Kubeflow weekly community meeting feedback and format changes

[terrytangyuan]

Hi community,

The KSC like to collect feedback on the current format of the community meeting, specifically the following (not an exhaustive list but just to kick off the discussion):

1. Whether there's need to split the meeting into different meetings that have focuses on users and contributors.
2. Whether we should change the format of the meetings, e.g. presentation based user community meetings.
3. Rotations among more meeting hosts/moderators.
4. Meeting frequency and length.

If you are interested in being the hosts/moderators of future community meetings, please let us know in this issue. Any feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated!

cc @kubeflow/kubeflow-steering-committee

[franciscojavierarceo]

Would be happy to be a host/moderator.

[gmfrasca]

Feedback item: It seems topics about the website's design and layout are frequently very active, with a few passionate members discussing and debating at length about them on a weekly basis. Perhaps that specific area should be contained within its own meeting/working group? It could even be held immediately after the main Community Meeting.

Spirit of this would be to free up room in the agenda, and encourage more general/broader-scoped topics from the community, while also helping the meeting adhere to it's intended timebox.

[thesuperzapper]

Feedback item: It seems topics about the website's design and layout are frequently very active, with a few passionate members discussing and debating at length about them on a weekly basis. Perhaps that specific area should be contained within its own meeting/working group? It could even be held immediately after the main Community Meeting.

Spirit of this would be to free up room in the agenda, and encourage more general/broader-scoped topics from the community, while also helping the meeting adhere to it's intended timebox.

@gmfrasca thats effectivly what we do, we actually ended the normal agenda at 9pm PT today, and only started talking about the website after.

We could consider a "distributions" or "documentation" working group, but it would probably not resolve cases like today, where very significant changes being proposed to core pages which affect everyone.

[rimolive]

@gmfrasca thats effectivly what we do, we actually ended the normal agenda at 9pm PT today, and only started talking about the website after.

This needs a separate slot anyway. I don't see anyone explicitly saying the general community meeting is over and the websites issues discussion will start. The recording is the same, which makes the impression that they are the same meeting.

We could consider a "distributions" or "documentation" working group, but it would probably not resolve cases like today, where very significant changes being proposed to core pages which affect everyone.

I support the idea of a documentation working group, but my opinion is the opposite: having a working group will definitely help resolve multi-wg cases because it will be their responsibility to work with the other WGs to propose changes.

[andreyvelich]

Thank you for your initiative @franciscojavierarceo and thank you for your feedback @gmfrasca!

It seems topics about the website's design and layout are frequently very active, with a few passionate members discussing and debating at length about them on a weekly basis. Perhaps that specific area should be contained within its own meeting/working group? It could even be held immediately after the main Community Meeting.

Yes, we need to better manage community calls for these topics. As @terrytangyuan mentioned above, we might want to host 2 bi-weekly meetings on Tuesdays:

• one for users to discuss AI/ML demos, questions, and topics with Kubeflow.
• one for developers for @kubeflow/kubeflow-steering-committee office hours, cross-working groups discussions, and release updates.

Also, we would like to see more meeting hosts/moderators who can follow the script and manage the timelines during these meetings.

@StefanoFioravanzo will get back next week and we will start working on the doc to improve our community calls.

[StefanoFioravanzo]

Thank you @terrytangyuan for starting this issue.

Our community meetings have become bloated with technical discussions and open-ended topics that often result in heated debate and overtime.

The purpose of a community meeting is to:

1. Allow community members who are not core contributors to demo and showcase their solutions
2. Let working groups present innovative and recent work to a wider audience
3. Summarize recent work, providing quick updates on important topics, events, and decisions (this should an optional and very small part of the agenda)

I believe we should have a team of community meeting hosts who actively seek new members or core maintainers to deliver demos and presentations, prepare meeting agendas, and then moderate these meetings on a rotation. It should be ok to cancel a community meeting if there is no agenda. Also, it seems like reducing the frequency of these meetings would encourage more participation and a more interesting agenda.

We are living in a transition period, and the Kubeflow Steering Committee needs to make a lot of controversial decisions, which often spark conversation. I like the idea of having KSC office hours.

As for website and documentation discussions, we should recognize that the community meeting is not the right place to hold those discussions. Forming a dedicated WG may be a path forward, but is out of the scope of this issue. We could move these themes to KSC office hours, and then figure out a path forward.

[chasecadet]

@StefanoFioravanzo this is great! @andreyvelich mentioned an "out reach" WG where we managing external facing content and ensure we are "on brand" for community values. I think it makes sense to have whatever that group becomes help with things like the community calls, talks, booths etc.... If we need someone to help run calls, I often managed calls for customers around technical topics as part of my role at organizations. I am happy to help drive and ensure we stay on topic and leave with action items etc... the goal being to protect everyone's time and align to outcomes. If we need more "free association" style calls we can do that as well but the community call (IMO) is how to get caught up and is also a potential "edge" to our community. Someone can (with low effort) peak into our community and understand "what we are about" and see our values. This is actual Principal #1 for any healthy community https://medium.com/@skueong/the-art-of-community-seven-principles-for-belonging-book-notes-4997cd637a58. "Members want to know who’s in the community and shares their values. Visitors want to know a safe way to explore without committing themselves. Novices prefer to know at what point they’ve joined a community." food for thought .