The D AGM

[Johannes Loher]

Am 13.05.19 um 07:27 schrieb Johan Coder:
> Hello D community,
> 
> 
> I use D professionally from some months back.  Posting as anonymous to
> avoid opening debates at work.  I come from a Scala-Java-Python
> background and in many ways D is a breathe of fresh air.  True in others
> is not which is expected.  Also started following the github stream of
> work because we are interested in a few bugfixes in language-and
> phobos-space.  Not much on forums but have been active in other
> languages similar forums and on occasions in their official meetups.
> 
> I looked at the conference and AGM on video because it is related to my
> day job.  I have had hopes about the AGM but it was a bit disappointing
> due to a few things.  Feed back inspired from similar meetings I saw:
> 
> - Formalism is very important and it is great that Walter and Andrei
> insist on it.  Python PEP are very informal and the process is
> argumentative.  Java and Scala are better and should give inspiration.
> 
> - The DIPS discussion was too long.  DIP 1000 needs more documentation
> but that should be one minute decision.  DIP 1015 is not very important,
> why discuss it again? All languages have things like this and I like D
> bool more than verbose Java boolean.  But it does not matter anyway! 
> DIP 1016 was the interesting but was not discussed.  No discussion about
> the DIPS pipeline which is the most important!
> 
> - The vision part was also too long and too few clear conclusion.  A lot
> of important things not discussed.
> 
> - Form of meeting was.....  much to be improved.  Anyone could hold the
> microphone for any time and say whatever.  No filter and honest some
> people said too little in too much (not sure how to express).  Many
> words with little content.  The person at
> https://youtu.be/cpTAtiboIDs?t=4462 loves to hear himself.  There should
> be a limit.  In such meetings the moderator needs to control it, and
> they did a poor job.
> 
> - Meeting should not be with time limit.  All items must be discussed
> and it ends when topics end.  Why only two hours for so many items?
> 
> - Items came in random order.  If there is a time limit most important
> topics must come first.  Most meeting was on minor things!
> 
> - Speaking of meeting moderator, who was that? Mike, Ethan or Nick? The
> moderator/s did a bad job at making the meeting work.  One problem is
> Nick was not organized and difficult to understand even.  More
> complicated is I don't understand Nicks role.  Was he chosen by the D
> foundation?  If so I suggest he is replaced for next year.  If not I did
> not see a process of election by the community.  Does it means he
> appointed himself?  Anyone can do that by collecting a random list of
> popular topics and saying he will hold an AGM?  That would be an even
> bigger problem.
> 
> This is my list.  It is in random order too!  Most important:  make time
> for all topics.  Discuss important topics first.  Moderation should
> limit time with the microphone and move the meeting forward such that
> everything is discussed.

I mostly agree with this. To be honest, when I first saw the agenda for
the AGM and the time that was allocated to the AGM, I was in shock: It
is simply too much to discuss in that amount of time. It actually turned
out much better than I expected but we still had to cut the complete
list of genral topics due to lack of time.

I think the problems with the meeting boil down to a few points:

1. Unclear purpose

At least from what I understand, the meeting did not serve any specific
purpose and it did also not set any clear expectations. Is this meeting
just an extended form of the "Ask us Anything!" panel, just with a
predefined agenda? Or is something where we can actually try to make
some decisions or at least find some sort of conensus on some things?

2. Missing form

There was absolutley no form to the meeting. As the previous poster also
mentioned, it was basically "go through a list of points and whoever
wants to say something to a point just does so". This sort of meeting
form is _very_ ineffective and inefficient. The previous poster made
some good suggestions already but there is a lot more that can be improved.

3. Missing structure in the agenda

This also has already been said by the previous poster. Basically it was
just a list of points grouped more or less randomly. I believe this is
due to how the list was assembled (Nicholas just included all issues
with D, the D community and the process of how D is developed he could
think of and also all pointer that others suggested to him should be
added to the list) but also due to the nature of the list: The topics
are quite diverse, e.g. there were language related issues but also
process related issues. It is non trivial how to even create a
meaningful structure to _all_ of these topics and I believe that simply
not enough time has been spent on that.

4. Unclear roles

This has also been said already in some form. Who is the moderator (and
relating back to my seond point, what is the job of the moderator)? What
are Walter's and Andrei's (well, from now on Atila's instead) role in
the meeting. What was Nicholas' role? What about the comminity's? I
believe one problem in particular with moderation was that the moderator
should be as neutral as possible and focus on the process of the meeting
instead of making his own point. Mike and Ethan tried this and did a
fairly good job, but you noticed that Nicholas struggled with that
because he feels strongly about many of the topics. This is not meant as
an offense at all, it just means that Nicholas was not qualified to be a
moderator for this meeting.
Also why did we not have any official recorder? I know that the meeting
was recorded on video but for things like this it is important to
document the _results_ in a way that can easily be acted upon and that
is much easier with a written record. Now we basically only have the
notes that some of us took...



Going forward, if we are to repeat the AGM next year, I believe we need
to address these issues. In particular, we need to:

1. Define a clear purpose for the AGM.
2. Define a clear form / structure for the meeting.
3. Create a much better structured agenda (this could also mean that we
simply need to explicitly exclude some of the points).
4. Define who is responsible for what in the AGM.

This list is ordered by how important I believe the points to be but I
firmly believe that we need to address all of them.

I hope this helps in making the AGM a bigger success next time.

Best regards,
Johannes