Remote plenaries and Incubation group

Shu-yu Guo: Google

Daniel Ehrenberg: Igalia in partnership with Bloomberg

February 2020 TC39 meeting

Two separate calls, for different reasons, but they're both calls, so we're explaining them together for a unified vision

Remote plenary

Daniel Ehrenberg

Motivation

• Reduce travel burden and stress for everyone
• Further improve inclusion of TC39 mostly-remote delegates
• Let us all be better rested and more mentally present
• Decrease the latency between plenaries

Is it really a plenary if it's remote?

• Yes
• Ecma rules permit TCs to make decisions in person or remote
• The call has the same status as these meetings
• Remote plenaries are expected to have quorum to the same extent as in-person meetings

Agenda and schedule constraints

• Agendas are set 10 days ahead, just like physical meetings
• If people can't attend a remote plenary call and there's an interesting topic, note an agenda constraint and the topic can be bumped to the next meeting
• Committee members are expected to appropriately rate-limit what they add to the agenda: If you were discussing your topic every plenary, that might not be appropriate with plenary every two weeks.

Frequency/plenary hours/call length tradeoff:

Some options:

• Meetings are 15.5 hours
• If we remove two meetings, we'd need to make up 31 hours

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• 4 physical plenaries of the same length, plus…
• An hour-long call every two weeks? -- adds up to 22 hours
• 6 calls that are 5 hours long -- no lost plenary hours!
• 8 calls that are 3 hours -- reduce hours further

Frequency/plenary hours/call length tradeoff

• I'd be interested in your feedback on:
• How many hours could we reduce for efficiency gains� (0 or "negative" are possible answers)
• How frequently you'd be up for a remote plenary?� (weekly? 4x a year?)
• How long of a call seems good to you� (1 hour? 2 hours? 1 day?)

We can choose two of these three, then the other is set

Our proposal

• Four in-person meetings a year
• Every two weeks, an hour-long remote plenary call

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• Theory: Increased efficiency from planning, well-restedness
• ⇒ it's OK to lose 9 hours
• Theory: Calls that are longer than an hour are really brutal

Where and when?

• Physical plenaries:�One US east coast, one US west coast, one Europe, one TBD
• Remote plenaries:�If an hour, most calls in PST morning. 22 calls per year

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• Remote plenary would start happening in 2021, since we already have six meetings planned for 2020�(unless we want to adjust the late 2020 schedule)

Thoughts on remote plenary?�Would the committee be interested in this direction?

INCUBATION CALLS

Shu-yu Guo

Improving the Feedback Loop

TC39 lays out some constraints

TC39 works out the constraints

Stage

Advance-

ment

2 months

2 months

I Wish the Following Were the Norm

1. Champion group do almost all technical work done async in text, e.g. on GitHub issues
2. Broader stakeholder group provide feedback regularly, mostly async in text, sometimes on calls
3. No surprises and off-the-cuff blockers at plenary during stage advancement
4. Comic Sans

Improving the Feedback Loop

Plenary Meeting

Incubation Calls

Stage

Advance-

ment

2 weeks?

2 weeks?

Debate the Details

• Scope: proposals amenable to incubation in smaller groups
• Examples: UUID, ArrayBuffer#transfer, Map#upsert, Array#lastElement
• Purpose: fast feedback loop
• No stage advancement ability
• Produces recommendations to plenary

Who

• TC39 delegates and invited experts
• Incubation group facilitators drive the meeting and draft agendas
• We are available for this role if the committee approves
• Want to be a facilitator of the incubation group too?
• “Rechartered” at the end of every plenary: identify the proposals and stakeholders in TC39 that should be incubated and call for participation, depending on issues identified during plenary
• Expectation is those stakeholders know to check the agenda and show up if their proposal is on the agenda until the next recharter

When

• 1 hour every 2 weeks
• Time slots to be determined by spreadsheet collecting ranked preferences among participants
• Google Meet? Zoom?

Agenda

• Agendas drafted by incubation group facilitators and made available at least 10 days before meeting
• Input welcome to draft and prioritize
• Frozen 5 days before meeting
• Agendas focused on proposals in the current charter
• Champion groups may request new charter between plenaries if they can get the stakeholders to show up

Call Structure

• Mostly time boxed agenda items about the proposals in the charter
• 5, 15, or 25 minutes
• First 5 minutes reserved for administrative and meta topics
• Last 5 minutes reserved for recap
• Minutes to be taken and made available after 2 days to allow for editing

Synthesis

When these meetings happen

• Incubation calls: Start any time now
• Remote plenary: Starting in 2021
• (stick with current 2020 physical plenary plans)
• When they are both happening, alternate weeks

Why they are complementary

Categorically different

• Remote plenaries are like existing plenaries
• Consensus process, stage advancement, etc is only in plenaries
• Incubation calls are to informally discuss, iterate, mentor, etc
• These activities can take place in smaller groups

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• Separation saves time and builds welcoming environments

Proposed next steps

• Remote plenary:�TC39 chair group to integrate committee feedback�and come to a meeting planning decision at some point

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• Incubation groups:�Call to start in the coming weeks,�no formal Ecma/TC structure sought

Concerns?

Feedback?