 Okay, how are you doing doing great? How's your week been? Mike and went well I'm ready for the next weekend You and me both funny how that works out, isn't it? Yeah, it's Tuesday, but I want to be done. Yeah Fortunately we get we're one of those companies that gets veterans day off just tomorrow Yeah, yeah Because our CEO Grew up in a government or military family or something like that. So anyway It was a pleasant surprise to see that on the calendar. I Had a company I would give people all the holidays off I'm coming to work for you Yeah Nice to meet you. Hey, how are you doing? Good. Thanks Are you? Oh I'm good. We're gonna be busy today Yeah, thanks for pointing out like I have to say I'm a little I Don't know if Charles is also feeling seems a little bit confused because they're like so many subgroups and it's like Yeah, you want to You know, I'm sure there's like an etiquette and how to do stuff and it's like it's like, okay I'm just trying to figure it out. I didn't know so it was like when I saw this Contributive growth working group and then I was like, okay, this sounds like the right Yeah We're not terribly formal like if you communicate honestly on any of our channels like you did on the mailing list or whatever Like it's a small group people find you it's just we have these working groups so that People who care about focusing on one topic for an hour every couple weeks can do so and not feel like They're on three meetings a week or anything like that. So for example, I don't go to the governance meetings unless I'm really keen on something I've just been joining all of them How many are they do it you get a lot of work assigned to you But this seems like the Right group to do so you you heard my pit. Oh you read my pitch and Yeah, I think Charles found the sick by coincidence I don't know how like because we were just talking about like well, we have this challenges and we really want to you know Create a framework and make it more, you know, cuz I mean Linker D has been doing a lot of things, you know but it's like yeah in a strategic way and Yeah, and then he he he found this and was like, oh my god, this sounds like exactly what we need and then Exactly what we need and so yeah, it's like I think is any I think that it was on the agenda So we don't have anything else Because I know Paris and Karen it's if they show up if they don't show up we're not gonna talk about their stuff Um But that's very dear to our hearts as well. So yeah, no, we're definitely talking about yours first So how yeah, like Yeah, if you could just let us know as newbies You know what we would like to do is like how do we make it happen? You said like yes, it is the right Group How do we get it started? What is yeah, just like a quick introduction into the sick world for Charles and me Sure. Sure. Um One Paris apply the better person answer, but she's not on the call. Yeah, she's gonna be a couple minutes late So far what our group has been doing is we get together every other week Oh, we can obviously people can get together more if they want to but that's just kind of our regular recurring cadence and then Put stuff on the agenda We could spend an entire meeting doing a working meeting where we talked just about for example Contributor growth strategy framework and being like what do we want in it? Let's open up a document start collaborating And then usually one person takes point for getting something Edited and completely filled out so that we could open up a poll request to our repository I don't know if you've seen this yet This is where when we're ready and we have up like a The framework, this is where it would go I'm working right now on taking what's here and making a website so people can read it Yeah, I saw like what you shared and it looks great and in the slack job Well, if I could type There we go. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm working on guides right now And essentially what happened is we'd be clever right here. You can you know work on it Independently you can engage with people in the community and start filling this out and Then when you're ready to send a poll request to add Essentially like a page for this, but they're just pages in here at the moment. It's like we go on a contributor growth At the moment we was just documents and we're keeping them here. We don't have them on the website yet, but And then it's just marked down and whatever you want to write And the only thing is we just need to make sure that As a group as a sig we all kind of agree on what we're saying so Usually that's not a problem, but yeah That that kind of stuff usually comes out in these meetings where people And contributor growth or whatever we'll say like wow, I vehemently disagree or something And otherwise the PR is mostly just editing making sure you know There's no typos. We didn't miss anything that kind of stuff and how do How do we because Like personally, I don't have a lot to contribute in terms of knowledge Right, I'm new to this So my idea was okay like if we have a few people Who can just you know like provide feedback and that's why I was saying like if we could you know recruit a small group of people Maybe like you know seven. I don't know maybe less. It just depends like and and Have a meeting we recorded like this one and then I just go and summarize it I want to make it as easy as possible for the people who have it in their brains because like That's my way of