 Yeah, I'm happy that some people made it here. I'm happy. There's still seats free in the team. I Started this very late and I'm a bit tired and It's my thoughts and I think probably go through them and see what we do then Luca, can you press? Oh Yeah, I didn't do this Pass I plan to do this there. I think I Can do it after this talk I think Space, please So there was some strong feedback from people from the team which are actually not here at the moment They don't want to discuss now Maybe you find the time for discussion now other people are fine to discuss and Still they like the dep conf the view is fantastic Space please Luca, I'd say time but this is my please continue Then at night Phil hence brought the idea of depth content Frankfurt Han Which is the airport and close to Frankfurt and has conference facilities is easy to reach and would be very different My reply was space please plus Luca Stop smoking crack And to fill which Phil replied to because it can be seen from very different view angles Who has been to a dep conf which wasn't good Wow So you have I have ideas but Anyway, so most people have been only to good got depth com school just great Who was skeptical about depth com 13 before coming here? Who is next one? Who stayed unconvinced and think this wasn't a good depth con? Okay Next And yeah, this should absolutely not be about depth com 13 Originally in my slide started after this one I didn't want to have anything about it, but feedback yesterday made me to add this as we all Experienced or who has experienced this step conf or other also other depth com to our decision-making process is quite often way too painful I think it's because it's not documented. It's not a clear process. There are no clear responsibilities. No way how to make decisions we all know this and This is personally if perception definitely some months. I've had the impression that the chairs were asked to decide everything and in the last days or weeks I had rather the impression that the chairs were ignored and Wasn't that good? so Dep Confess a Debian has these foundation documents the Constitution Debian free software guidelines and also other important documents Which define how Debian works while that confess just some wiki pages in a manual category, which is something but very little And thus different people have different interpretation how that conf works The obvious have different ideas how it should work, but also different interpretations about what we agreed how it shall work and And Space Gonna I shared these slides with gonna and Murray and got feedback from gonna only That he absolutely prefers decision structure than governance because that conf is Debian and thus we have a governance Which he has a point the current delegation was done by Suck two years ago Space please Delegating gonna Murray and me as Deb conf chairs With the text the main responsibility of the Deb conf chairs is to act as a liaison between the Debian project and the Deb conf Organization in that capacity the chairs will be responsible to the project for the organization of Deb conf and how Debian resources For example money, but also the Debian name are used to that end Deb conf organization itself does not need to change in response to this new delegation and the informal Deb conf team Is free as it always has been to establish its own structures and decision mechanisms The chairs are expected to help the team in establishing those things and to break decision ties if and when they occur This is a very But then very wise delegation because it leaves many things open Press space, please I talked with suck what he intended about this and He told me that he wanted to spell out that Depp conf is Debian and clarifying who's responsible for Debian resource usage and Space again, please Yeah, that was very much needed clarify that Depp conf is Debian and there's no doubt about this anymore I'm very thankful for this. Who's that? And Of course Depp conf is also not Debian that there are differences between Well, not Debian that Depp conf works quite different than other Debian projects, but then all Debian projects are in several ways different than the other So there is still a difference, but it's not on the Identical or in the We still are part of the same project even though we are different sub projects and I think Probably the Depp conf team doesn't really need to be redefined but rather formalized what it is because I think we agree that it's fine that these people here or who want to be here off team, but It's completely not clear how to become team member next please so idea one anybody on the list the IRC channel is on the team next Idea two formal process to join and leave for example public mail to the list auto acceptance by default and the chair that delegates Can put this on hold or deny it and yearly after Depp conf it's cleared by the team or the chairs And we maintain the list in a public it would be one idea The other is the same except that it's not auto-exceptant, but one existing team member needs to be an advocate Next or Instead of chair delegation how about team delegation and then the team is free to add more members to it How they fit could be the same with the previous idea and the DPA can deny those so there are many different ways To form the team next please other suggestions Which doesn't yeah, I don't know whether which one so You started by stating a problem, which is that making decisions within Depp conf is painful Which I agree But is this Working towards a solution to that problem. Is that the goal that you have in talking about the team formation process? I have that goal, but I don't think we can reach it today Okay, I believe it's This is quite going into the direction of the goal because one problem which we had at least in the last round of Discussions was that there were quite different people in different sessions and The same problems Got reiterated quite a number of times because of this because