, Michael Howitz, Paul Roeland, Philip Bauer, Ramon Navarro Bosch, Rikupekka Oksanen, Rob Porter, Sally Kleinfeldt, Stefan Antonelli, Sven Strack, Victor Fernandez de Alba, Vincent Fretin, Erico Andrei, Kim Nguyen
Minutes by Kim Nguyen, with notes from Sally
- Chrissy: we will meet once every other month and will last one hour. It’s about coordination between teams, creation of new teams, retirement of teams, similar to the old team leader meeting led by Eric Steele, checking we’re not blocked, remind us what we’re trying to do. There should be a representative from each team, not necessarily the team lead but maybe the same person. There will be an agenda before each meeting. The community is welcome as long as we stick to the agenda. Minutes will be published on the forum https://community.plone.org
Zope team
- Jens Vagelpohl had concerns about expectations of the Zope team, which uses GitHub to track issues and does not have formal or regular meetings and would like not to have a public channel become a place for support requests. After Zope 5 release it will go into maintenance mode.
- Philip: no formal meetings are required.
- Alexander: these meetings and structure are useful for onboarding new members, could help attract people to Zope.
- Jens Klein: more transparent communication will help surface what’s going on. We are four groups now! Plone, Zope, Guillotina, Volto. We need team communications when things are in flux, but if Zope is currently stable and in maintenance mode there won't be so much need for cross team communications.
Updating the teams list
- Jens Klein: there should be information on how to form a team, updated info on each team on plone.org/community, including the team leader for each team. Are there any teams to remove? This should be a regular part of these meetings.
New core team vs framework team vs roadmap team
- There is already an unofficial roadmap “team”.
- Stefan Antonelli and Maik explain the Plone Core Strategic Team idea, at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hKkxicf-W1o0hotLocD_HZ2pGIH289v1wW4kyQ1tD8Q/edit#
- Timo: there is overlap with the framework team.
- Jens K: there’s a need for more regular discussion on what goes into classic Plone than what is happening in the roadmap team.
- Erico: the framework team is where decisions are made about what goes into Plone.
- Maik: maybe we need to make the roadmap team processes more transparent. People look to the framework team on what features go in, but not where Plone goes. Who decides direction for development of the product?
- Timo: framework team accepts PLIPs that are just proposals now, to make it easier, and makes a decision on a technical basis.
- Kim N: maybe we can regularize the roadmap team and add members to the framework team? Rather than create a new team that will add confusion about where to ask for direction.
- Philip: the roadmap team would meet after discussion had happened at, say, a conference. The core team doesn’t need to be formalized, but could be a meeting that replaces a sprint discussion and reports on what new ideas should be added to the roadmap.
- Jens: what is the process for getting things into the roadmap?
- Timo: there is generally a lack of time to finish updating the roadmap with ideas, but adding more meetings is maybe not the solution. There’s a need for people who do the actual work, who write something down that can be discussed.
- Jens: how do we make it easier for new contributors? Maybe there are people who would step up if they knew it was needed.
- Philip: call this new team the roadmap team? Have a well advertised first meeting, encourage people to come, update a draft of the new roadmap, submit to the board, host discussion.
- Maik: it's important for the community to understand how things work, who makes decisions.
- Chrissy: action item: organize a follow up meeting to decide what to do about the core team vs framework team and put out a call for new people to join in. Asking people directly individually is more effective, and would be a good way to invite people to contribute in this way. Jens to help organize follow up on this topic.
Teams discussion
- Chrissy: we would like each team to report out. Are there any teams that are no longer active or needed or should be merged.
- UI/UX/Usability/Volto discussion. The current state is confusing: Rob Porter is official lead but the team has had trouble getting going in the past. Volto vs UX team (Albert Casado, Timo, Victor Fernandez de Alba). Volto people (Albert, Victor) talk regularly and make decisions but this only applies to Volto. No decision.
- Roadmap team is really an ad hoc group.
- Kim Paulissen: forum discussion is not clear on whether a decision has been made. Where are decisions recorded?
- Chrissy: each group should update its page regularly
- Maik: each team should include a forum category it uses.
- Maik: there is a small team of Germans who meet regularly about the Classic UI, they should be more public about what they're doing.
- Timo: discussion is great but opinions can be louder than others, but in the end it’s whoever has the energy and takes action. That’s what we rely on to make progress. The decision making process based on who is loudest doesn’t help things happen. It’s a do-ocracy.
- Chrissy: agree that we should discuss and do as much as possible in the forum, in the open.
Plone Conference 2020
- Chrissy: the conference will be online, 4 days of talks, 1 day of open spaces, training will happen over the weekend. See https://plone.org/news/2020/plone-conference-2020-online
Sponsorship management
- Chrissy: we would like a trusted volunteer to take over regular sponsorship management. Please contact Kim Nguyen, who will help do knowledge transfer.
Plone 6 release timeline
- Philip: release schedule for Plone 6 has been pushed later. We need Barceloneta LTS and other things done in addition to Volto. How do you ship Volto with the unified installer?
- Maik: there is a group sprinting in October to work on the unified installer
- Timo: no thought yet on how to get Volto into the unified installer
Miscellaneous
- Philip: hi to everyone from Max Jacob, who is sprinting on Volto. He’d love us to fix self-registration in Volto!
- Erico: when is the 5.2.2 release official? Kim: he needs to publicize it with Rikupekka’s help.
- Erico: the Zope and Guillotina teams should send items to or ask the marketing team for help publicizing announcements or new releases.
Various updates
- Plone Core Team document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hKkxicf-W1o0hotLocD_HZ2pGIH289v1wW4kyQ1tD8Q/edit#
- Rikupekka Oksanen: Marketing team is active. We have a meeting every 2 weeks, 6 members. Making sure we have news items in the pipeline. Now doing also plone.org content improvements, also trying to slightly improve some parts of the theme. This is very useful discussion today, we can improve the community page on plone.org based on this.
- Jens Klein: Here is where the official announcements and minutes of team meetings should go: https://community.plone.org/c/announcements/team-minutes/32
- Timo Stollenwerk: The marketing team rocks!
- Érico Andrei: The AI Team also is active. We will adopt the same approach of the Marketing Team -- with a document and public minutes, when applicable.
Next Steering Circle meeting
- Chrissy: we will schedule the next meetings on the 3rd Tuesday of every month at this time. We acknowledge this is a hard time to meet for Plonistas in Asia and Australia.
