> On 24 Jul 2017, at 21:56, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 01:17:25PM +0200, Michael Richardson wrote: >> >> Can you explain "time boxes" here? > > "Time box" is the (admittedly inelegant) jargon that proponents of > certain agile software development methodologies use to describe a > period in which active development + other stuff happens. This is > sometimes called the "sprint", but it's not only that of course since > that's usually coding and such like. The whole group does all the > stuff it does for a period inside the "time box". This is often a > period of two or three weeks, though I've seen groups that do as much > as six. The idea is that, within the period in question, a group > focusses only on certain things and everything else is set aside. > > Setting the jargon aside for a moment, the point is that instead of > having a WG interim in which everyone has to interrupt their circadian > rhythm, the WG instead decides that (say) the WG is going to hammer > out the issues on $draft between (say) Tues and Thurs of next week. > The jabber room is open and active and issues are rapidly taken up > from the tracker and knocked down, and then an interim consensus call > can be done on (say) Friday. There could also be some sort of voice > channel up and available, I suppose, if people wanted to join it _ad > hoc_ to sort something out. It's more async and therefore there'll be > more mail and jabber back and forth, and maybe someone will come to > the discussion later and be annoyed that his or her deathless prose was > mangled, but it's still a way of working rapidly but async in keeping > with the geographic distribution. I have seen free software projects > have success with this sort of thing, so it is possible to do it, > though it requires that all participants rely really a lot on the > principle of charity and are super polite and nice in their emails. > So it might not work here. But it might be worth a go to see whether > it could produce results. Nice idea, and as you say it should help with the time zone issue. Worth an experiment... Tim