contributing right by they they they give the knowledge and and then I could You know write a draft and then circulate it because I think like we are also Working internally and trying to figure it out internally and and Charles and I could probably also contribute a little bit but the idea is like I mean, there are so many people on different companies who have Have been or and from projects that are more mature who know What has worked and what hasn't worked and if we could like compile all that knowledge, you know And have that dynamic discussion, you know, because like we I mean we could come up with ideas and brainstorm what we haven't really tried it out but like if we can like That was kind of my hope to get people to who have had the experience and Yeah, brainstorm and and and capture that Knowledge in a document that everyone can then benefit from and like how does that recruit immense? Part and do you think I mean is there an appetite at all? Do you think like do people? Because it is a big group, but yeah the question is it's very easy to be on the mailing list, right? It's another thing to actually be part of I would suggest that um, so what I have no problems with anything you're saying I'm just thinking about how we can make it happen. Um, I would think first like identify people who we think We'd love to just ask questions too because we're pretty sure they have good answers And then I would be sure that we come together with like come prepared with the questions we want to ask And most people if you say can I just get some of your time? And maybe it's like 30 minutes and we ask some very targeted questions And then we handle collating and editing and bringing it together. I think people would be willing minus Holidays vacation and the election It's you know, like yeah, that's a standard like Thing you have kind of to add everything at the moment. Um But I just want to bring that up because a lot of people are going to be involved with a conference I think it's next week. Oh, yeah Yeah, and then a lot of people have Thanksgiving and then Uh PTO but if we can kind of like work around that or maybe engage with people one on one instead of trying to get A big meeting of 10 people. I think that would Work pretty well. Yeah. Yeah, okay Um, and would you because you've been in a part of this group for a little longer than us Uh, which isn't difficult longer But um, could you help I maybe like suggesting I didn't find people that you know that would be uh, like, you know And I don't want to put you in a spot or anything, but I just don't know who's part of that group and who you think are um, you know are active and Know a lot that we could ask and we maybe like we don't have to name names while we're recording But yeah offline I think we can come up with One is projects. We think we're doing this. Well, we may not know that the people particularly But we may go we really think Envoy for example is doing a great job of growing their community and we'd like to talk to someone who Has been leading that and reach out to them and we may know we're like, oh it's my client. Okay um, or we may just know certain people like Paris Who like this is what they do And if we can identify people who are community managers who focus on this stuff We can say we know we know they do a great job with it and we'll invite them But I think it helps to talk about projects like other individual projects that You think are doing this well and we'd like to reach out to them Um, I think we were trying we were discussing that last time, right? Um We were trying to identify projects that are but then we were talking about ourselves right now. We're talking in general, right? Um, and one of the feedback was that a lot of people are struggling with the same thing. So that was kind of like the the Aha moment for well, I mean probably we should have guessed it, right? But like you always think you're the only one struggling with those things But apparently like everyone is going through that challenge. I think v tests josh mentioned them um Here are you in this document? Could you maybe add some people? Uh, I think quite understand what you said v tax V. Yeah, let me just where is I think v tests used to be a hepdo project, right? Isn't it now? Like via somewhere or something part of tanzu Unless I'm thinking wrong one I think I could be wrong Wouldn't be the first time Oh, okay I am wrong. I'm definitely wrong. No, no, that's fine. I just um, I I didn't pronounce it that way in my head. So I Pronounce maybe I don't know. No, no, I just uh, I never said it out loud before You know how that is um Yeah, I think part of the strategy that I'm also part of the strategy that we discussed is looking at other cncf projects To see which are like roughly at the same level as us community-wise and Seeing what kind of collaboration we can do with them if it makes sense for two Two projects to work together Um, but then also we want to take lessons from some of these projects that are already Like on boy, which has a huge community Yeah, I think what we very beneficial is talking to Projects who are a lot more mature and have gone through All the pitfalls, you know and said like okay, this sounds like a good idea But much more difficult and just like so we can you know create like Based on that like all the knowledge that they um Accumulated over the years then put that into like some guidelines. Um So it's a little bit different different