I'm a big fan of having some of the Board meetings on IRC regularly, for better transparency and community engagement. And I also think having the community Q&A section up front is helpful so that community members aren't held up by other agenda items. Previously the Board tried a fully open meeting with no enforced protocol to do this. That meeting ended up being confusing and hard to track, with multiple overlapping conversations. That's not a problem when everyone in the meeting has separate concerns that can all be handled individually by different people -- after all, we do it every day in other IRC channels. However, it's not as effective in the setting of a group meeting whose purpose is to explore issues, achieve consensus, and make decisions. Clarity is just as important in the open Q&A portion so the Board members' positions are clear to the people asking questions, and the community at large. Therefore, I suggest the Board consider having some sort of orderly process for taking questions. The Board agreed publicly that if needed, the level of order in the IRC meetings could be increased incrementally to make them more effective. Here is how I'd propose to escalate that level, one meeting at a time, stopping when things seem to work OK: 1. Avoid using VOICE, and employ a self-regulated meeting protocol like our Ambassadors do in their regional meetings (!/?/eof/+1): https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/IRCHowTo#Protocol 2. Bring in a non-Board moderator to facilitate the above process, through gentle reminders to participants. 3. Have the non-Board moderator employ VOICE to facilitate the meeting. Thoughts? -- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ Where open source multiplies: http://opensource.com _______________________________________________ advisory-board mailing list advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board
