Face to face meetings at the ASF
August 4th, 2007 by HenAkin to a previous post, this is a thought dump on something that comes up while looking at project reports in the ASF board meeting.
Sometimes a project will report that they had a face to face meeting, or are planning one, and the immediate concern will be whether they are organizing it openly. Face to face meetings are hugely valuable (thus the emphasis the foundation puts on the ApacheCon conferences), but making sure that all of the contributors are aware of the meeting is also important. Discuss the plans for the meeting on the dev@ mailing list; make sure that contributors are welcome to attend if they can.
One worry might be how to refuse those of trollish behaviour. I think it helps that it’s a lot, lot harder to be a troll in a face to face meeting. The author of the BileBlog attended the Struts/WebWork BOF (birds of a feather) a few years back and it didn’t turn into a bile ridden criticism of all the things they’re doing wrong. Most likely your favourite troll won’t show, will be quiet, or even better - will be valuable.
Another worry might be that the discussion will be all about user questions and not development discussion. You should be so lucky. If that turns out to be the case, embrace it and set aside part of the meeting for that focus (a third or so perhaps).
As with all of these thought dumps (and I hope to do a lot more), this is what I’ve culled from the information flying by within Apache - it may not be 100% the answer.