 Okay, welcome to our QWERTY meeting in April. It's been, yeah, the last meeting we had was to kick off the hackathon two months ago, and I think the world's turned upside down a bit since then, but hopefully everyone's doing well and safe. I think I talked to a number of you either on the phone or Slack or Gitter. Things are going okay, and I appreciate you guys responding to my comments on issues, MRs, or responding to my Slack messages when there are obviously other things going on. We obviously skipped the meeting last month. We thought we'll get a chance to meet face to face, but that obviously didn't happen, but have several items that want to go over. And then have an item under any other business under number four, but we can certainly discuss other topics as well. Let's see. Let me go into the presentation mode. So first is the scale retrospective. This is an event about a month and a half ago. It seems like a world away when we actually had events. And I'll talk about you efforts to move a lot of the events online or virtually, because obviously we're not going to be able to have a lot of traditional events at a location face to face. So Gill Lab Marketing Team has actually been looking at this for a while and wanted to support this with meetups and hackathons for wider community members as well. And there's been a, oops, sorry, advanced too fast. Talk about new core team members that we have a confidential issue that's open that's being discussed. We'll quickly talk about that. And then in time remaining, we can talk other topics besides the next meeting in May as well. Before I go on, like any other topics that people want to add here before I continue or plow through, then I guess I can get started. Ray, can I ask about the virtual contribute that is going to happen in April? Yes, I don't have a ton of information on that. But yeah, I haven't, like I've been out for a few days, so I haven't been like on top of things on virtual contributes. Like if things are being like discussed in like a Slack channels or on issues, but yeah, I don't think, I think there are like some talks that are being lined up in April. Renmi, I don't know if you know more than I do, but I've sort of been away from that for at least a few days. But happy to follow up on Slack or other avenues, but good question. I'll make a note of that too for myself. Okay, so the first agenda topic, scale, this is an event. This is the 18th edition of the open source event that's been happening in the LA area. And it was actually my first participation at the event was last year. I just went there as an attendee. GitLab also had a booth for in the expo area, so I helped out a bit, but I just mainly went there to see what the event was about. And I mean, I really liked the event when I attended last year. It was pretty similar to PlazaM that a lot of you are already familiar that I'm a big fan of. So we organize a GitLab community day on a Friday. And I mean, we had a room for, I mean, it was a decent size room for about 100 people for half a day in the afternoon. And then basically addressed two main topics. One was basically introduce all the programs under the community relationship, not just for code contribution, but for evangelist program, open source program, and education program. So you see a picture of all my colleagues, you know, presenting their programs to the audience. And then we also had Francis Potter from the sales team that actually walked through all of the DevOps stages of GitLab. So basically gave an overview of not only of our product, but also community programs. And because of, I mean, this is before the state was basically shut down because of COVID-19, but already things were, I mean, people were already starting to cancel their trips. So the number of people that were in the room were, I think we had about 40 to 45 people in the room throughout the whole afternoon. So it wasn't, it wasn't that bad attendance wise. But the room was able to fit about like 100 people. So it was about half full. And when we sort of pull the attendees, most of the people were from the Los Angeles area. Because I think a lot of the people, like a lot of the companies were already starting to like to cancel all the travels and conference attendance. I was told that typically 15% of the people come from outside of the United States. But I'm guessing it was a lot lower than that. It was mostly what the sense I got was a lot of the folks were local. And I mean, I know Ben's on the call. I mean, thank you Ben for coming over and joining us in the afternoon. It was definitely great having you there. And it was definitely great having, we're able to like introduce somebody to get lab heroes that were in the room, not just Ben, but we have a couple other like the heroes that were in attendance. So we were able to point those people out. And then Ben, you also help people with, because we also had like an hour workshop where we walk through different areas where community members can contribute. And then I mean, four people actually submitted their first MRs to fix some of the documentation. So I sort of listed on the Google doc. So I want people to be familiar with like opening an MR and getting those reviewed MRs. So that was pretty cool. I mean, four new contributors were there. And then I know Ben, you had to help like one or two people out. So I appreciate you being there for that. If you want more details, there's a retrospective. If you click on the retrospective link. So I mean, pretty much all of us that were there, we had sort of pros and cons of how the event went. I mean, you're assuming like events continue like it has in the past, like next year. This is something that we probably definitely want to go back to. Good way to sort of engage with community members, not just in Southern California, but if people are traveling, they definitely get a lot of people from outside of California as well. So something that we'll be strongly consider. And then if you want more photos, I added a link to the Twitter moment there that you can check out. Ben, did you have anything else that you think I missed anything, or feel free to add anything that I forgot about? No, I mean, I think overall it was good. Minus the fact that it was starting to be affected by the virus outbreak. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the keynotes, I mean, their keynotes are on like a Saturday and Sunday. Like the Saturday keynote was like absolutely full with standing around me. And then like Sunday was pretty, was already starting to thin out. And then I've never been to a conference where like the conference schedule was just being adjusted throughout the event because a speaker weren't able to travel and have to cancel their plans. But yeah, I mean, despite that, we can definitely see the type of audience that typically attend the event. So we'll plan on going back with this. I mean, things go back to normal. Yeah, I mean, let us know if you have any questions. Especially if you look through the retrospectives, feel free to comment directly there and let me know if you have any questions. Cool. All right, so moving right along. So hackathon in a box. And I think I talked about this. I can't remember whether it was in January or February. What I started doing late last year was sort of creating a package or content that people can use if they sort of want to organize their own hackathons during like meetups. So I was thinking mostly like pretty much all face to face. People might organize. We have 30 plus meetups that are happening around the world. And one of the topics could be encouraging people to contribute to get led. And I know, Takria, you've done that successfully a few times in Japan. So I wanted to provide a tool to sort of replicate that and call the hackathon in a box. But with the recent events, obviously we're kind of pivoting towards focusing on like a virtual events. I mean, a lot of marketing folks are working on this and give up. And we wanted to sort of focus on virtual events, not just for industry events, but also for meetups as well. Because so John's done a great job of sort of pivoting his meetup programs to support virtual meetups. And you can click on that link. You'll see the new virtual meetups page. And as we did at scale, we kind of piloted like a hackathon in a box at a Hamburg meetup that actually happened the same time as a hackathon in February. I'm not sure if anybody actually made contributions, but David, myself and John were able to sort of attend a meetup for about 30 minutes. I think their meetup was like a 90 minute, but we carved out like a third of the time to encourage people to contribute. So the content material was there. So we just want to make this also available as a tool for virtual meetup. So the first link there is I just made a handbook update. I just asked for a review from John and David to update handbook to include a section on a virtual hackathon. And a couple of things I wanted to point out. I mean, obviously the goal, I mean, we're still going to have like a quarterly hackathons like we've been having over the past couple of years. This is sort of to supplement like what's going, what's happening every quarter. And then the expectation is to rely on wider community members to organize this as they're doing their own meetups in their locations. I mean, John or myself will be able to support and provide materials that are needed to support the virtual meetups. But we're not going to be that hands on. We'll provide the necessary support like John does with the meetups. And the main target will be like a first sign contributors. Like a lot of people who've never done it before. So we want to keep things simple. And then we even want to make the issues like pretty simple enough for people to work on like we did at scale. Like a simple documentation fixes. Those are where this sort of get people get started. So that will be the focus. We'll still have the quarterly hackathon. But this is just a tool for wider community members to do something locally or virtually if they want to organize something. In the first event, I mean, I mentioned that the expectation is to have wider community members sort of organize this, but sort of to kick things off. I'll be the first host and we'll do this in about two weeks on April 29th. And you'll see an issue there. So we'll get that going. And then hopefully we'll get other community members expressed interest in organizing something like this going forward. Yeah, because even meetups, what we notice in early March was that a lot of like an in-person meetups are getting canceled because facilities weren't available. People weren't going into work or travel is being severely restricted. It's the case in most places around the world right now. So we'll see how it goes. And the next couple of meetings will provide an update on how things are going. Any questions or comments? I mean, Takria, you've been very active in organizing meetups in Tokyo area. I assume like meetups are not happening in person anymore for a while, right? Yeah, I assume like you're not able to organize like meetups like in office locations or buildings. Yes, we can have a meetup in person. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So hopefully, I don't know how successful it will be in a lot of places. But I mean, if you're interested in sort of piloting this as a sort of a virtual thing in Japan, I mean, let us know. Yeah, cool. Thanks. All right. So yeah, any questions or comments? I mean, even on the MR, if you want to provide your feedback on that, that would be appreciated. Cool. All right. So moving right along. So new core team members. So and this is one of the discussions that Ben and I had while we're at scale. Because we, I mean, we both realized we haven't added a new member in probably well over a year. And, you know, we've had a lot of good contributors that have been contributing to GILLAB since that time. And then quick reminder in the process, I just basically cut and pasted these sentences from the core team page. I mean, current members like to nominate a new member from the wider community and with the confidential issue that that's been open. And, you know, there will be like a two week window where people can either vote or raise any concerns or objection if there are any concerns within a two week period. If there are no objections within two weeks and there are at least two positive votes, then, you know, I basically reach out to that candidate and then see if they would be willing to join the core team. So that's that's sort of the reminder in the process. And, and Georgie opened the issue, I think, sometime last week and right now the due date is set to 22nd, but I think there's been discussion about extending that because you opened it like right before the Easter holidays, right? Exactly. I think it's wise to extend this for two more weeks just to make sure that most of the core team members to get to see this in time. Right. Yeah. I mean, the last time I checked like maybe it was about an hour ago, I think there were already like a three or four upvotes. So I think about roughly half the people already voted, but yeah, one or two weeks, I think that's completely fine. I mean, the other thing I think I mentioned this in a different issue is that, you know, we could obviously invite like more than one member, you know, if there are other deserving candidates. So, I mean, if people think of other people that you think would be a good fit, I mean, feel free to open up like another issue and then we can discuss it there. No, cool. Sounds good. Yeah. Two questions here, right? Yeah. Do you have feedback from the request to replace Winnie from the team members? No. Yeah. I mean, yeah, thanks for the reminder. I haven't gotten like a, I need to follow up on that discussion on Slack, because I don't think, I mean, I got one feedback from ZJ, but I think he was, I think he actually recommended somebody that's from like from the wider community. But I need to follow up on that. If I don't, I mean, I've got a couple of names that I've heard from people, but I wanted to like open it up to the wider members of the company. But I can start, certainly start reaching out to folks or, I mean, George, if you want to chime in there and encourage other people to come forward with candidates that we appreciate it. Yeah, I completely forgot about that. Yeah. Maybe make it clear what's included. I mean, being a core team member for the team and why I named this. Maybe it could help. Right. Yep. Yeah. And the second question is about the scale event. Could you, was the, what about the, the audience, what the diversity of the audience that you have contributors from mostly females, females, something? Yeah. I mean, Ben, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think the, I mean, the diversity of the audience wasn't a whole lot different from traditional technical conferences. It was, you know, I mean, a lot of, I mean, I think at some point I counted like a high many female attendees were there. I mean, there were, I mean, it was, it was more than a few, but it's, it was probably definitely less than like 10 or 15% is my guess, if I remember correctly. I mean, there weren't that many. Yeah, not, not that I recall. I mean, yeah. I mean, Ben, am I remembering that correctly? Or I don't think it was any different than other tech conferences that we typically go to, but in terms of diversity of attendees? Yeah, I would say, and diversity wasn't great. Yeah. Right. So, I mean, the interesting thing, I mean, this is sort of off the topic, and this isn't like the question you asked. Like one of the things that we asked to the audience, because I asked like how many people are from the area. And the other question I asked people were, how many people already have a gilab.com account? And I think like 100% of the people said yes, which kind of shocked me to be honest. Like, I mean, I expected a high percentage of people, but I didn't expect like close 100% of people having already having like gilab.com account. So that made the hands-on exercise a little bit more like, we're able to kind of jump right into it. So, but yeah, I mean, diversity, I think it's just a, it's a challenge. So, I mean, there were a lot of like a female presenters in other sessions that I attended, but in the room that we're in, unfortunately during our community day, it wasn't, it wasn't that stellar. So, thanks for the questions though. So, the final thing on the core team membership, I mean, this is sort of the question that I wanted to ask, because right now, what we have is, you know, if there's a single objection, then it can block a candidate from becoming a, becoming a core team member. And I think this was fine when the core team was like relatively small, like they had like a four or five people. But as we're growing, I was concerned that is it going to be, is this going to be, you know, potentially discouraged having a, having a diverse group of people in the core team? Because I mean, I just wanted to like, you know, ask people like what your thoughts are. I mean, if we wanted to like move away from like, you know, a single, single objection blocking a candidate, we could, we can change a rule so that, you know, we required like a two-third majority of people to vote yes, rather than, rather than having like a single, single like dissenting opinion, sort of block the candidate from becoming a member. You know, I don't think this has been a huge issue, but I just wanted to sort of raise this and see what people's thoughts are. Like no opinions or... That's good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, if people are okay with this, I mean, I think the easiest thing to do is, I mean, we don't have to decide now, obviously, on the call. Like I can start an MR to sort of update the core team handbook and suggest some texts and see what people think. If there are concerns with what I'm proposing, I think that's probably a good way to discuss it there. Sounds perfect. So I think it sounds good. Yeah. I think if we do it, you know, somehow similar to how it would nominate someone or, you know, MR works too, we could vote on it there. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Let me start like an MR. I mean, I don't think this needs to be private. Like, I mean, we can have a public MR to sort of discuss this. And if there are no objections, then we can merge it into the core team page. And I think that he sort of makes things easy. Cool. Okay. Sounds good. Whoops. All right. So, oh, Hanna said it on note here, which is cool. So, I mean, first thing, I assume this is going to be quick. I thought combining the kickoff of the hackathon and the court team meeting worked out pretty well. So I was going to propose to do the same thing in May. Because I thought, I mean, they've brought a lot more people to the court team meeting. People that are not on court team members to the call. So if there are no objections, I'll just plan on combining the kickoff with the court team meeting next month. I thought the meeting was more interesting as well. So, cool. And then I don't think Hanna is on the call. But let me go to that issue that he opened it and I commented on. And yeah, I think he was suggesting like a badging for hackathon. I had some couple of clarifying questions that I went to ask. I mean, I'm assuming like people who get MRs merge during a hackathon get some sort of a badge. But I'll wait for Hanna's feedback on that. But people have any, like a strong opinion on this? Because I added in a comment, because interestingly enough, about a month ago, I was listening to a podcast from featuring actually John O'Bacon. And then he actually didn't have a very high opinion of badges, because there are just too many of them. And people may not value them as much as they used to. I'm not sure if I 100% agree with that, but I thought it was kind of interesting that he wasn't quite sure if badgings were very effective anymore. But I don't know if people have any thoughts or, I mean, obviously we'll wait for Hanna's like the clarification. But do people have any thoughts on this? Or I mean, I don't have like a, I don't think I have a strong opinion one way or the other. Because I think he opened, like he says, he opened a similar issue on heroes. Like, I don't know, I know we have a graphic for the heroes, but I don't know if it's like you want to call that a badge. But people have any strong like a positive opinion on this? So I don't necessarily have a too strong opinion, but I guess my thing is like, why should someone get a badge for participating in the hackathon versus just a badge for contributing to GitLab in any way, any time? Right, right. Yeah, because we sort of, I mean, I don't want to call this a badge. I mean, obviously I have a top contributor's page, which features many of you on this call. So I have this like a little icons for SuperSara, Sara, and the well. I mean, I don't, I mean, I didn't necessarily call that a badge, but the sort of the only place where we have sort of a recognition and an icon for people that are regularly contributed. But yeah, so yeah, I think, Ben, you bring up a good point. Like if we create a badge for hackathons and we need to have, we probably need to create a lot more or a lot of different badges for people that have been contributing on a regular basis. Right, I think that's, that's, is that what you're suggesting, Ben? Right, I mean, I guess in a way a hackathon is a, seems like a good time for us to, like encourage people to participate, but we also want people to participate all the time. So, you know, it, like, because I, I think some people probably end up participating in the hackathon sort of accidentally, you know, just because the timing winds up, right? Right, yeah. I mean, there are, there are definitely some of that. Like, I mean, I'll get a comment about, they didn't even realize what the hackathon was going on and just a happy accident. But yeah, I mean, I, yeah, so I, I definitely see your point and tend to agree with you that we don't want to devalue the people that are contributing on a regular basis outside of quarterly events. Oops. I was about to edit the slide. And George, I didn't want to forget about the virtual contribute. So, I'll follow up on this. Thank you very much. It was about us. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Any other topics or anything else? I've also added the question about, not sure about the virtual, it's, this is related about, with the virtual hackathon, about guidelines from the team to host the virtual GitLab Meetup. I know it was, a GitLab Meetup in Greece was about to happen one of these days, but does the GitLab team provide any guidelines how to host the virtual GitLab Meetup? Yeah, I mean, let me go back to the page. There should be a checklist on like a hosting virtual Meetups. And I know there's like a checklist on, yeah, there's a checklist if you click on this link, and it takes you to, I think, John's like a handbook page. So, yeah, so there is a definitely a checklist that you can take a look at. And then, yeah, and then if you open up an issue, and then just flag John, and then, I mean, I mean, you're probably, you probably did the same thing for the, for the original Meetup as well in Greece, right, when you open, you open an issue. Yeah, John Bing Bing means that this, yeah. Yeah, right. So, yeah, I think the process is, it's probably not a whole lot different, but he has a little bit more details about like your conferencing tools, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, yeah, so, cool. Hopefully, yeah, that was relatively easy. Okay. No, cool, you bet. So, yeah, I mean, John got this up and running like last week, which was awesome. So, cool. Anything else? Like, are people surviving being indoors all the time? I'm like really tired of running the same trail like over and over again. I don't know what else to do, but hopefully people are staying healthy and insane, like, yeah. Well, things will start to get back to normal soon. Hopefully. Cool. Yeah, cool. All right. All right. Well, thanks everybody for your time. It's a pleasure as always, and we'll, I mean, I'm sure we'll, well, most of us will talk before, but at the latest, we'll talk when we kick out the hackathon next month. All right. Thanks everybody. Have a good day. Bye. Yeah, bye. Have a good day.