discussion from what we had last time We were talking about like who can we compare ourselves now? It's probably more it's like who are like who's doing it right like when who is it was much further along and who can share Yeah, their experience who yeah Yeah, well, that's why I put Paris on there. It's her work with kubernetes Qualifies for that Don't know many projects who Have been pretty vocal about saying they're doing it well um, so I think a lot more people are going to fall into the category of They're trying to work on this right now and that's we want to engage with it may not be less the same level is more just like Whoever's like actively thinking about this. Yeah, it doesn't matter. You know, like if we get like different people who have tried different things Uh together we can come up, you know with a much better plan, right? And the idea is like you you put it out there and then over the years, you know, we We add more improve it or like it's just like to get started and then It's yeah Should be a living document at some point you kind of start, you know updating with new experiences and new things that people have experimented but Instead of that know-how staying within those teams, you know, like it should be out there for the community Yeah, I think that um We should focus on being iterative with us uh, just getting As soon as we get like one idea One tip one piece of advice one reflection or case study. Let's put it up there um instead of trying to Create something in a big bang So just because I think we're going to get a trickle of feedback from people over time I think it may be more of an engagement over a couple months talking to people And getting them when they are available to talk to us um Like I said, for example, I don't expect many people to have time in the next Month and a half, you know Yeah to engage with us But after the holidays me able to chat with people and then fill it out more and refine what we have um You're free to use this meeting This scheduled one to invite people to uh If you if you don't want to try to set up one-on-one things with people you can invite them to come to this meeting when they're available Um, they may not work for all time so and so this is ridiculously late for Yeah outside the u.s Yeah, so yeah, so basically like kind of I think that the topics that um We had identified as like main and it's like and that can be like. Yeah, as you said, it doesn't have to be like the whole thing, but like uh I mean You can only talk about so much in each meeting Right would be like growing the code contributive base right like what are like strategies like and ideas Yeah, but that would be one meeting and then the second one and then this is just again This is just a suggestion because I wanted to put something out there and it's discussion And then recognizing and then lay in Again recognizing and enabling non-code contributors Definitely That would be another one, right and then the other the third one would be recruiting external maintainers core core slash core contributors Uh, which would be with a particular focus on building the contributor ladder So that's like we're very much aligned because I know that's uh important thing as well for the graduation and that's something that we Are very interested in it as well. So it's great that that is um Topic that other people put out there. I have a question about that last one. Just real quick Yeah, I want to make sure I understand what the focus is Is it trying to increase maintainer diversity? specifically Not only yes, or is it just trying to promote existing contributors into the maintainer role Because those are actually two very different things Well, don't you don't you generally start as a contributor and then you become a maintainer? You don't go right into maintainer. Yes. However, what I'm trying to say is that um, your funnel of new contributors may not actually count towards your diversity at all um, and if you're trying to find people who are potential maintainers from other companies um, that's a completely different ballgame of trying to find someone who would basically have somebody Who's being paid to work on your project? Get them involved with the project. It's it's a different sometimes it happens naturally And they're already attracted your project and you're like I'm a Microsoft project and then someone from VMware like works their way up just because they're purely interested But when you're when that hasn't happened and you're trying to graduate um, I think different strategies are probably in order Then just directly encouraging people to move up the ladder because you may just not have any contributors from another company or who or who isn't Uh, basically an end user in the community who occasionally contributes and that doesn't I don't think that counts towards the maintainer diversity Um, well, I guess then let's split that up into two Yeah, yeah Yeah, and I think this is part of the iterative process that we've been going through is like we know we want to Have a contributor ladder and I know that from One of the other from the meeting last Thursday that that's an agenda item for the for the SIG as a whole where we're Trying to figure out is what is how many rungs are there and what is the first rung? Yeah, what's the next rung and so that's something I think we we can all totally iterate on They have oh, sorry. I was just going to let you know that we do have a