people haven't been Hadn't been involved in previous decisions and then the next times and the made these decisions came up They they tried to intervene on already made decisions So it's the idea is that if the team was well defined by some mechanism You could say the team you would be in a better position to say that the team has decided something That's true. I Have my doubts. I think if Formalizing the team membership leads to kind of more of a feeling of responsibility for the team on the side of the members and they there's more Continuity in the meetings then it might be a good thing, but The problem on a state that is more a problem of Continuity between different meetings and I don't and I think if we can solve that the fuzzy border of the team Is no longer a problem I agree. I think defining the team is part of many things we need to do and Right, so this is something that I had spoken with Holger about Over the course of the lead up to the DC 13 where I was feeling Personally that you know, I had opinions about things But I didn't feel that I was necessarily a part of the team because I wasn't involved in DC 13 organization And I did have concerns about some things, but I didn't know what was the right Should I even be voting if things are being voted on should I be participating in discussions the IRC meetings? It's very difficult for people to know With the existing setup how much they should participate how much how loud they should be and I think having a clear idea of who's in And who's out means that we have a clearer process of of making the decisions because the situation now is that anybody who feels strongly enough about an issue to make a To make noise about it effectively Moves the needle on where the the consensus is and I don't think that actually makes sense to have people who have strong opinions About a particular issue show up and argue it if they're not participating in deb conf team the rest of the time And I also think that if we have this idea of you are part of the team It's also social pressure on people who might otherwise just drift away bit by bit to stay involved to to you know So thinking of this in terms of like the Ubuntu code of contact conduct the idea that you if you are no longer doing a role You step down gracefully And I think I think having this this more formalized idea of a team Helps with ensuring that people recognize. Okay. This is this is a responsibility that I have And if I'm not living up to that responsibility, I should step down So that the remaining members of the team know they can they should make decisions without me and in that way having a more A shared understanding of what the team structure is Whereas right now we have this kind of amorphous group of people who show up on IRC and participate in some meetings or others And have the effect of you know, no I'd like to stop this discussion now here because that's more stuff prepared I Also what I haven't put in here, but I want to realize they're now It's absolutely vital that we get members new people easily in the team like Raphael We didn't nobody knew eight months before or maybe two or three people and he was a super good team member so that must be super easy for new members to join the team every year and I really would like to continue unless you really insist on saying something Then use the microphone Just once that alternative suggestions. I don't think we have to discuss it just that it's noted We might also want to think about having something similar or the same as the process We kind of established for adding new members to the depth com team Subversion repository, but which is that Each year there should be one admin from the local team that is trusted by the global organization Allowed to add local team members I think this SVN access is derives from the team membership, but anyway Next slide please. Let's I don't know how many people remember the times when this was the Debian motto was in the mid and end 90s so and rough consensus and working code and For Debian, it's probably easier because working code is quite easy to define exit zero Next slide please so what's consensus idea one consensus is when we all agree Next slide consensus means decision by a clear majority Mmm next slide consensus means an absence of significant dissent maybe that next one Other suggestions no, no, no, no, no, no, let me please continue with this or use the microphone, but you don't get it Next and yeah, this also needs to be formally documented. What does that mean because else make one Some people eight people agreeing one vocally disagreeing and to a bit unsure as a consensus But Debian is a diverse community. So this is not true for all so we need to document this Really really really really even if you're most we were mostly white males Which we are not and We and Debian will change change in future too So our assumption now, which might work today for a group will not work in whatever time Yeah, final decisions also Debian is the project where Debian via delegates or GR has the final decision power And that's required by the Constitution 8 3 and 4 1 1 Please read it up if you want to and this means nothing is final like the only final thing is death That is final in a sense that if you fuck up delegates or GR might override you And of course nothing is final and there are and there have been many many final and good decisions The view on the lake is fantastic. Thank you There now have some more random ideas So maybe the term advisory board make might make things clearer than chairs or Might maybe really redefine things because an advisor is something else than a chair And not no matter what name we choose we also need to define the procedures and I think Maybe steering board is better than chairs or advisory board And it's again something different Then there's also the depth conf comity Which are those people who? Entitled to Reach the decision where the next step conf will be and That would also be