Proposal: Adjusting Dev Chat times for the 6.7 release

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Background

The weekly WordPress Dev Chat meeting is a tradition that dates back to the days when WordPress contributors primarily communicated via IRC. Since that time, these meetings have continued to serve as a regular time each week where contributors working on CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. releases could gather to have synchronous conversations about important matters related to the upcoming releases or to discuss general team processes.

Given the global nature of the WordPress community, the current time for these Dev Chats are not inclusive to everyone to attend. We experimented with a second APAC Dev Chat starting in 2020 as a way of creating opportunities for folks who could not attend the current time to still participate in a weekly Dev Chat. However, those were not well attended and were eventually abandoned.

Scheduling Dev Chats for WordPress 6.7

Given that the primary purpose of Dev Chats is to have a time for synchronous conversations about the upcoming release, holding them at a time where the majority of named the release squad members for 6.7 are unable to attend isn’t ideal. Let’s consider moving them to a more APAC friendly time during this release.

If we’re trying to find a time that is inclusive to folks from India Standard Time (UTC +5:30) to Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC +10) then the best times for rescheduling seem to be between 3–10 UTC. The early part of that range could cover some folks in the Americas but not folks in EMEA. Likewise, the latter part of this range could work for a majority of folks from EMEA, but is not ideal for folks in the Americas. Moving the time range earlier, to 0:00 UTC would allow participation from more folks in the Americas, but would exclude folks from EMEA and folks around IST as well. With that in mind, I’m proposing a few options for consideration to gather feedback.

Proposed time options

Wednesdays at 3:00 UTC (Ex: Wednesday, August 7, 3:00 UTC): India, Japan, Australia with some late Americas overlap (no EMEA)
Wednesdays at 10:00 UTC (Ex: Wednesday, August 7, 10:00 UTC): India, Japan, Australia and EMEA (no Americas)
Wednesdays at 0:00 UTC (Ex: Wednesday, August 7, 0:00 UTC): Japan, Australia, Americas (no India or EMEA overap)
Wednesdays at 20:00 UTC (Ex: Wednesday, August 7, 20:00 UTC): No Change – Americas and EMEA (no India, Japan, Australia)

Feedback Deadline: July 31, 2024
Please provide feedback to this proposal before Wed., July 31. In your feedback, let us know if you regularly attend Dev Chats and if you have a role for 6.7 that would be impacted (positively or negatively) by your preferred time. We’ll collect responses and plan to announce an updated schedule before Aug. 7, 2024.

Changing the time following the 6.7 release

Currently, WordPress 6.7 is scheduled for release on Nov 12, 2024. Following this release, we will maintain the updated Dev Chat time to address any post-release wrap up, including confirming another time change for the 6.8 release based on the success of this experiment and the needs of the release squad for that release.

Props to @desrosj, @colorful-tones, and @peterwilsoncc for review and feedback on this proposal.

#6-7, #dev-chat, #proposal

Tonya Mork 5:28 pm on July 23, 2024

As the 6.7 release squad is not yet fully formed, I’m curious …

What if the Release Coordinator (RCrelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta).) is not in APAC timezone, such as they are in AMER timezone? How might that affect this proposal?
- Joe McGill 6:12 pm on July 23, 2024
  
  Great question! I hope that we’ll be able to identify the Release Coordinator for 6.7 during the feedback period, which would be an important consideration for what the new time should be. If there are too many unresolved questions by July 31, we can also consider extending the feedback period by another week, but I want to try to resolve this quickly so that the current release squad can be effective right away.
- Héctor Prieto 4:56 pm on July 24, 2024
  
  RCrelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). volunteers for 6.7 are mostly AMER-based, so most options except #2 would work (that is, if we don’t expect the meetings to be during traditional office hours, which is almost never the case for non-AMER folks, too 😅).
  
  In any case, as a recurring RC in recent releases, I would not suggest optimizing for that role, considering the already big representation of APAC leads confirmed in the squad. The squad isn’t finished yet and will take a few more days, but aligning time zones will be considered in its making as a nice to have.
Kira Schroder 1:44 pm on July 24, 2024

Thanks so much for bringing this up for discussion!
I would love to be able to attend dev chat this cycle.

I can be available for options 1, 2, or 3.

Separate from considerations around others’ availability, my personal preference would be for 1 or 2.
- Joe McGill 1:58 am on August 7, 2024
  
  Thanks @kirasong. These options were initially just to hit the edges of what I thought would be the likely windows where people would be available. If 0:00 UTC is too early, would an hour later be preferable, or will that still be too early?
David Baumwald 2:09 am on July 25, 2024

Just stepping back from this a bit, I wonder. In my experience, the Dev Chat of old doesn’t exist anymore. The one where many folks attended and there was consistent engagement from one to the next. This seems to have died(over the COVID era and maybe for various reasons), and Dev Chat for a while became a “link dump”.

Before, there was always a good bit of info spreading and feedback for the current cycle during the “Upcoming Releases” section, but for the last many majors, these updates are usually summarized as “BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. X was released yesterday, Beta X+1 next Tuesday”. I’ve seen very few recent instances of something the release squad needs to share during a synchronous chat that isn’t already disseminated to the same audience.

Thinking about _why_ this is could be the fact that in the last few years, the work going into the release is more open and discoverable with the advent of the public `X-Y-release-leads` channel in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. Whereas, these use to be private channels or release coordination happened either in DMs or Dev Chat. So, maybe this information sharing has just shifted to the dedicated public channel now, and most things shared in Dev Chats would just be repeat.

Anyway, I do think it should be up to the squad to decide that if they _need_ Dev Chat to share extra info based on the way they want to run that cycle, that’s OK.

That being said, recent attempts at having an APAC-friendly Dev Chat(albeit an additional one that occurred +-12 hours from the normal time slot) had pretty poor attendance. If increasing attendance/engagement from the general audience is a goal here, I am not sure that will be easily achieved.
Peter Wilson 1:30 am on July 29, 2024

I can attend either of the first three with my preference being: 3:00 UTC (1), 0:00 UTC (3) and 10:00 UTC (2) as a distant third.

From a coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. tech lead perspective, and I suspect editor tech lead, as long as one of the people listed can attend I think that works.

Comments are closed.

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Communication

Background

Scheduling Dev Chats for WordPress 6.7

Proposed time options

Changing the time following the 6.7 release

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