Bugzilla meetings: disappointment, disaster and chaos

[Frédéric Buclin]

Hey all,

"disappointment, disaster and chaos" Here are some of the words which 
appeared to summarize our last Bugzilla meeting which took place 
yesterday. And considering that all our meetings look similar (which is 
quite true), here is how we could summarize all our meetings on IRC.

So you all remember that yesterday was a bit "special" with Mike 
Beltzner being our "special" guest. I invited him to let him share with 
us some of his experience about User Experience and what could be good 
for us to do in the near future to improve the UI of our product.

And after 28 minutes started the chaos:

<beltzner> this is chaos
<beltzner> I don't know how you guys do meetings like this and expect to 
get anything done

- Chaos because everybody started talking at the same time, mostly 
ignoring guest's review and interrupting him. Chaos also because 
comments appeared in the IRC channel faster than one could read.

- Disaster because we haven't been able to take the best of what Mike 
Beltzner could offer. Maybe is this due to our inabilities to take 
decisions?

<beltzner> If you want a UI module owner, nominate one.
<beltzner> Stop saying you want it.
<beltzner> If you want to do a full rewrite of the UI, say that.
<beltzner> Tell me that incremental changes aren't what you're looking for.
<beltzner> Tell me that you want to just say "fuck bugzilla 2.*, if 
people want better UI, they have to move to bugzilla 3.*"

If I'm quoting Beltzner out of the context of the meeting, please those 
who attended tell me.

- Disappointment because as being the one who invited him, I expected 
some better discussion, with less chaos and better decisions from our... 
ah yes, do we have module owners and leaderships?

This email is not about debating about the lack of a UI module owner. 
This will be in a separate email I plan to write in a few minutes, to 
separate threads. This email is about the way we should manage our IRC 
meetings. Here is an example of how a meeting could take place (thanks 
to vladd for pointing me to this URL):

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Meetings/2006-06-15?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=fedora-ambassadors-2006-06-15.txt

Pretty boring, isn't it? So what? How should we proceed? Someone 
suggested per /msg to moderate the meeting, for instance using /mode +m 
and giving voice /mode +v to the next speaker only (people could ask the 
moderator per /msg to talk, and the moderator would manage this). Is 
that what we should do to avoid these "café du commerce" talks? Or 
should we simply have leaders, owners or whatever you like who take 
decisions?


LpSolit