Re: Contributor Summit planning

On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 9:31 AM Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

For the past several years, we've held a Git Contributor Summit as part
of the Git Merge conference. I'd like to get opinions from the community
to help plan future installments. Any feedback or opinion is welcome,
but some obvious things to think about:

  - where, when, and how often?

    Plans are shaping up to have Git Merge 2019 in Brussels right after
    FOSDEM in February (like it was two years ago), with a contributor
    summit attached.

    Are there people who would be more likely to attend a contributor
    summit if it were held elsewhere (e.g., in North America, probably
    in the Bay Area)? Are people interested in attending a separate
    contributor summit not attached to the larger Git Merge (and if so,
    is there any other event it might be worth connecting it with,
    time-wise)?  Are people interested in going to two summits in a year
    (e.g., Brussels in February, and then maybe some in North America
    later in the year), or is that diminishing returns?

We have been kicking around the thought of reviving the GitTogethers
like back in the olden days (I only know them from hearsay), in
Mountain View or Sunnyvale at the Google Campus, but we have not yet
spent enough thought to make it so.

I think twice a year is fine for the community and has not reached the
point of diminishing returns.

As most contributors are from North America (estimated), I would not
mind a conference somewhere here.

I'd be looking forward to Brussels next February!

  - format

    For those who haven't attended before, it's basically 25-ish Git
    (and associated project) developers sitting in a room for a day
    chatting about the project. Topics go on a whiteboard in the
    morning, and then we discuss each for 30-60 minutes.

    We could do multiple days (which might give more room for actually
    working collaboratively instead of just discussing). We could do
    something more formal (like actual talks). We could do something
    less formal (like an all-day spaghetti buffet, where conversation
    happens only between mouthfuls). The sky is the limit. Some of those
    ideas may be better than others.

Personally I think the way is fine; we could collect topics in advance on
the list to have a head start, but the whiteboard is totally fine, IMHO.

Stefan