Open Stack

Hi Jeremy,

Using a phone/VoIP call was not because the group "would rather have
conference calls because they're
disinclined to learn how to conduct meetings the way the rest of OpenStack
does".  For one OpenStack conducts meetings in many ways including IRC,
face-to-face, over Etherpad and using voice/VoIP calls.

In particular using the phrases "disinclined to learn" and "it wasn't a
substantial hurdle after
all." comes across poorly. One of the points of this group is to identify
what are the barriers women face and how can we help. Women brought up
concerns about IRC as being a barrier from a technical and group
interaction standpoint. We are evaluating the best options to address those
concerns.

As a starting point we had the meeting via phone call and Carol offered to
get access codes attendees in different countries. We discussed the
geography, time and technology questions. There are no easy answers so we
will have to try different things as we find ways to help women ramp up to
the OpenStack community and flourish. Just because a tool was adopted once,
doesn't mean that we shouldn't explore other options that might be a better
fit. To be clear that doesn't mean we are discarding the current tools
or impeding communication, indeed part of the conversation was devoted to
how to help people move past technical barriers to using the most popular
OpenStack tools (IRC, Gerrit etc).

We determined that one action to redress the technical barrier with IRC is
to have "tech office hours" during the lunches at the summit for those in
need of assistance. While I appreciate that there are
some instructions that you and Courtney provided/approved of, they are not
great for beginners and assume a great deal. Additionally for IRC to have
parity with other chatting clients or to be useful in the way we
(OpenStack) uses it requires 3+ additional systems be installed
or understood (bouncer/proxy, cloak, etherpad, eavesdrop etc). It's painful
to setup and use, creating a complexity that is often best handled with
in-person help. It would be great to have your and the other Project
Infrastructure team members experience and help getting interested
newbies ramped up and comfortable with the OpenStack tools.

The non-technical barriers are a different kind of concern and we will be
looking at defining them and, as mentioned, evaluating the best options to
address the concerns.

Thanks,
Amanda

On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 9:16 AM, Jeremy Stanley <fungi at yuggoth.org> wrote:

> On 2015-09-03 15:16:40 +0000 (+0000), Courtney Ferry wrote:
> > There are pretty good instructions for using IRC on the OpenStack Wiki
> > https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/IRC and Freenode site
> > https://freenode.net/using_the_network.shtml.
> > And a tutorial here: http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/irctutorial.html
>
> Agreed, those are great.
>
> > If you have questions that aren't covered there, please let me
> > know. I'm happy to do an IRC walk through, if needed.
>
> I was actually suggesting an IRC tutorial might be helpful for
> people who would rather have conference calls because they're
> disinclined to learn how to conduct meetings the way the rest of
> OpenStack does. If you've already determined to switch to IRC
> meetings then it sounds like it wasn't a substantial hurdle after
> all.
>
> See http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/ for instructions on adding your
> regular meetings to the schedule, and
> http://docs.openstack.org/infra/system-config/irc.html#starting-a-meeting
> for some helpful hints on how to interact with our meetbot to take
> advantage of logging and autogenerated meeting minutes. Don't
> hesitate to let me or others in the Project Infrastructure team know
> if you have any questions or need further assistance!
> --
> Jeremy Stanley
>
> _______________________________________________
> Women-of-openstack mailing list
> Women-of-openstack at lists.openstack.org
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/women-of-openstack
>
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