NixCon Governance Workshop

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Posting the meeting notes here for posterity.

Nix Platform Governance Workshop Preparation Meeting #1

Date: 2023-08-23
Participants: @raitobezarius, @infinisil, @zimbatm, @lheckemann (mainly listening), @tomberek, @ron, @fricklerhandwerk (later)
Notes: @infinisil

Agenda

  • @zimbatm: what are top 3 action points we can gather from Where did you get stuck in the Nix ecosystem? Tell me your story ?
    • @infinisil: Issues like that should resolve itself if we fix the more fundamental problems of governance, we should start at the root
  • @raitobezarius: focusing on ensuring complete redundancy of access to community, especially towards unblocking community members in the future.
  • @fricklerhandwerk: ensure all vital functions are staffed and funded, and the ones responsible have authority over their domain and can be held accountable
  • @ron: Prioritize items to maximize focus and chance for progress during the few hours we have together on this
    • define goals for the session - ideally actionable outcome even if it’s small at first

Organization

  • Who leads the workshop? Who takes notes?
  • When does it happen? On which days and times? Nixcon time plan?
    • Split up across 2/3 days, good to process information overnight
    • Do it during beginner talks?
    • Could do it partly during lunch (there’s a longer break), maximum taking up time from one talk
    • On hackday before the hacking starts in the morning
    • Decision: 13:30 - ~14:15 on the conference days, morning on the hackday longer (08:30am)
  • Should it be publicly streamed or be private?
    • Decision: Not streamed/recorded
  • How will it be advertised publicly? What’s the description @zimbatm submitted to the NixCon proposal? (@ron: It’s currently a proposal that we can add as an agenda item if we’d like)
    • Decision:
      • Let’s write down who will be there in the meeting, people can challenge/ask if they don’t feel represented
      • Include a description for each person joining, affiliation
      • Witnesses allowed, but limited
    • Witnesses could take notes
  • How do we make sure all the people that should be there are actually there (if there at Nixcon) and participating in the discussion?
    • We can bunch them together there?
    • PM them ahead of time, confirm individually
    • 1 person per “component”, don’t have too many representatives of the same part
    • Diverse viewpoints
    • Whose viewpoint could be missed?
    • The people doing a lot in the community should be there
    • Team leads
    • Potentially missing:
      • New-comers to Nix
        • They don’t know enough about Nix to know the context
        • Not important for now
      • Genders diversity
      • People burned out from Nix
      • People that aren’t involved but have an interest, aka silent users
        • They might not be silent on forums, but not investing a lot of time
      • The people we don’t know, isn’t in the circle (yet)
    • Could write down these missing viewpoints in the public announcement
    • Even if we can’t represent them, we should keep them in mind
    • @fricklerhandwerk: Who to invite? What about people not there?
      • I have a list of the most frequent contributors, could publish it
      • @raitobezarius: Only active people (we don’t want to ping burnt-out people)
    • Decision: Mention that people are welcome to fill gaps in viewpoints
  • How to we ensure that the effort continues async/remotely past NixCon?
    • @fricklerhandwerk: can pick up the subject in the Zurich workshop, date is already known
      • (general disagreement on this idea, that would be too localized)
    • Continue online
    • Could have changing themes, invite different people depending on that
    • People often just want to be heard
    • @raitobezarius: Publicly address common concerns of people.
    • Collect concerns of people, then publicly write how it’s getting addressed
    • Listen, don’t let people write into the void
    • @infinisil: To continue, just offline, same structure as NixCon
    • @zimbatm: Idea: People come up with proposals that will be discussed.
      • Could be governance proposals too
      • Board of people with permissions
    • @ron: make sure it’s on our agenda to put a structure/plan for how this proceeds async/remotely

Next steps

  • anything to address right now?
    • @raitobezarius: We can’t talk about everything in these meetings
    • There are a lot of permissions that are difficult to unlock
    • We should unlock all permissions held by single people
    • Is access shared between people?
    • proposal: shared accesses to critical resources
    • proposal: establish team lead responsibilities
    • proposal: Allow people to point out where they’re blocked on permissions, then we can implement that
    • @zimbatm has root access to a lot of things, is willing to hand out permissions
    • @zimbatm can ask @edolstra/@grahamc/others for permissions

Next Meeting

  • 15:00 CEST 2023-08-31, @infinisil will send invites

Async tasks

  • @infinisil will send invites for the next meeting
  • @zimbatm sketch public address, send it for review to the Matrix channel
    • Will includes who will be there and what they’re representing
    • Send the draft early, then we can all help out
  • @raitobezarius ensure that we have a place for it, and how much space
    • @ron: Ideally circle arrangement
  • @raitobezarius/@ron: Guarantee the schedule
  • @fricklerhandwerk: Share list of most active contributors
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