[RFC] Moving project planning meeting to IRC

[Karsten Wade]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 08:04:19AM -0700, Chris Wright wrote:

> The only other downsides I've heard voiced (having just gone through
> this debate elsewhere):
> 
> 1) typing == slow for some folks
> 2) inevitible overlapping conversations
> 3) more consuming than phone (harder to do 2 things at once)
> 4) can't do from airport/kitchen/car/...

Yep, totally understand where this list comes from, I've been there
before.

The place I draw the line is, a tightly integrated team - such as a
developer team at a company - has a higher importance on certain
factors that make the above objections more relevant:

* It's your team meeting at your JOB, you make the meeting no matter
  what. So it's key to have it highly available (call from anywhere)
  v. text-based.

* The rest of your company may not be familiar with the pace of open
  source development - it doesn't respond to "NOW!" the way a job-role
  does, the urgency to be in meetings isn't the same, etc.

* And so forth.

Where it comes to open community meetings, we are plainly just more
flexible to be as accommodating as possible. So this means we do IRC
in plain text because:

* It's easier for non-native English speakers.

* In fact, some people can read English but not understand all the
  spoken accents.

* It's translatable.

* It's accessible - if you can't hear a phone conversation, you can
  read an IRC log. If you can't read a log, you can use a
  screenreader.

* It's searchable when the log is archived.

Once a project is out in the open and WANTS participation, that's when
the phone calls stop and IRC+email begins.

- Karsten
-- 
name:  Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team:   Red Hat Community Architecture & Leadership
uri:             http://communityleadershipteam.org
                        http://TheOpenSourceWay.org
gpg:                                       AD0E0C41
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