Discussion: Planning an agenda for Express TC meetings

[vinybk]

Starting this thread to coordinate the agenda for Express TC meetings.

Context:

In today's meeting, we discussed the benefits of having someone prepare an agenda ahead of time. This should take about one hour and help contributors bring topics to the TC when they are blocked or need guidance.

Being new to Express contributing, I volunteered to help with this. It seems like a good opportunity to start with a non-technical matter.

Discussion points:

• Existing automatic meeting issue creation (GitHub Workflow)
• Source of topics: where do the topics on the agenda come from?
• Submitting topics: How can contributors submit topics for the meeting?
• Agenda storage: Where should the agenda be stored? (GitHub, Google Docs)
• Meeting minutes: We could use the agenda document to record relevant decisions.
• Update Contributing.md: Should we mention the topic submitting procedure in the contributing guide?

References

Here are two structured meeting notes from other open-source projects that could serve as inspiration:

• Kubeflow Pipelines Meeting Notes
• Kubeflow Community Meeting Notes

Open to ideas on how we should go about this!

[blakeembrey]

Related, but there's the Wednesday working session and the TC agenda meeting. It may be beneficial to test using the working session as a type of stand-up since I've heard from @wesleytodd and others that they don't know what's happening in parts of the ecosystem, as well as allow others to submit recent blockers that may not exist on the agenda.

[vinybk]

Thanks for the input! I think it's a good idea to use the working sessions for this.

Building on that, @bjohansebas recently updated the bot to track issues labeled as 'agenda' in the working session meeting issues. With this change, I think we're close (if not there already) to having a practical workflow where contributors can add this label to issues they want to discuss in the working session. While contributors are always welcome to stand up, adding this label guarantees that their issue is on the agenda.

This encourages participation in the meeting and ensures that issues get addressed even if the contributor can't make it. In the worst-case scenario, their issue would be addressed within 14 days after adding the label, assuming there's enough bandwidth in the meetings.

Thinking about developer experience, it might be helpful to notify contributors when their issue is added to the agenda. Maybe the bot could ping them when their issue is scheduled so they can plan ahead?

@blakeembrey, do you think this is a good direction?

[bjohansebas]

Although I broke the workflow with that label and the issues no longer appear on the agenda, it could be the way forward, given that the labels won’t be shown until we fix it or revert the change. @vinybk can review the statusboard where, at a global level across the three organizations, the issues and PRs with a specific label are listed.

Until an @expressjs/express-tc member can create the agenda label with that script, we won't be able to use it.

[kjugi]

Regarding this:

Source of topics: where do the topics on the agenda come from?

Members can add a label to the issues that are highly commented on or have more attention than others.

About this:

Submitting topics: How can contributors submit topics for the meeting?

Everybody can comment on the meeting issue. For example here: #328 and let know that you want to discuss a particular topic. Not sure if this flow is common or propagated tho.

[vinybk]

Hmm, I see. So the idea of contributors adding the agenda label to their issues wouldn't work for contributors directly because only members can do that.

Everybody can comment on the meeting issue. For example here: #328 and let know that you want to discuss a particular topic. Not sure if this flow is common or propagated tho.

I agree. This seems to be the way currently - also not sure if people know/do it.

`- / -

How about using the workflow to track a specific string in the comments, like #discuss-in-meeting?

This way, non-members can add issues to the agenda as well.

When added to the agenda, the bot would comment something like This issue was added to the [YYYY-MM-DD] working session. to avoid adding the same issue multiple times. If the contributor wants to add it again, they can by commenting the trigger string one more time. The bot would look for it after the last bot comment.

I discussed this with ChatGPT, and it appears to be doable. If you guys think this is a good idea, I can create a test repo to see how it goes. What do you think?

[bjohansebas]

Express has too many repositories to have a bot observing every comment, and the idea of having a bot has already been discarded due to security concerns (#309)

Hmm, I see. So the idea of contributors adding the agenda label to their issues wouldn't work for contributors directly because only members can do that.