the option to keep that name And another idea which is also could be supplemented is LCA has Ghosts which are previous organizers who are happy to help running Next conf conferences and they also do after LCA directly a handover From from the previous local team to the next low-earth team and to the next team Including some ghosts so that would mean that whatever 20 people of us or maybe 10. I have no idea Meet after this step con for the next one for one and two days Maybe just have one house here or go somewhere else whatever details and plan the next Conference seems to work well for LCA. I Haven't hit Pick your poison Yeah, so That is probably useful, but that doesn't sound like there's a core issue we want to address This is about sharing experience. I think we are not too too bad at that. I mean the fact that the next depth conf team members Attending the previous one also helps that like that for that. It's just a different way to the same thing Yeah, it's just an idea one detail to make things more smooth Yeah, and no matter what model we choose the really important part is that everybody understands the same and can live with it And that future generations will do the same and this Maybe sounds easy. I don't think that sounds easy actually Yeah, but please press space first Yeah, I think kept press place space once again And what occurred to me and two minutes ago to end this who thinks or wants to be involved in Depcon 14 and wants to sit here Hopefully more on the internet So if you go back to the previous slide No, the one before yeah, so the fact that you state that future generations will do the same That's quite strange because you started by saying that the beyond as many different teams with many different decision processes And I wonder if Each depth con should not be seen as a different Debian team kind of with a and may maybe different depth confs require different decision-making mechanisms based on for example the past experience of depth conf organizers about Debian and depth conf for example next year. We have a local team with people from a small derivative. We're not very familiar with Debian Could raise no, I'm just joking but it could raise some Different well issues and they've gone where there's a really strong local team from people who don't know Debian very well Yeah, there is which occurred in the past and then Decision-making process need could need to be different in those cases and I quite concur with what was just said because My personal experience from at least the transition between last year's depth conf and these depth confers There's just a whole different set of people Working on the depth conf and the chairs are like the the thing that connects to different depth conf and that maybe try to get some Homogeneity between the depth conf but in the end the people doing most of the work to make it happen is a complete different set of people So as well as I agree that Documenting decision processes and all that we can also not expect everyone willing to Participate in depth conf organization to spend a week reading wiki pages. Although. It's good to have documentation It's also a team of people that maybe know each other have Have a way of taking decisions or working towards a goal together and that is also something valuable in the depth conf Organization, I think Documentation documentation for packaging now. I really need to be a bit disagree with what you said I've noticed that I Have been now to I think six more six step conf I am at and it's a previous years For example, when it's a deck of at Mexico The team was even mostly stuffed by the by the global team and the few local team members And I'm actually even not that sure that it's good to have a complete the shape of the team for the depth conf So I think we should rise that we have some people involved in all depth conf Other people are involved in more than one depth conf that's the shares experience that we don't need to repeat the same mistakes we did before and Actually, I think it's really we should have a governance model which helps us in doing it in the ways that we want So nobody says about you have to read one one week of documents However, we should write the documents in a way that say help us to achieve our goals And that it makes it actually easier and faster and less painful for all involved. Yes, I think it's worth to try to do that and So I think we should write more things up and that the government's might be a bit different between different years of depth Conf was of different people involved is okay for me. However, if we change it, I think we need to agree on it first and then change it Yeah, that was He summed up my point quite well I think we it should be possible to establish a kind of process or experience things which Could apply to many many depth comps and could save us a lot of redefining and finding Precedures and decisions with new team members. It doesn't I think it must not be spelled out for all details But I think there are some things which are quite Which are similar between depth comps like whatever What do we need for network stuff accommodations? We talked about this a lot and Yeah, I don't think Let's have I Just want to throw in one thing that is for my point of view missing We should think about when defining kind of a governance model and that is that we Have to have a view of what's local and what's global I think one year ago. We kind of were had this idea Let's drop this local team and merge everything into global and in my personal view. It's failed and The failure I was thinking about this quite a lot And I think one part of point of the failure was that as at that point we had quite a big local team Taking everyone from the local team to the global team and every and they were quite motivated by it Then led to just the locals taking over the global team because we were quite a lot and at the point where the globals were like recovering from the previous step con and one