It all started with a tweet:
Here's a #Fedora stat that jumps out at me: we had *1190* IRC meetings over the past year. And that's not counting non-meeting chat!
— mattdm (@mattdm) July 7, 2015
That started a discussion between Matt and Karsten Wade about how to measure whether or not a meeting was productive. Matt suggested a count of “#action”, “#agreed”, and “#info” MeetBot commands.
about how to measure whether or not a meeting was productive. Matt suggested a count of “#action”, “#agreed”, and “#info” MeetBot commands. At this point, I had to jump in. “#info”, I felt, did not really belong in a measure of whether a not a meeting was productive.
My take is that #info should be used primarily as a reminder of things that have already been brought up on the appropriate mailing list. It serves as context for what’s going on in the discussion and should not be used to bring up new ideas.
Fedora teams particularly, and many open source teams generally, are too geographically distributed for IRC meetings to be where new items come up. Ideally, even #agreed should be mostly a formal recognition of the consensus on the mailing list. When contributors span the globe, it is nearly impossible to find a time when everyone can meet, making asynchronous communication essential.
This lines up with my philosophy about meetings in general. It’s better to share information ahead of time so people can evaluate it before the meeting. This saves time, since less explanation is required during the meeting, and it gives people the opportunity to more rationally consider their position on the topic.
Matt also suggested that #info is a way to call out things that were brought up as new in a meeting. To the extent that it’s better than not calling out new things, I agree. However, as Karsten suggested, perhaps #idea is a better.
Each team will have, to some extent, its own culture and its own rules for coming to decisions. The important thing is to make sure that contributors who can’t regularly attend IRC meetings still have the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process.
I’ve heard that protocol in Dept of Defense is that you send your slide deck early, and at the meeting, you start with the questions, assuming that all the data dumping of a slide presentation has already happened. This is because/after the death-by-PowerPoint became too much a thing for them.
I don’t know or use their tools or yours, but it does strike me that #info is not a sign of productivity in meetings. In fact, I think #info expands to #anotherMeetingThatCouldHaveBeenAnEmail
But I am a notorious meeting hater from way back.