Engineering Community Team/Meetings

The Engineering Community Team organizes two public monthly meetings, always on Tuesday at 17:00 UTC (Summer), 16:00 UTC (Winter): Check the Calendar for details about the next meetings.
 * ECT Showcase (last Tuesday of the month) - Showing completed tasks and sharing short term plans. Video hangout + streaming.
 * ECT Office Hour (second Tuesday of the month) - Pre-scheduled topics followed by Q&A. IRC.

We also schedule videoconferencing team meetings for the remaining Tuesdays. Their notes are also published here. If you'd like to attend please send us a request.

Planning
We connect our short term plans with the 2013-14 Wikimedia Technical Community goals at the ECT Showcase. Then we eventually fine tune the details in the following meetings.

(Should regular tasks be included here? Should just one person have the lead of one task? Should we use some section transclusion magic to show this info also in our user profiles?)

Quarterly goals
October to December 2013.

Sumana
 * On sabbatical until Jan 2014.

Guillaume
 * Provide ongoing communications support (blog post reviews, activity pages, etc.)
 * Assemble and publish monthly reports
 * Revive tech news and try to assemble a team of volunteers
 * Experiment with "bug of the week" engagement on social media? (and other small experiments we discussed in SF: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sustainability_tech_contributors.png ) put on backburner in favor of Google Code-In
 * Prepare Google Code-In, publicize communications/documentation tasks, and mentor students

Andre
 * Make "guided bug report form" usable for Bugzilla newbies (inherit feedback from design team) ✅
 * Prepare / start testing upgrade to Bugzilla 4.4 (and our custom patches) - 49597
 * Get "bug of the week" started (kind of rebooting "Annoying little bugs") -- superseded by getting Google Code-In running first and organizing it
 * Think about better Bugzilla taxonomy (products/components structure) and identify some initial non-controversial tasks
 * Provide a NEEDINFO flag in Bugzilla (code does not work currently, should be easier once Bugzilla 4.4 is in place) - 36064
 * Also see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Task_list#Plans_for_Q4.2F2013 for full list of plans

Quim
 * FOSS Outreach Program for Women - round 7 kicked off with at least 8 interns and new lessons learned.
 * First Wikimedia participation in Google Code-In headed to a successful completion.
 * About 6 volunteers contributing to automated tests regularly. (questioned)
 * At least 3 Key Progress Indicators integrated to the Tech Communit Metrics dashboard.
 * MediaWiki Architecture Summit, Wikimedia participation at FOSDEM and pre-Wikimania London hackathons ready to roll.
 * "Bug of the Week" process working, including promotion. (after Google Code-in)
 * MediaWiki OSS Way of Working proposal discussed publicly with Wikimedia Foundation development teams and community liaisons. (maybe after Google Code-in)

October 2013
Guillaume
 * Publish the engineering report for September ✅
 * Follow up on outstanding requests (e.g. blog post reviews) ✅
 * Finish to assemble and publish the tech newsletter ✅
 * Rest! ✅
 * Catch up ✅
 * Assemble and publish tech newsletter ✅
 * Start drafting the engineering report for October ✅
 * Plan the activities for the next month ✅

Quim
 * Events: MediaWiki 1.22 Release Plan tech talk ✅ and Flow UX Workshop meetup ✅
 * Participating in Google Code-in ✅
 * Bootstrap experiment of ECT public meetings. ✅
 * Wrap up Google Summer of Code 2013 and leave Possible Projects ready for FOSS Outreach Program for Women - round 7
 * Community metrics: Who contributes code key progress indicator
 * Bug of the Week ready to start.
 * Start drafting MediaWiki OSS Way of Working (too busy, maybe after GCI)
 * Promote OAuth to app developers? (waiting for the team to answer back)

November 2013
Guillaume
 * Publish the engineering report for October
 * Follow up on support requests (e.g. blog post reviews)
 * Get the weekly tech newsletter assembled, published, translated and delivered (ideally with help)
 * Prepare for Google Code-In: prepare tasks and add them to melange, reach out to volunteers and other Wikimedia teams for collaboration
 * Mentor Google Code-In students

Quim
 * Start Google Code-In
 * Start FOSS Outreach Program for Women - Round 7
 * Engineering Community team quarterly review.
 * Proposal for a Wikimedia stand at FOSDEM submitted by November 20. (Dimitar Parvanov)
 * Complete Community metrics: Who contributes code and Gerrit review queue key progress indicators. (Bitergia)
 * Send Request for Proposals for a technical writer temporary contractor.
 * Help organizing Architecture meetings
 * Convert to GCI tasks:
 * Google Code-in
 * Review and polish browser test automation docs for newcomers. (moved from October)
 * Screencast: how to file your first bug report. (moved from October)
 * Wrap up Google Summer of Code 2013 (moved from October)
 * Update Possible Projects (moved from October)

