Frequently Asked Questions
Who can attend the meeting?
This meeting is open for anyone to come and observe. Even though the meeting is primarily meant as a forum for the members of the Rust teams, it can be hard to define the borders of a community like ours. We'd love to have people who work on major Rust libraries in the ecosystem, for example, or who work on the various Rust teams at different companies.
I have 222+ unread Github notifications in rust-lang/rust. Why is this meeting worth my time?
This meeting is meant for busy people. It's not just a bunch of random status updates. It's a carefully selected set of topics meant to spark both discussions and new ideas for how the Rust teams operate, and a place for us to coordinate on cross-cutting technical projects.
One other point: because the agenda will be circulated in advance, it may be that you pick and choose which meetings to attend based on whether this is a discussion topic that you have a lot of interest in.
Who will MC and who will assemble the meeting agenda?
To start, nikomatsakis plans to do those things. Assuming the meeting is a success, we'll figure out next steps then.
What kinds of things would be a good fit for the agenda?
We're looking for three kinds of things:
- Status updates on projects that could affect multiple teams;
- Experience reports with insights to share;
- "Rough draft" proposals that are ready to be brought before a wider audience.
How can I propose an agenda item?
Open an issue on the CTCFT repo to let nikomatsakis know about it!
What if I have something sensitive to discuss?
For sensitive items, this is likely not the right meeting, but you can reach out to nikomatsakis privately to discuss it.
Does this really have to be synchronous?
Yes. For this to work, we need people to pay attention for an hour. We're all really busy, and asynchronous communication is all too easy to ignore.
What can we do to make this accessible to people around the globe?
The Rust project includes people from all over the world, and some time zones are just plain incompatible. We've put some thought into how to structure the meeting to make it accessible to folks from different time zones:
- We will alternate between different times so that folks in different time zones can more readily attend.
- We will also distribute recordings of the meeting (and perhaps consider livestreaming as well) so that people can watch.
- Per Rust's 'No new rationale' principal, we will not use the meeting to make decisions, particularly on controversial issues, but rather to generate discussion and distribute information. (See the next question.)
What if I can't make some meeting or other? Am I going to miss out on key decisions?
Per Rust's 'No new rationale' principal, we will not use the meeting to make decisions, particularly on controversial issues, but rather to generate discussion and distribute information. This means that folks who couldn't attend the meeting can watch the recordings and then participate in the follow-up discussion.
How will this be better or different than the project leadership sync meeting?
Some time back we attempted a Project Leadership Sync Meeting. The structure was basically status reports and -- after a time -- it petered out in favor of (sparsely used) Zulip streams.
This meeting has a different structure. To start, it will have more active curation of the agenda, and it will not have a "round robin" format. We'll not be looking to find out what is going on, but rather to distribute the key points of that information, and to focus conversation on interesting agenda items that merit discussion.
Further, the scope of the meeting is broader. The meeting will representatives from project groups like error handling and other key efforts of the Rust project.
How did you arrive at those times? Can we try different ones?
The timing for the meeting is something I would like feedback on. I think it's important that we make the meeting accessible, but I also think we should take into account the time zone that the majority of participants are coming from. Here is a kind of survey of possible times and how accessible they are to folks from different time zones:
| Berlin | NY | SF | Beijing | Sydney | Auckland | 🔗 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12:00 🥰 | 06:00 ❌ | 03:00 ❌ | 18:00 🥱 | 20:00 ❌ | 22:00 ❌ | link |
| 15:00 🥰 | 09:00 🥰 | 06:00 ❌ | 21:00 🥱 | 23:00 🥰 | 00:00 ❌ | link |
| 17:00 🥰 | 11:00 🥰 | 08:00 🥰 | 23:00 ❌ | 01:00 ❌ | 02:00 ❌ | link |
| 21:00 🥱 | 15:00 🥰 | 12:00 🥰 | 3:00 ❌ | 5:00 ❌ | 7:00 ❌ | link |
| 01:00 ❌ | 19:00 🥱 | 16:00 🥰 | 7:00 ❌ | 9:00 🥰 | 10:00 🥰 | link |
| 02:00 ❌ | 20:00 🥱 | 17:00 🥰 | 8:00 ❌ | 10:00 🥰 | 11:00 🥰 | link |
| 03:00 ❌ | 21:00 🥱 | 18:00 🥱 | 9:00 🥰 | 11:00 🥰 | 12:00 🥰 | link |
Key:
- 🥰 working hours (9:00..18:00)
- 🥱 rather late (18:00..22:00) -- which could be good for some folks!
- ❌ totally unreasonable (22:00 - 9:00)
I love the logo. Who designed it?
Glad you asked! I love it too! @Xfactor521 made it! 🙏