PROCESS CHANGE: Introduction of Office Hours

[prajjwalyd]

One of the recommendations for enhancing the contributor experience in Knative, as outlined in the Contributor Experience Research 2024, involves implementing scheduled office hours.

Here's a breakdown of the proposal:

Scheduled Office Hours

• Regular Sessions: Schedule weekly office hours at consistent times to provide a reliable opportunity for contributors to seek help. Ensure that these sessions are well-publicized and open to all contributors, seeking guidance and mentorship or facing challenges while contributing.
• Diverse Mentorship: Rotate the hosts for these sessions among different maintainers and experienced contributors to provide diverse perspectives and expertise. This also helps distribute the mentoring load and gives attendees the chance to interact with various members of the community.

Why is it needed?

• Comfortable Environment: Some contributors may feel uncomfortable asking questions in public forums or Slack channels due to fear of judgment or just lack of confidence. Office hours provide a more supportive environment where they can seek help without hesitation.
• Immediate Support: Real-time interaction during office hours allows contributors to get immediate feedback and solutions to their problems, reducing delays and enhancing productivity.
• Community Building: Regular interactions through office hours foster a stronger sense of community and collaboration. Contributors get to know each other and build relationships, which can lead to more effective teamwork and knowledge sharing.
• Adoption by Other Projects: Many open-source projects have adopted office hours as a best practice to enhance collaboration and support.

Implementation:

• Scheduling: Establish a regular schedule for weekly office hours at convenient times for contributors.
• Duration: Start with a 30-minute weekly call and increase it over time if demand requires.
• Promotion: Publicize the office hours through various channels such as Slack and social media.
• Session Host: Have 1 or 2 maintainers present in a single session, rotating the hosting responsibilities every week to prevent anyone from feeling burdened.

[Cali0707]

/cc @knative/steering-committee @knative/technical-oversight-committee

[dprotaso]

How does this different from the WG meeting?

Calendar is here: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=knative.team_9q83bg07qs5b9rrslp5jor4l6s@group.calendar.google.com

[Cali0707]

@dprotaso it might be a branding problem. One of the things that came up in the interviews with newer contributors was that they didn't feel "ready" to come to the WG meetings. So, perhaps rebranding them to something that sounds less formal could help? Or splitting the WG meetings into triage and office hours (maybe alternating weekly)?

[dprotaso]

So, perhaps rebranding them to something that sounds less formal could help?

Yeah that might be it.

Or splitting the WG meetings into triage and office hours (maybe alternating weekly)?

Pulling triage out makes sense for the WGs that are doing triage in those meetings.

Just note that sync meetings are pretty difficult to have - ideally if there was a more approachable async way (eg. utlizing GitHub issues/Discussions or something else) that would be preffered by myself. Especially since you could search questions that were asked before.

[aliok]

Let's rebrand as office hours...

What we can do is,

• Talk to people coming to the meeting, by specifically asking if they have any questions or if there's a reason if they joined the meeting.
• Go back to WG discussions later on.

Just note that sync meetings are pretty difficult to have - ideally if there was a more approachable async way (eg. utlizing GitHub issues/Discussions or something else) that would be preffered by myself. Especially since you could search questions that were asked before.

You're absolutely right, but I think the idea is preparing a more welcoming and safe environment for people asking questions. And, we're supposed to do the WG meetings anyway, so, we might improve the situation with rebranding.

I am curious what WG leads think. @knative/ux-wg-leads @knative/serving-wg-leads @knative/client-wg-leads @knative/eventing-wg-leads

I think ideally we should have a separate general office hours, not related to any WG, but let's start with rebranding IMO.

[aliok]

@pierDipi I know we rebranded the WG meeting as office hours. Has there been any interest?

If not, we can try to promote it on social media / Slack / mailing lists to gather more interest and still not, we can call it not needed.

[Cali0707]

Has there been any interest?

When I mentioned them in slack the last two weeks, we did have some new contributors showing up. Last week the meeting had the most new attendees I've seen since I joined the WG (3)

But, maybe promoting them more would help too

[Leo6Leo]

One feedback I got from one of the new member who came to that meeting is: they felt more comfortable to join the meeting when heard that's an office hour instead of a WG meeting.

[prajjwalyd]

Glad to hear that this rebranding is giving some positive initial feedback!
I also think that promoting it would help a lot, especially during weeks when we don't have any major agenda (like last Thursday's meeting).