corefx-standup/Standups/2017-06.md

CoreFX Contributors standup - June 2017

Date: 2017/6/26

See Goals and Format

Recording

We plan to share recordings of future standups.

Notes & Action items

• How to escalate? Ping @us. We will create a team.
• Consider renaming Future to Backlog. Have area owners do some grooming
• Didn't know about http://source.dot.net or backlinks from there
• Need explanation of how contracts and implementation work, and coreclr/corefx go together:)
• Github repo notifications are unmanageable
• Twitter most popular channel for announcements
• Consider .NET blog
• 5 minute new contributor video
• Preference for documentation in markdown, not repo.
• Untrusted cert for apisof.net. Consider renaming dot.net/apis
• Great interest in Q&A and deep dive presentations
• Some interest in interviews with team members
• Feeling that moderation is appropriate
• Strong interest in having a separate repo for API reviews, with proposal vs. discussion
• Suggestion for api-unreviewed tag distinct from api-needs-work
• Very positive feedback on this first standup
• Monthly, 1-1.5 hours, focused with preannounced topic chosen by voting. Stick with Skype. Like the IM format for questions.
• Specific repo for organizing standups (scrub emails - done)

Community attendees

• Edwin van Wijk
• ENGLARD, SAMUEL
• pgolebiowski (Patryk Gołębiowski)
• Rion Williams
• Jonathan Mezach
• Radka Janeková
• Tanner Gooding
• Mandar
• Nick Craver
• nietras
• Ben Adams
• Kevin Jones (@vcsjones)
• Tim (Drawaes)
• Christian Weiss
• svick
• Clockwork-Muse
• Jon Hanna
• Adam Friedman (ITaaS)

Preparation

Specifics

First standup will be a bit special. We want to experiment with format, content, etc.

Key differences:

• It will be invitation-only for key/top 20-30 contributors on CoreFX repo.
  • We will open it for larger community in next sessions.
  • We want to start small and extend to prevent chaos / over-extension at the beginning.
• We won't stream the first event live to everyone, only invited people will be part of it. We will publish the recording later.

Mechanics

• We will discuss specific topics, most of them voted upfront.
• CoreFX team will provide basic information about each topic from our side, and then open short Q&A / discussion.
• We will leave room for larger Q&A / discussion at the end (incl. ad-hoc topics not covered earlier).

Expectation: We may not be able to fully answer all questions on the spot - either because some info is not public (e.g. ship dates), or because we do not know the answer or we do not have all the right people in the room.

Expected participants from CoreFX team:

• @karelz - Engineering Manager on CoreFX team and CoreFX repo community manager
• @danmosemsft - Engineering Manager on CoreFX team
• @stephentoub - Engineer and architect on CoreFX team
• ~@terrajobst - Program Manager for .NET team (incl. CoreFX team)~ (on vacation, cannot make it)
• @weshaggard - Engineer on CoreFX team (pending confirmation)
• ~@jkotas - Engineer and architect on .NET team (mostly CoreRT and Runtime areas)~ (didn't show up)

Date

Mon 2017/6/26 @ 10am-12 PT (see time converter). Please vote on time/date / your availability in issue #2.

Skype for business:

• Join Skype Meeting
• Join via Skype Web App (requires quick install, many browsers are supported, Mac is also supported)

Content / topics

We will recommend topics and let contributors vote for them / suggest additional topics. See the list in issue #3.

Participants

Who are the top/key 20-30 contributors invited to the first session?

@karelz collected list of most active contributors submitting PRs, responding on CoreFX issues/gitter, submitting high-quality product feedback, helping with new contributor documentation, etc. If you think I missed someone who should be included (which is possible), please send me email / ping me on gitter with the name.

Here's the list of invited folks: issue #5

Finalized Content / Topics

Prioritized based on voting in issue #3.

• Random ideas - 11
• About CoreFX repo team(s) - 9
• Discussion: General communication from CoreFX / .NET team - 7
• Product plans - 6

(0) Intro

Talking points:

• Session will be recorded and posted on youtube + tweet / blog eventually
  • We will repeat things from offline info for larger community watching the video
• Goals:
  • Have bi-directional communication with our key contributors and valuable community members. Give them space to ask questions about anything involving our .NET Core repos, .NET Core product and .NET Framework.
  • Identify blind spots and painpoints we are not aware of. Learn what we do not know (e.g. 2FA is pain when you are at school and hop computers every day, etc.).
  • Give our contributors voice in the product and repo community shaping.
• First standup is selected list of 'core' contributors (we may have missed some, for which we appologize)
  • No live streaming (we need to experiment with the format first)
  • Contributors considered: Most active contributors submitting PRs, responding on CoreFX issues/gitter, submitting high-quality product feedback, helping with new contributor documentation, etc.
  • Topics were suggested by MS (with option to suggest more by community), they were upvoted by community (we will tackle them in that order)
    • We have more topics than we will be able to cover in 2h
  • We expect to leave last 20-30 minutes for open questions about anything (if there are none, we can continue tackling remaining topics).
• Future standups will be streamed online, anyone can join online
  • We need to pick technology - Skype for Business vs. Google Hangouts vs. BlueJeans?
    • Orleans team did something similar, we will ask them
  • We (as community) need to decide how to moderate (e.g. one option - no voice option for non-'core' contributors)
  • We (as community) need to decide how to vote for topics (anyone vs. prioritize 'core'-contributors?)

