As a delegate I would like to meet other delegates in a periodic zoom call, maybe monthly. But of course, everyone is in different timezones and even if we voted on one that is the most common, we would be excluding people.
So I thought: what if we did a regular call in shifting timezones, each N hours away from each other. For example:
Month 1
Week 1: call at 0h GMT
Week 2: call at 12h GMT
Week 3: call at 6h GMT
Week 4: call at 18h GMT
Delegates would be encouraged to attend 1 or 2 calls so that each individual delegate would only be doing a few calls per month but there would still be enough overlap between them that information can flow in the group.
To make sure that we could accomodate everyone’s schedules, we could further push the call two hours every month:
Month 2
Week 1: call at 2h GMT
Week 2: call at 14h GMT
Week 3: call at 8h GMT
Week 4: call at 20h GMT
Month 3
Week 1: call at 4h GMT
Week 2: call at 16h GMT
Week 3: call at 10h GMT
Week 4: call at 22h GMT
Month 4 would then return to have the exact same schedule as month 1. It sounds all complicated, but we all use calendar software which makes it easier. All it takes is one person to set up all the calls in a shared calendar and then individuals can decide to accept or reject each unique call on their calendar.
I like the idea, and I’d like to add that it would be great if we had the call schedule available online apart from just relying on users individual calendar applications.
What’s a good video meetup system that has no central caller? In the sense that if I create the event but myself do not attend, then anyone else who attends can still have the call?
Option 1 is basically how All Core Devs meetings function these days, and I think it’s a good option.
We have an “Events” category on the forum that lets you create events using a built in event scheduling plugin; you set a time and it shows up on the post with a link to add it to your calendar. It also supports ical and google calendar feeds for the whole category.
Google Meet is flexible and supports scheduling events without requiring the organiser to be present.
I love the idea of automatically rotating to ensure that everyone around the world has a chance to participate without wrecking their sleep schedule! This may serve as a good template for how larger working groups can collaborate together as well, when those get rolled out.
Maybe some timeslots would go unused or seldom used, but I still think it’s good to have them available in case someone in that timezone suddenly has something pressing to talk about.
What should we use for meeting minutes/notes, or keeping track of an agenda, etc?
Thanks for all the replies! I’ve set up a few meetings in the events page! This is all an experiment so if you want to join, pick a few that you’d like to attend!
I’ve subscribed to the discourse calendar on my google calendar but I think there’s an error as no events are being shown on it.
I’m entirely for it.