Andre
 * Define generic information (template) to be included in every GCI task description; clean up and import Google Code-In tasks from wikipage into Google Melange.
 * Finish cleaning up and syncing custom CSS in Wikimedia Bugzilla
 * Write an "etiquette" draft for behavior in Bugzilla, similar to Mozilla's, as discussed on teampractices@
 * Start porting our custom Bugzilla patches by writing "dry" (non-tested) patches to deploy on a vanilla Bugzilla 4.4

Events
Heads up about events listed at the Calendar:
 * WikiCon 2013 in Karlsruhe (DE), November 22-24, 2013

Meeting notes
Anything relevant discussed beyond the review of goals.

2013-10-29
ECT Showcase meeting at 16:00 UTC via Google Hangout http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3Gl-oR2ucU Use to send your questions & feedback.

Featuring:


 * Google Code-in ideas page. Qgil
 * Technical communications/What you can do? guillom
 * GSoC & FOSS OPW wrap-up presentation and lessons learned. Qgil
 * Community metrics: Who contributes code. Álvaro del Castillo
 * New guided bug entry form for Bugzilla newcomers -- andre
 * InlineHistory in Bugzilla, showing metadata changes between the lines -- andre
 * Tech/News — has resumed a weekly publication schedule, is translated into at least half a dozen languages every week. guillom
 * Pywikibot migrated from Sourceforge to Bugzilla; import script by Legoktm, imported 400 tickets, triaged 100 tickets over the weekend -- andre
 * Wikis devroom @ FOSDEM accepted (call for participation). Qgil
 * https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/ and Technical communications/Tech blog activity . guillom
 * New experimental process for Engineering Community Team/Meetings. Qgil

2013-10-22
Google Code-in (selection by Google by Nov. 1; program starts on Nov 18; then it lasts about 7 weeks, until Jan. 6)
 * We're going to apply; this is about many many small tasks, each one taking ~2-3 days for a 13-17yo student to complete during their free time
 * Programming: only 1 of the 5 areas of this program. An opportunity for other areas: QA, doc, marketing, design
 * No critical mass last year
 * ECT, QA and Design teams are the only ones concerned at the moment; other teams aren't really prepared for this yet. We may involve them later on during the program, when we/they see progress on other tasks
 * Mentors must respond/review tasks within 36h, and ideally within 24h
 * < Discussion about QA's involvement in google Code-in >
 * Andre: triage-related tasks.
 * Guillaume: Can think of 3 tasks at the moment, one is recurring every week so that makes a few more, another one can be reused a few times as well
 * Quim suggests: Documentation pages to update (use outdated or similar), writing small tutorials (step by step), screencasts, etc. Guillaume will ask the Liaisons team
 * Quim: will find community management-related tasks

Other topics:
 * pywikipediabot bug day
 * ECT Showcase, if there is anything to plan.
 * Things Guillaume may have missed that you really want him to know :)

2013-10-15
Full log.
 * We agreed to prepare Wikimedia's application to the Google Code-in program:
 * qgil: set up Google Code-in page and Google Form with the info agreed here so far
 * qgil: agree participation with QA, UX
 * qgil: coordinate with ECT for outreach tasks
 * andre__ and qgil : triage EASY bugs focusing on code and documentation.
 * We agreed to use try MeetBot in the next ECT meeting on IRC. Instructions.
 * andre__ and qgil to focus first on Google Code-in, and then plan Bug of the Week on November, according to the results obtained.
 * Guide to plan monthly goals: what completed tasks do you want to show at the showcase meeting?

Experimenting with ECT meetings

 * Quim: would like to work more as a team. We're working well as individuals at the moment, and it's working well overall, but we might be able to work even better together


 * Also, we ought to work more closely with liaisons, community advocacy and the communications team at the WMF


 * And work more closely with "the community" (discussion about what this entails exactly)


 * Monthly check-in: what did we do, and what would we like to do. (reuse monthly report)
 * i.e. like quarterly review, but more lightweight and monthly. Also relates to Rob's wish of getting that monthly showcase of what was done.
 * And liaisons / LCA / Comms could be invited to that monthly retrospective / sync-up
 * One public Google hangout per month; two week later office hour on IRC
 * Release management and QA have now their own meeting. Still invited optionally to ECT meetings and we are open to topics proposed by them.