Just I think just that that's something that needs thinking about I don't know if I don't have a solution I currently rather tend to Reinforce the local team more than we did in the past and defining areas that are clearly in the Competence of the local team and defining things that are have to be done on a global level and One other thing about the consensus slides We should keep in mind is that as it is in real life meetings I can also observe in our lists and IRC meetings that basing everything on consensus and Pushing back votes as far as possible leads to a dominance by those that speak a lot that feel comfortable to speak and So so so on and on and I think we should also think about ways to value more the opinions of those that are probably not so comfortable in English and speak less I Like to say two things at least One is that this the idea to have One team and not local and global team is not a year old idea But rather something which is five or eight years old It's really a long topic where we worked on to have one team because there were problems in the past and now When that we achieved that better we have new problems So things changed and what you just described is throwing away experience, which I think we must avoid I'm sure that the depth comforting team even if nobody from depth of 13 will be or from previous depth Conf will be there can do a good conference But I think it will be a better conference if there's some continuity Yeah, and That was the one point and the other point which I'm Having Is really that I think there are It's a very difficult discussion at the moment because many people are not here No, also didn't come to depth conf 13 And and also I have want to hold myself back now because I've said a lot of things But I don't think those I don't think the discussion is now leveled and I don't want to shut shut down your words But I'd like to keep in mind that we need that this is talk and talk is cheap and Somebody needs to do something Yeah, sometimes Yeah, I see My question is now for the old bees in this in this round Which experiences do you actually talk about? This is something which came up and there was some a number of times in in the Underpinnings of some discussions over here that there have been these Experiences from from from past that comes which Which makes joining the local and global team worthwhile? so which but there was never an explicit what Experiences are this For example the depth conf 12 team wanted to sign a venue was about to sign a venue for which there was no money Sorry, I'm trying to unwind now and remember what I was going to say regarding some from the DC 14 perspective I mean we are we're looking to put on a good conference And we would like to do that with the help of of those who've been in depth come for a while and have the experience and and the The knowledge of how to run it and also the the knowledge of how all of the infrastructure works that that we have that We can leverage to put on a conference But the other thing that I'm hoping that we can accomplish here is Because this year the conference is being run at the local level by folks who have been involved in dev comp in the past which For the past few years has not really been the case Which which is not a problem, but I'm thinking I'm hoping that We're coming from a position that we can as we go along we can be writing down down the things and Helping with the documentation problem in order to pass things on for the next year as well That's one of the my goals is is in DC 14 is to be able to provide that for future conference as well perhaps at a More systematically than we've done in the past. Yeah, it works One thing about consensus is that I think I have the feeling it can work for technical decisions We can we can postpone like a release but Dev Conf is is time is time-based and maybe that's related to how Switzerland works, but We just we it It's not possible and it has not been possible to postpone the signature of a contract or the Giving out of money Indefinitely because then you have counterflames that come back by that postponing and by that I think just taking time to find a good consensus is just It's all fine for us And it's good that we can find consensus but when we have a time-based deadline and Time-based things that we have to get out and Dev Conf happens at a specific date We need to find a way to short these consensus finding periods in a in a situation where people can actually Take a decision and go ahead I'd like to agree quite strongly with DDA on this point because it is time-based The effect of always requiring a consensus although we should certainly try to be a team that works well together And does things based on consensus because when you have consensus people feel better about things The problem is when you don't have consensus And you don't have a process for deciding in the absence of consensus the net result is that it drags on it Drains everybody and everybody feels miserable at the end of it because some people get their way But had to fight for it other people didn't get their way and had to fight for it And it repeats itself over and over again And so I think it's important when as we're talking about processes for Dev Conf that we do have a way to efficiently Decide in the absence of consensus and some of this I think means also developing more of a culture of actively seeking consensus and and and you know Understanding what the consensus is and taking decisions that the whole team can support But some of it is also that you need to have deciders of last resort who will take the decisions when they need to And I think that's something that has not happened in the recent past within the Dev Conf organization I think that's important that we address And I really think the word better better about some consensus rough consensus I don't think we have a total consensus that everyone agrees on the idea But said at least it said said one can say yes a team