contributor That yeah, I don't know. It should be able to show up today um One sec. It's a slack dm Okay, oh goodness Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I just think that you'd like to see it Yeah, no for sure and I was I was about to transition into a An orthogonal thought so that's okay Here we go Just so you can see what we've been collaborating on so far in this working group If you're interested and just kind of seeing what we've got or any comments, we're actively looking for feedback on this right now Okay I don't think I've seen this one. This looks it's brand new. You haven't seen it. Okay Book market Yeah, I mean this all makes just reading this ladder here totally makes sense to me Right now we basically have like Community member and contributor and reviewer are all one maintainer is its own thing project lead and community maintainer we we haven't defined Like I think the roles are defined here. We haven't defined what that means within the context of our project And especially when it comes to something like project manager We've we've been taking all that on ourselves and Yeah, it's a much bigger conversation within the team to understand If we are if what it looks like for An external project or not external, but you know a project manager release manager, but this ladder totally makes sense to me Yeah, one thing. Oh, sorry. I just want to call one thing is that um, we don't really expect unless you're in a very large project To have these be different people We're outlining roles Excuse me roles and For a small project you're probably doing all of them if you're a maintainer, right? But we wanted to articulate what the roles were And and allow people to kind of think about when they're thinking about their own project Like just naming it's a role acknowledging the work understanding Any responsibilities or anything you're accountable for or understanding when the role isn't actually being satisfied appropriately So, you know, maybe to look for someone to help meet that role and and like fill it So you're not alone like no one has individuals for all of these but um, these are all things that usually a maintainer is overloaded in trying to do So yeah, that's totally in line with what we're doing right now 100% yeah so the thought that I had a minute ago was A conversation that we're among the conversations we've been having internally katharine's been working Really hard on the what our Um gross strategy looks like how we get Folks into The community how we recognize the work that they're doing My approach has been more on the technical side and one of the first things that I want to do And I think the timing might be actually really great for this. I want to as part of the framework. I would like to have A template for projects to have a hello world, right and this is The idea is Here is a Like a code insiders or sorry a vs code file or a an intelligent file to get your project like set up follow these steps to Modify the code and print hello world And then now you're ready to begin developing Can you help me understand coming back up just one second? Yeah, um, who do you expect to be using this template? It was a target audience for this So just to get someone into your project or Starting a new project. So the template would be the would be used by the project people, right because tool chains are complex and build pipelines are difficult and so What it would be is even if it's a really simple framework of You know, if you use go you're going to need these libraries Or if you use java script, you're going to need these libraries So it's really the the on ramp or the onboarding process for somebody who's like I'm curious about this project. It appears to solve a problem that I have and I need to know more about it. And so the goal would be like you Clone the repository you open the workspace file you edit some code and you see those changes straight away And again, that that's like the the the structure of it And So that would be the the baseline for the template that each project uses So for example v tests, maybe they they're getting they want to onboard somebody quickly I'm not sure what language they're using but they can give you a template file that you are sorry not a template file Uh, let me let me separate the two. So the template is for the framework the What's what's a good name for it just like a Like a mini project. So you would do a mini project and That would be the fully filled out template that the project has so v tests Uh They take the template they add in the implementation details of their tooling chain or their their build pipeline So for us, we're using rust which means you need cargo And the rust sdk installed you need go installed and so The template would be like here are the things that you need to build this project And then the implementation of it for us would be you need go you need rust We use visual studio code. You can open this workspace file and start hacking straight away. Does that make sense separating those two questions, um, just because I'm trying to get everything that I think you have contacts on and I'm missing um So for this project template and you're saying like print hello world Um, if you have an established code base, are they editing the code base? Where's this like a completely separate slim down Set of code that just mimics the environment, but not the code. Nope. So Uh, it's basically setting up your developer