(1) About CoreFX repo team(s) - 9 votes

You can chime in & voice your opinion on the topic in issue #19

• Ownership/expertise is per technology, not runtime/stack in most cases.
• There is a central team that drives the repo but we have contributors/owners from many different parts of the organization.
• When trying to work on a specific area, we will help you find the technology expert to help with the contribution (https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/Documentation/project-docs/issue-guide.md#areas).

(2) Product plans - 6 votes

You can chime in & voice your opinion on the topic in issue #20

2.0 vs. UWP6.0 vs. 2.1 vs. Future Note: We can't discuss dates beyond official ship dates.

Talking points:

• 2.0 is almost out of the door (can't share details) - deep in Escrow (i.e. only critical and low risk bugs) to avoid disrupting upstack libraries at the "last minute"
• Shooting for 95% accuracy on milestones (part of triage rules)
  • Future = we do not plan to invest into it in next ("named") releases, it is on backlog.
• Timeline communication - next milestone (e.g. ZBB, preview) in milestones description and official ship dates
• UWP6.0 will be release only for .NET Native = UWP, it won't be applicable to 2.1. However, all changes will flow into 2.1 as well (both releases are in master branch now).
  • UWP currently internal only (unable to run tests locally efficiently). We plan to make it more open in future UWP releases (too much disruption for UWP6.0 now).
  • The infrastructure to make it happen is non-trivial with closed-source bits - NUTC, .NET Native toolchain and VS integration (part of VS Core).
• 2.1 - Will contain all UWP6.0 changes + more. Will be .NET Core only.
  • We want monthly alpha previews, easy to consume (ideally also in VS).

(3) Discussion: General communication from CoreFX / .NET team - 7 votes

You can chime in & voice your opinion on the topic in issue #21

Talking points:

• What we use today:
  • 'Announcement' issues on CoreFX repo, e.g.:
    • Engineering changes #15135
    • .NET Core 2.0 ZBB #17619,
    • 2.0 Data call for help #19970,
    • CoreFX CI legs update #21135
    • Networking stack - Technical roadmap #21533
  • General issues, e.g.:
    • Update docs to be new-contributor friendly #17534
    • APIs out of scope in CoreFX - 'CoreFXExtension's repo? #20902
    • Regular alpha versions of vnext product #20911
    • Faster SslStream #21371 ... larger investment
  • Usually together with tweets
  • This repo https://github.com/dotnet/corefx-standup-temp - tagging all participants manually
• Questions:
  • How do you learn about these things? Whic channel do you use?
    • Do you use Twitter @corefxissues feed?
    • Do you monitor entire CoreFX repo via GitHub notifications?
    • Do you check new issues manually on GitHub?
    • Anything else?
  • Is the communication channel effective? Would you like to see different?
  • Feedback / suggestion on the kind of announcements / communications? What would you improve?
    • Are issues sufficient?
    • Is regular contributors standup valuable?
    • Should we accompany it with regular "what's happening" blog posts? (e.g. on .NET blog)
    • anything else?
  • How can we be more open? (what works well, what doesn't, suggestions)

(4) Random ideas - 11 votes

You can chime in & voice your opinion on the topic: issue #22

Go through list, ask for feedback & suggestions:

1. More hackatons (incl. world-wide?) like Dutch .NET Core 2.0 Hackaton (3 mins video)
2. Release some internal .NET Foundations talks on youtube (we use these weekly sessions as deep dive into technologies for new team members - we have notes since 2008 & A/V since 2011)
3. Host regular-ish .NET Core technology Q&A sessions (starting with GC session from Maoni Stephens) - likely in late August
4. Shared Source CLI Essentials book for .NET Core - initiated from community, will be created in the open (everyone can contribute)
   • We are not ready to do full announcement yet. The community driver will do that in couple of weeks.
   • Opportunity: We need 1-3 people help us convert PDF to Markdown and prep repo for wider contributions. Contact @karelz if you are interested.
5. .NET MeetUps roadshow in Europe this summer (Amsterdam, NL - 7/11, Prague, CZ - 7/19, Brno, CZ - 8/1)
6. Under discussion: Remote almost-internships - Help grow engineers who are not eligible for classic internship. Smaller/mid-size projects with mentoring from Microsoft employees.
   • Would some experienced contributors be interested in becoming mentors?
7. Recent idea: Meet-the-team interviews - short in-the-office chats about various parts of the technology
   • Would that be interesting?

Upcoming efforts:

1. More investment into New contributor docs
2. Establish firmer Code of Conduct enforcement (deleting offensive comments/content). Idea: Blog about what and why it will be enforced?

(END) General Q&A

Last 20-30 mins should be blocked for random Q&As/discussion. We may postpone some questions/discussions offline. We can keep tackling the next topics (as we won't finish them all most likely) if that's what participants want.

(END) Feedback on standup

You can chime in & voice your opinion on the topic: issue #23

Questions:

• Was the standup useful?
  • If yes, what frequency would you like to see?
• What would you change? (on format, moderation, topic selection, etc.)
• Any suggestions how to involve larger community in the standup?
  • Who should be allowed to 'speak up'? (only core contributors, the rest IM questions only?)
  • How to promote/nominate more contributors into 'core contributors' list? Community nominations with voting?
• Other suggestions?