wants to go this way Steve and I we think we both know that we have a lot of discussions where we Had had different opinions where we were both the least managers I don't think anything ever any of you have ever seen a friction between us on that topic But the world is cushions and we had a proper way to handle that And I think that's the same as what is really needed for Dev Conf It's we should try to drive to consensus or love consensus But if it doesn't work your life decisions need to be made and they need to be made fast But in a way that nobody is hurt and that we can go on and continue to see Consensus again for the next one because consensus also means well I've got this means that ever is that the team agrees it and we go ahead with it It not that just one someone will run around and the next one is going to fight against it because fighting is even worse It's an a bit of delay most most often Would one of you like a microphone Was released him so the question was how did we do that in the least team? I think they were Two different answers to that one is I mean we all know that we couldn't was that we need to come to a common Opinion anyways because there's no need to do it. Otherwise. So yes, it's been slightly hard in lots of cases It was I still disagree with you, but still go ahead or the other way round So this is one way to go Then there was of course not only the release measure There was also the least team so when one of us noticed that he was alone in the release team Even so he was a really special asset. We're here. Just do it. I don't mind too much or the exception case when one of us said Yes, I do mind so much then mostly but other people respected because Yeah, we had lots of respect for each other. So it worked in the last one We had one case where we really couldn't agree and then we escalated together to the technical committee for decision So I wanted to make a remark which wasn't about consensus or voting But about decision-making and my experience this year on bursaries was Not that we had difficulty reaching consensus but that there was no Buddy who felt responsible for driving the process Enough I know Steve is pointing at me and eventually I guess it was me which is fine But it would have been better if I knew that earlier Details so I think when we're thinking about organizing things that it's not just about how we make final difficult decisions But also deciding who's responsible for getting things done is also important. I like Hello, I'd like to comment you both described how consensus Has it's difficult or has problems before the conference this to me It's way more difficult during the conference because there's then even less time usually So I think then this consensus model that needs to be What do we do if we don't reach consensus that needs to be in there definitely and I'd like to ask has anybody watching the talk room one IRC channel. Is there some useful input and As I would like to end this session because I think we are getting in circles. We have five more minutes left But I don't think we need to use this five more minutes Because we really need to work with documents and I really regret that I have not put this document on goby Before the session and then didn't let it happen So Well that did somebody check IRC is there in I can forward Madak agreeing with me so Madak says I think the important thing is exactly related to what Bremner just said Conflict prevention is a lot about definition of roles and management of expectations and I Think that's one reason we why we should not just end the session now and go out But try to follow that and have at least some Understanding on how we will actually I reach to a better point I don't think there's someone that wants to do proposal or a small group or whatever or we all should write to the mailing list or Because I fear a bit that we had a nice session now We had quite some good discussions, but it won't change anything. I Think this will be the case anyway, whether we continue five more minutes or not There are five more minutes that's Using the five minutes here, but what are we doing to continue this discussion, okay? But then let's let's spend those five minutes to talk about this and not about whether we should What decision process not clean enough and what what you said yesterday that you will after depth conflict You will be with busy with finishing depth conf 13 and So my idea would be to discuss this decision-making process and define it when the depth conf 13 final report is done Don't do it now Yeah, so one thing I'm kind of wondering is wouldn't quite a good solution would be to Ask the depth conf depth conf chairs actually to make that work of Defining making sure that rules are clearly defined and defining decision-making process that works with the local team for each depth conf Instead of defining one that would that would always be applied to each different depth conf. Maybe That's part of that conf chairs. That should be part of that depth conf chairs responsibility to ensure that this works similar to ensuring that I'm not sure always present the delegation, but that's a budget is used in a sensible way The release team delegates also decides how the release team works as far as I know or other delegates decide how they're They're not okay. I yeah so I must somehow Put my word against the idea of Putting this decision back until the final report is out because that's In the the case of the last step that would have been by the middle of this this year By the then in the final report is out or in two months better We have one minutes. Okay. I just wanted to I think relay a complaint from gonna you will be surprised here gonna have complaining So kind of says it won't change anything because there's not enough people in the session or at depth conf He remarks on the fact that we're missing two chairs and lots of team members. I Think this is a good closing statement Okay, enjoy the last day of depth conf