environment for a specific project Right. So the template again would be used by v test. It would be used by envoy. It would be used by us and In that template each project would fill in the details of What it would take for you to go and then enter like Uh, you want to print hello world when the application starts up So you're actually editing the project code and all you're doing is getting it to write a log line So that when that container starts up or whatever the application starts up You can go and tail the logs and then like Here's okay. You say okay now you're ready You're you know that your build environment is working the same way that everybody else in the project has their environment working and now when If you have a question or if you have uh, if you file an issue or you file a pull request You can go back and reference this and say starting from the hello world project I went and modified this code because I'm trying to do this So that second piece that I just mentioned I think is further down the line The first part would just be like let's create this template for step one for onboarding people to The project and again that template would be These are the tools you need these are the commands you need to run to build the project Maybe here's some yaml to deploy the resources to Kubernetes and those would be project specific But the template would be something that they just go in and fill in quickly So the template walks a project leader maintainer through Thinking about all the things that we need to be given to someone who's a new contributor so that they could Modify their code base and see it and run it you nailed it That's in fact the next time I try to explain next time I explain it. I'm going to use those words Okay. No, sorry. I didn't mean to ask so many questions. I just want to make sure I got what you were thinking about I think this is cool. We have a section in the contributing guide right now. Okay, where we encourage people To articulate everything we're talking about here, but we don't have anything that walks them through What new people would run into and need to know, you know, and I think that would be very valuable So it's kind of neat to think about so that's like I said, that's kind of more the tech Technology like actual getting your hands into the code side The other part is that Catherine has been working on and that we've been working on together, but mostly Catherine is again recognizing people Yeah recognizing contributions Finding people who are already using linkerd or or using the project That's funny that you wrote that I was that thought just came to my head. You get an onboarding badge. I like it Yeah, like if you have an onboarding Project we'll say our experience then you can get a little bit and we've been talking about badges as part of our working group How can we acknowledge that You have open governance that you that you meet these certain things so that someone looks at your project They can quickly figure out like will someone help me on board. Is this open governance or not or various things? Yeah, so this would be cool I'm so sad Paris in here because she loves badges That's funny. Um, so you got a bunch of cool stuff here. I just want to confirm that these are things that You would like to lead or you asking us to take on and then lead This is this this template is something that I want to build specifically Yeah Catherine is that the same thing for the framework? Yeah, so I'm as I said like I just need the input so um Yeah, maybe having doing one-on-one having brainstorming a few ideas with like for questions with Charles before meeting with people one-on-one or like yeah, I like I'm I'm willing to adapt to whatever works for the people that Have the information and want to share it but yeah, I'm so I'll Probably it sounds like it makes most sense to talk to Paris First because she is one of those people if she's willing to have her maybe interview her ask her for advice and maybe the best approach is like hopping from one to the other right like talking to paris and then Have and like ask all the questions to her and then may I'm sure she knows people that know stuff And she could recommend us and then just hop from one person to the other who's like since I don't know The community of the people maybe just like starting with one person and then hopping from one to the other Makes sense No, I think it makes sense You probably want to get up as many people up front because none of them's going to be ready to talk to you for the next one So you can kind of move to lovers ready. Um I would suggest for for the questions that you want to ask for each topic Like I wouldn't just ask someone like hey, let's grow a contributory grace, right? Like just you were saying we're going to Charles to come up with questions for each meeting like This would probably be a good thing to chat about in one of the sig meetings to either this one or the general one to um, get some more ideas for for questions to ask as well Okay, so just so that we we figure it out and we don't realize like three people in that we really wanted to be asking Some other question too, you know what I mean? So, yeah, yeah, it makes sense Yeah, and I'd rather do it right and even if it takes a little longer than doing it, you know, um, just Mid-Yorker work and and you know forgetting half of it. So action items for next meeting. So this is like Every two weeks, right? So it's is it