[Infrastructure] Proposal: Collaboration Toolset

[Dimitris Zacharopoulos (HARICA)]

On 9/7/2019 11:49 μ.μ., Ryan Sleevi wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 4:36 PM Jos Purvis (jopurvis) 
> <jopurvis at cisco.com <mailto:jopurvis at cisco.com>> wrote:
>
>     So, now that I’ve thoroughly embarrassed myself for one day, let
>     me throw out a proposal that occurred to me during the last CABF. :)
>
>     There was discussion during the meeting of the use of tools like
>     Etherpad to take minutes, providing a collaborative, real-time
>     opportunity for those present to review and correct minutes
>     information—this would potentially lead to faster
>     review-and-approval cycles for minutes. In addition, there have
>     been a couple discussions in different contexts about the use of
>     tools like Slack for Working Groups, since this might lead to a
>     loss of IP-related information from discussions.
>
>     Since we have the ability to host additional services through AWS,
>     I had considered starting up instances of a couple tools:
>
>       * Nextcloud (nextcloud.org <http://nextcloud.org>) is a free and
>         open-source tool that provides document storage, as well as
>         collaborative tools such as Etherpad-like collaborative note
>         editing. This might encourage groups to store working copies
>         of documents in a server the CABF maintains, as well as
>         offering the above-noted collaborative minute-taking.
>
> Known Luddite here. I'm not a big fan of this, largely because the 
> more systems we have that provide document storage, the more documents 
> that end up littered all over :) This was my same apprehension around 
> Microsoft's generous offer to host Sharepoint at one point. That said, 
> I thought our Wiki was meant to be the Happy Path here?
>
> I understand the tension of not wanting to require any One True Way, 
> but I always worry about encouraging Many Disparate Systems. If we 
> switch from the 'what' to the 'why', we can see a few things:
>
> - Collaboration on Minutes
> - In-progress drafts/ballots
> - Task tracking
>
> While Nextcloud appeals for the real-time collaboration on minutes, a 
> different working model might be to use Mattermost itself to track 
> minutes real-time, and thus might also reduce the 
> time-to-draft-minutes rather significantly.
>
> For in-progress drafts/ballots, I'd love to reduce obstacles and 
> friction for folks on GitHub, so that while it may not be required, it 
> ends up the most useful approach for folks.
>
> Task Tracking is a bit more interesting. The Validation WG has, AIUI, 
> used a combination of Trello and Google Docs. My understanding 
> (perhaps incorrectly) is that the latter predates the former. I would 
> think our Wiki may have been equally sufficient? Not sure there.

I personally don't mind introducing various tools that can assist in 
organizing the information/tasks handled by the Forum as long as this 
information "lands" in the same location and platforms that we have 
traditionally been using, otherwise Members will be forced to learn new 
tools all the time. For example, we can use all sorts of tools like 
Etherpad for drafting the minutes of the F2F or even regular 
teleconferences, but the final minutes of the teleconferences must be 
posted on a public mailing list (and appear in the archives) and the 
minutes of the F2F will be posted on the public web site.

>      *
>
>
>       * Mattermost (mattermost.org <http://mattermost.org>) is a free,
>         open-source Slack alternative that provides strong encryption
>         with unlimited channel-logging, allowing for Working Groups to
>         collaborate without loss of IP-related details.
>
>
> While no experience with this particular software, I am supportive of 
> finding /some/ real-time collaboration solution that works, as I think 
> that could unlock a lot of potential here for more effective 
> collaboration during our real-time events, like the telecons and F2F. 
> There's a tension with the cost to infrastructure to support and 
> secure such instances, compared to having something managed/3P (like 
> Slack), but that's second order to what I consider the first order 
> discussion: Whether there is shared sentiment in the value of 
> real-time collaboration / chat.

This is definitely worth exploring some more, especially for 
live/real-time events. We could discuss on our next call perhaps with 
some examples of how people see this being used.

Dimitris.

>
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