If someone needs that label added, they can ask a triage member. also, there are many members who have notifications for all repositories, so if we see that a topic should be added to the agenda, we will most likely do it.

[jonchurch]

I want to step back for a second and highlight that agenda automation is just one piece of a larger problem space around discoverability. While we absolutely need better ways to surface important discussions across our many orgs and repos, the highest leverage improvements will come from refining how we run our meetings and projects.

Here are some of the concepts I mentioned in the last TC meeting (#328) that I said I'd post back in this thread. The goal here is incremental improvement. We don’t need to solve all of this at once, but these principles can guide us toward making meetings more effective.

Express TC Meeting Agenda Principles

If we adopt these principles, we should review this list the week before each TC meeting to refine the agenda:

• Human curation is essential—automation alone cannot ensure high-value discussions.
• Meetings are for making decisions & unblocking work, not open-ended discussions.
• Agenda items require an owner—someone responsible for championing, answering questions, and following up on action items.
• Discussions should be async-first—happening in GitHub issues, not meetings.
• No zombie topics—if an item has been unresolved after two meetings, it moves back to async until a clear decision is possible.
• The agenda must be finalized and widely circulated well in advance, with enough context for attendees to prepare and make effective decisions.

[wesleytodd]

the working session as a type of stand-up since I've heard from @wesleytodd and others that they don't know what's happening in parts of the ecosystem

I love this idea. I dont think we need to like announce everything, but it would be really nice to see folks have a space to say "hey, this is something I think the whole group might like to know about". In many meetings node and the open js foundation folks do a "announcements" section, maybe we could just do both at once?

Thinking about developer experience, it might be helpful to notify contributors when their issue is added to the agenda.

Would be cool if we could add an @ for the person who opened the issue and also maybe the person who added the label to it? The action can for sure be setup to do this.

Until an @expressjs/express-tc member can create the agenda label with that script, we won't be able to use it.

@bjohansebas tell me more about this? I might have missed what you mean here. Is it because we need the tc agenda label in all the orgs?

So the idea of contributors adding the agenda label to their issues wouldn't work for contributors directly because only members can do that.

This would be intentional. I think either a triage member (as @bjohansebas says) or someone else with context to know if it needs to be discussed should be in charge of adding the label.

Additionally, I want to call out to @vinybk and anyone else who is not yet a member of the org but is attending the meetings and participating, if you want to become a triage member that is a great initial role in the org. It gives you the label permission and a few others to help reply and triage incoming issues. It also displays the org on your profile if you want it to. If you want this, see the doc in the express repo about becoming a triage member. IIRC we can nominate you, and we would happily do that!

Meetings are for making decisions & unblocking work, not open-ended discussions.

While I agree, this one is going to be a tough one to enforce in this group. We have over the critical number of "talkers" 😆 to do it without some serious enforcement. Additionally, one thing I have enjoyed over the past years is getting to know y'all better. I wonder if maybe we could make the TC meeting the more structured one but keep the working session more open? Maybe with the standup idea to start, and "an agenda" for the main part but also not being too strict? At least until we could do an in person thing 😉!

The agenda must be finalized and widely circulated well in advance, with enough context for attendees to prepare and make effective decisions.

When I originally set up the action to do these I made it create the meeting a week in advance for exactly this reason. Do we think that is a good schedule? Or should we maybe do it like the Friday before the meeting instead? I worry sometimes that those come across my notifications too soon for me to really think about them. Maybe with a more curated agenda that will fix the problem?

[bjohansebas]

Until an @expressjs/express-tc member can create the agenda label with that script, we won't be able to use it.

@bjohansebas tell me more about this? I might have missed what you mean here. Is it because we need the tc agenda label in all the orgs?

Yep, that label is not created in all repositories, and the new agenda label is not created either (in this case, in any repository)

we could make the TC meeting the more structured one but keep the working session more open

I love that idea

When I originally set up the action to do these I made it create the meeting a week in advance for exactly this reason. Do we think that is a good schedule?

I think the time we have is just right.