going to happen even though it's the Thanksgiving week? uh, yeah, okay so action item for next week is um Well, there is no action because we're gonna brainstorm one topic, right? So it's like we're we're going the first topic was growing code contributor and then You know, like I'm gonna come with some questions that I brainstormed with Charles and we're gonna discuss them here and see if we can add to them and then Um, maybe as a group come up with the best person To interview maybe you can ask around we can ask around think about it and and then just Have it ready Like the question is ready to talk to you our first interviewee, which I'm happy to do Does that make sure so I was typing as we're talking so make sure I got this So you'd like to have some brainstorm questions ready to roll for our next meeting and then maybe road test them on me in Paris Yes, the the thing is like I started adjusting we adjusting my So for next meeting Before our next meeting Charles and I I'm going are going to brainstorm ideas for the topic for the first topic Okay, and then we can discuss these questions in this meeting and get feedback and see what's missing So we're not going to come empty-handed. We're going to come with a few Questions, okay Ready to discuss and then we can see, you know, what what's missing what makes sense What doesn't make sense and then hopefully after that meeting We have a set of questions that we think will really capture Everything we want to have in that part of the framework. Yeah And then how identify the first person to interview Yeah, okay. Yeah, that seems good Um Charles was there anything that you wanted I don't not pushing anyone for action I was by the way Things move at the pace people have time for I was just going to write down if you were planning on doing anything some people knew Or if you want to focus on the time Yeah, before the next meeting Two weeks um I yeah, I think I'll try and get like an outline for this template Okay If we come up with a name for what to call it by the way, that's also It's gotta be some clever acronym. I'll come up with it Yeah Maybe it should we will do something like What is it when when your pirates board your ship? A vast I don't know something like that But we'll make it we'll make it like a something very nautical and kubernetes-like Well, it needs to actually be generic for cncf not just kubernetes Just so we keep that in mind. I'm glad you told me that Yeah, yeah, because this is this this sig is for all of cncf So we have people who have nothing to do with nautical nautical terms actually good. Good. I'm actually tired of nautical terms anyway That's okay The problem with nautical terms They're not very accessible, especially across languages and cultures. So There's nothing wrong with us just using our words and being explicit I just want to make sure that when when I talk about it that I'm using Some common language to describe what it is. That's all Totally makes sense. Thank you. Yeah. Oh man. My voice is going in and out I never talked to people and then I have a meeting and it's like My voice is so weak Darren Colvin Um, yeah, well, we've got a ton of great stuff here. I don't know if there's anything else you want to chat about um No, I think like From oh, sorry. Go ahead. Charles. I was just gonna say I think that's all the things that we had Wanted to bring to the meeting right? Yeah, yeah for me. It's just like how do we even get started? So I mean now we have a plan It's like just talking to people Yeah, I have an idea. It's like I don't know like what what do you do even do? So it's like it's good. We have like a first start questions and then we'll move From there um So I can help facilitate Uh, you know, obviously I'll be at every single one of these meetings But if you if you feel like you need something from me and I'm not doing it or whatever You just have confusions feel free to just reach out and And you know ask me or Paris or anybody like hey, how are we supposed to move something forward? Whatever, um, usually if something isn't moving forwards because someone doesn't realize it's on their plate So, yeah, yeah, and everyone is busy. Yeah. Yeah, but I think like if if Until the next meeting you can kind of maybe just think about potential people and if you meet them just you know like Ask if they would be interested like that would be like a huge help. Um If yeah, because Yeah, yeah, I'll keep that like it's contingent on like getting those brains Talk to them, right? Like otherwise, uh, but yeah, I think that that would be like the biggest um Thing on our end. I have one potential name. I need to to Think about it. Make sure I'm not mixing up my people. Um, you know, it is your handle. It's not people sometimes But yeah, I think uh I think we have a couple people we can reach out to at the beginning Yeah, I think probably always the beginning is a little harder, right because you're getting started and but Hopefully once we're rolling and things are Um moving forward, it's gonna be easier I think it will this this is this is stuff that's near and dear to everyone's heart So I'm sure people will be happy to to give us feedback. Yeah Great, okay. Oh, if there's nothing else, I think we're we're good. Okay. I have some time Yeah, thanks for your time. It's really helpful, karen. Yeah. No, thank you for showing up We will we're gonna be regulars here, so Okay Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye