Proposals: an APAC Dev Chat + Town Hall Meetings

I have two proposals that I would like to bring to your attention to increase the number of dev chats to include contributors from APAC and contributors that can not meet in person at this time.

APAC Dev Chat

The current dev chat happens at 08:00 PM UTC. This is a good time for all the US and people in Western Europe that don’t mind staying up until 11 pm to chat. Anyone easter than CEST needs to stay up very late just to start the chat. Very early risers in Australia show up but this doesn’t seem like the best way to include as many contributors as we could in a global project.
I propose we have two chats on the same day, one Americas and EMEA friendly (possibly have it at 7 PM UTC, which should start-of-day PDT and before midnight in the Middle East) and one APAC friendly.
This is something that the Community Team has been doing for a couple of years now, and the Hosting Team has adopted too.

Town Hall Meetings

Contributor Days are gonna happen less often in 2020. The WordPress project manages fine with async, but it’s very useful to come together face to face every once in a while.
The Marketing Team has weekly Coffee Breaks and as far as I know, people appreciate the opportunity to chat with like-minded contributor.
My proposal is to have a one-hour Town Hall, once a month, via videocall (platform to be determined) where we mix business and pleasure: the pleasure to catch up with each other and see how everyone is doing and discuss some topics/tasks we are working on. Maybe you have a ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. you would like more eyes on, maybe you have an idea for a feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. and you want to discuss it with other contributors.
Maybe sometimes someone who is working on exciting features can attend and we can ask questions. Or maybe we end up having a cup to tea on video 🙂

This is in no way meant to substitute weekly chats, nor it’s a place to make decisions. I think of it as a place where we might encourage each other to keep contributing and feel less lonely.

What do you think?

For number one I think someone needs to step up and say “I’ll do it”. Better a group of people that can rotate. The folxs hosting the Americas/EMEA chat can catch up with what was said in the previous chat

For number two I would first like to hear opinions: on the idea itself, the potential schedule, the platform. Maybe it’s a terrible idea, maybe it’s a great one. Who knows 🙂

Deadline to comment: May 18, 2020

Thanks!