Hi gang at Cheers! :-)
Hi, Olegil! :-P
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This to make life easier for the poor bastard in charge of collecting the logs and extracting all the bits that are relevant (about that... I think this should be an official secretary/moderator position, and I am considering applying for it. Even though it is an important position, at least it's easily replaceable, so I shouldn't loose any sleep over it).
Another idea being that everyone gets to try this at least once, we decide before hand who is going to take care of what logs. Example (using the Frieden brothers as example names here, since I'm not very imaginative today):Thomas is responsible for day 1, session one. Topic is "dependencies". We know we need to make a list of all the dependencies of all the dependencies (I mean recursive :-) ), with a proper graph that ends in things we have. We also need to pin down some names to different parts of the graph. Once the discussion is over, Thomas takes the logs, the graph, the names, writes it up into a document that can be put on the web site. In this document there are three major parts: 1: What we have agreed upon.
2: What we have discussed, but haven't agreed upon yet. These should be voted over ASAP. They could come from the topic, the list of things we have discussed here, or things that just pop up while in the IRC session. 3: Topic, timestamp and "unfortunate log-compacting bastard" for next session. These COULD come from the IRC session, but they could also come from the mailing list. Flexibility within set limits is the key here. Hans-Jörg is that unfortunate soul for the next session, so he takes what Thomas wrote down, spends 5 minutes going over what we need to discuss according to that document and 5 miuntes preparing what he's gotten off the grape vine, and then the session is started. Of course, not ALL sessions are going to have a predefined topic, but ALL sessions must have someone compacting logs. I also think we should take a moment or two to discuss when we have time for sessions. And do we want to chalk down 14 of them every week? I think this is the only feasible way to make sure we get ANY useful discussion ;-). Trying to assemble enough people to make a decision without having a fixed schedule is a complete nightmare. A truly horrible experience. Please use worldclock. I am volunteering to look over the results and see if there are some clear candidates. 14 sessions per week, I suggest capping the length to something between 30 and 60 minutes per sessions (as I said, discussion can take place outside business hours, but any formal decisions should come from a pre-determined session). Example: I am up at a bit before 6am three days a week (I lift heavy things and put them down again for an hour, then I go to work). Another half hour earlier sure isn't gonna kill me. So that's
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=1&day=10&... plus 30 miuntes, the same on wednesdays and fridays.
Then I'll need to find 11 more that works for me ;-) I am also fortunate enough to have a boss that thinks 10% of work time spent on private projects (as long as they are relevant to what I do at work, which this is ;-) ) is good. So I can also use an hour or two of work time each week to catch any good discussions I would otherwise miss. And my work hours are flexible, so I can stretch the morning or afternoon quite a bit. I then assemble an email with the 14 (or more, or less. Anything goes)worldclock urls (each with their own number of minutes I am available, and whether or not I'm available enough to take responsibility of the chatroom at that time, or whether I'm only lurking from work and might have to pop out for 10 minutes in the middle of a session because someone has a question IRL), and send it to some place where the data gets processed and suitable sessions are picked. Or Olegil could assemble a "small" PHP based script that people can use to input their available time and give us a nice picture with one row per person, one column per half-hour, red, green or yellow depending on how well this period suits the person. We could then update our personal info weekly and 5-6 days ahead the session is scheduled. Much more flexible, and actually doable since I have the basics running in a room-booking system already. I just need to make it use half-hours instead of hours, have it use three states (green/yellow/red) for availability instead of just two, and shift it from 04.00-28.00 down to 00.00-24.00 (we stop serving beer at 02.30, and quite often a person is told to start working at "25.00 friday", for instance tidying up after a band has been on stage or something. That way we know which day we're supposed to be there, noone ever comes 24 hours too late ;-) ) Am I starting to make sense here? I'm not ACTUALLY trying to create a bureucracy (where is aspell when you need it? :-P ), but SOME things must be agreed upon before-hand to make them work. :-)