Issues Arranging Design Forum Calls

Community
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@burke @jthomas

It seems like there have been issues trying to schedule design forums lately. When I ask about people having time for a design forum topic they are not all responding. I’m not sure why this is but it is making it hard to get things scheduled and I am sure it is frustrating to those who propose topics. I post things on Talk and at times have to send emails and/or look for people on chat to get a response. Some of this is pretty typical but I am finding it hard to have the cycles to chase people down.

What could we do to better improve coordination for these meetings?

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I agree that we’ve been struggling lately. Here is a proposed SOP:

  • We created https://om.rs/designtime as an entry point for anyone wanting to request design time. I think we should continue to reinforce this approach – i.e., anyone asking for design time elsewhere should be advised to post to https://om.rs/designtime following the directions outlined in the original post on that topic.†

Scheduling a design forum

  1. Whenever someone proposes a topic on https://om.rs/designtime, we reply in a new topic (see HOWTO at https://om.rs/offtopic) to work out timing arrangements (see this post as an example of best practice):

    • Title: “Design time for [proposed title]”
    • Category: Development
    • Label: design-forum
    • Quote the original request (for context)

  2. When 3+ people’s schedules need to be coordinated, create a doodle poll of upcoming available design forum slots and let them work it out.

  3. Leave it up to the person requesting the design forum to ensure enough people have confirmed before we consider scheduling the forum. If they can’t get people to complete the doodle poll, then there’s probably little chance they’re going to get them all on a call together.

Announcing a design forum

  1. Announce design forum topics not fewer than 3 days beforehand (by Monday for a Wednesday forum and by Friday for a Monday forum).

    • Title: "Design Forum YYYY-MM-DD: [proposed title]
    • Category: Development
    • Labels: meetings design-forum

  2. Ensure the time of the call is included in the announcement

  3. Quote the proposal in the announcement, changing “required attendees” to “ATTN”. See this post for example of best practice. This allows people to see a brief description & objectives for the discussion, who proposed it, and calls out attendees yet again.

  4. Extra credit: revise the OpenMRS calendar (om.rs/cal) entry for that design forum to include the topic and description. I’m not sure if this is necessary, but it would be a nice touch and might help people with timezone dyschronometria.

† I’ve requested a topic-specific reply template for Discourse. If that ever happens, it would make it even easier for people to standardize their design forum proposals.

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I like this approach but would like to hear from others as using this approach requires commitment on those proposing the topic to do some follow up.

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Given our constraints, I think this is actually desirable.

However there’s a bit of a missing piece here in “leave it up to the person…to ensure enough people have confirmed”. The problem is that this question is already being asked on Talk, and people don’t reply. (Often because (a) some people get too much Talk traffic and (b) some people are rarely on Talk).

(For example I myself rarely check my availability based on a talk message, but I always do when Jamie sends me a skype message.)

It sounds a bit like we’re asking the proposer of a topic to use their personal connections to get people to share their schedules, and they won’t necessarily have those connections.

Can we help this by letting people share their skype/telegram/email contacts for this purpose? (I guess we’d make them available to people who are trying to schedule discussions, but not have these contacts be fully public.)

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FYI – I updated today’s design forum announcement to:

  • Include prominent title and description/goals
  • Include “/Attn” as reminder for required attendees
  • Add timezone converter links
  • Include link to notes

Agreed. That was my point. Instead of us offering a calendar management service, we can help them set up a doodle poll with available times and then leave it up to the people who want to see the forum happen to get people to respond to the doodle poll.

Good point. How about this approach?

  • We give 24-48 hours for required attendees to see the post from Talk and respond on the Doodle poll
  • If there are remaining required attendees who haven’t responded to the Doodle poll, we email them and cc the requestor, asking them to fill out the doodle poll.
  • From that point on, it’s up to the requestor to select a time for the call.
  • Once a time is decided, we post an announcement (even if it’s a week or more out… we can always reply with a reminder on the topic to bump it up 2 days before the call)

That would leverage Doodle instead of Talk for coordinating schedules, avoid emailing people unnecessarily, and give the requestor the opening to keep nudging non-responders over email.

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Here are templates for design forum announcements.

Monday design forum announcement

Title: Design Forum {YYYY-MM-DD}: {TOPIC}

Category: Development

Labels: meetings design-forum

Content:

Monday's [design forum](https://om.rs/d) will discuss {TITLE}. Please join us from [4-5 pm UTC](http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/?t=4pm&tz=UTC).

{QUOTE PROPOSAL POST HERE}

----

To join the call using Audio, Chat, & Screen Sharing please use the latest Firefox, Chrome, or other WebRTC-compatible browser and go to: 

https://www.uberconference.com/openmrs

The next design forum on Wednesday, {DD MONTH} @ [6-7 pm UTC](http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/?t=6pm&tz=UTC). See upcoming events on the [OpenMRS Calendar](https://om.rs/cal).

Wednesday design forum announcement

Title: Design Forum {YYYY-MM-DD}: {TOPIC}

Category: Development

Labels: meetings design-forum

Content:

Wednesday's [design forum](https://om.rs/d) will discuss {TITLE}. Please join us from [6-7 pm UTC](http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/?t=6pm&tz=UTC).

{QUOTE PROPOSAL POST HERE}

----

To join the call using Audio, Chat, & Screen Sharing please use the latest Firefox, Chrome, or other WebRTC-compatible browser and go to: 

https://www.uberconference.com/openmrs

The next design forum on Monday, {DD MONTH} @ [4-5 pm UTC](http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/?t=4pm&tz=UTC). See upcoming events on the [OpenMRS Calendar](https://om.rs/cal).
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@jthomas, what do you think about announcing design forums as soon as they are scheduled? On one hand, I could see people getting confused if things are announced out of order or a week or two ahead of time. On the other hand, it might allow for people to discuss or prepare ahead of time.

I was thinking we could announce as soon as it was scheduled and then bump it up with a reply later (e.g., “Reminder, this is next Monday’s topic”).

I dunno. Seeing that you’re putting topics into the OpenMRS Calendar (nice touch!) removes one reason to do this (to be able to search Talk to see if something is already scheduled for a date). Maybe it would confuse more than help.

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@burke I’ve thought about this before and thought it would be confusing to post as they happen. The people who are required are on the proposed topic and scheduling posts so if they wanted to chat about topics ahead of time I think they would/are within the scheduling post. In fact I have seen conversations happen before calls in these post by participants and other community members who are interested.

I honestly am not sure posting any sooner would make a difference but I am also unsure how people are watching. Do they pay attention to proposed topics and/or the design time posts for scheduling like we intended? The idea was for this to be a public way to inform people but maybe they aren’t watching? Something to think about.