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You are here: Home Community Minutes Conference Calls 2010 2010-02-09 Tuesday Meeting

2010-02-09 Tuesday Meeting

Agenda

Remember: Agenda must be complete (with estimated times) on the day before the meeting. Any additions after that must go at the bottom (AOCB)

  1. EM questions: Will's presentation (30 mins)
  2. Project management (1 hr)
  3. AOCB (any other competent business) - briefly
    • Updates to OME site About page-- JRS

Notes

  • Graffle

    • no edits; everyone happy?
    • Chris: did the local changes from Melissa/Chris get added?
      • 2 days late, no worry
  • Agilo

    • possible to reverse?
    • Friday: upgraded the database again. worked well
    • To use it for real, have to change the ticket types (defect)
    • Downgrading is straight-forward
      • Can isable the agilo functionality
      • Lose teams & sprints (tables)
      • Not extensively tested, but went back to normal trac
    • Switch back and forth even
    • URLs are maintained, etc.
    • @Actions
      • Chris Need to request licenses from Agile42
      • Report back on Thursday
  • Survey review (15:11-...)

    • preview: sending them out to external parties
      • Brian: important thing was to vet who we're dealing with
      • know groups before we are required to deliver to them
      • Chris: what does a preview mean?
      • if "preview" is sending out to wider group / from hudson,...
        • a more complicated deal.
        • Brian: managing expectations
      • Josh: What needs to be set in stone?
        • Jason: Is the question clear?
        • Jason: Brian said 2 things * Can't vet fully early testers * Flaming is ok, but should also come with data * "Preview" versus "Prerelease"
      • Two zeroes from Ola & Carlos
        • Ola: Haven't done previews before
        • Carlos: will have to keep track of number of interested parties * Who wants what? Negative offset perhaps of what good may come of it. * Badly phrased? With a preview page, would get a more positive note. * More work to keep track of them, and keep them good enough.
      • Jason: need to keep them small, etc.
        • From some, we haven't gotten much
        • Jean-Marie: dedicated page with clarification of what we mean.
        • Permission, for example, "try at your own risk"
      • Jason:
        • Case-by-case basis for doing site-by-site approach
        • Here's a site that has data/requirement that is vocal and wants a preview
        • OpenGL and HCS haven't got much feedback.
    • job rotation
      • Jason: methodology? PM yes. Cut and paste error (Ignore)
      • Jason's 3rd and 4th -4 weren't. (chair)
        • Note taker: Jason is a horrible note taker
        • You don't want him to be note taker
        • Agenda maker: this way you know the person to go to
      • Most people don't care
      • Andrew: don't think meeting chair & agenda maker
      • Will: do we even need a meeting chair
      • Chris: don't like rotating, benefit from having consistent style
        • no point in recording notes if every time they are different
      • Josh: not a problem to take notes, but it's not accepted
        • Jean-Marie: have one day to review notes
        • Jason: next meeting, appoval of previous minutes
        • last chance to voice issue
        • Colin: implicit is that you've read
        • Will: not convinced
        • Brian: doing it online? not wasting time of meeting?
        • Andrew: reply to nitpick
        • Jean-Marie: hasn't happened for two years
      • Josh: sharing/rotating is a way to learn the process
        • Jason: not best mechanism to learn what's going on with the team
        • Jean-Marie: a bit ambitious
        • Josh: ok. Not a lot of support for large-scale rotating.
      • agenda making
        • best way?
        • @Andrew researchs best way to do it
        • Initially
      • @Actions
        • not rotating.
        • notes are more formal.
        • putting action items on next agenda
    • working week
      • Ola: ideal day is 6 hours of pure development work. Is that true?
      • Chris: relaxing definition of "development"
      • Andrew: difference between regular meetings (non-work) and mini-meetings (is-work)
      • If we're not including regular meetings, then lose a day
        • morning coffee, regular meetings, ...
      • Ola: entire week is 6hr/day in front of computer (docs, tests, code)
        • then is 24 hour week. every hour a 5 minute break.
        • if standard week is 30 hours then 24 hours of coding is maximum
      • is work just typing?
      • Andrew: where's the slack? in estimates or in the time per week?
      • Will: should we just say "ideal days" and not the number of hours?
      • Chris: there are 5 days a week, how many hours do you need for slack?
      • 2 hours for meetings, etc.
      • Jean-Marie: working day is 8 hours.
      • Ola: 30 hours of programming a week is too many
      • during estimates were assuming 30 hours of coding a week
      • 6 hours is all effective work (towards producing something)
      • Josh: anything that is a ticket (and is estimated) counts toward 6 hours
      • Chris: 2x2hour meetings. Tough to do 5 days total.
      • Donald: get paid for 35 hours.
      • Andrew: makes a big difference to the estimates over release period
      • Donald: and someone is then doing 6 hours a week?...
      • Andrew: if you assume people are going to do similar amounts, there's a problem
        • You are trying to schedule relative to others to have it comparable
        • Josh: velocity/averages will get rid of the rounding error
        • Andrew: important when looking who's overloaded
        • Chris: some of us work more than others
        • Jason: want to show that two tasks will be done at the same time
        • Andrew: will effect the planning on how many tasks we can get done
        • Brian: goal is for people to be self-aware about estimation accuracy
        • Then we can start real planning
        • Donald: distinguish between allocation and work that gets done
        • Scott: checking in the meetings that we're living up to our estimates
        • Carlos: don't feel comfortable talking about estimating, but any process will help me
      • @Actions
        • All effective work is counted (not just coding)
        • > <
        • ul>
      • other presentation?
        • bad scheduling, will shouldn't have been double booked
        • Jason: do a few more, summarize quickly
        • we have a gift of getting into the guts
        • schedule another time to go over with EM with Will (ad hoc)
        • Jason: double meetings don't work.
        • Brian: people run out of steam
      • notes
        • notes at all meetings?
          • Andrew: at every meeting is over the top. * Only meetings with decisions * But meetings without decisions are...???
          • @Notes will be taken at all meetings * Chris: Put them on tickets like mini-groups * Jean-Marie: at the moment, Tickets or WorkPlan * For current project-wide mtg, they go on plone
        • Format
          • Will: 2 word bullets are too short. Enough meaning the bullet points if you weren't there. Clarity.
          • Chris: making the notes more formal/declaritive implies that they have to be clear
      • Response time
        • Andrew: 24 hours seems a bit extreme. Not everyone needs that.
        • Jean-Marie: Swiss meeting where lot of confirmation of our 24-hour policy
        • Colin: "Next working day" (Josh: +1)
        • Ola: automatic response when we're away?
          • Chris: gets irritating
          • Andrew: but this isn't personal emails.
      • Mailing list v. forum
        • forums good
        • No's for mailing list
          • Chris: don't like having both of them. But not so bad.
          • Andrew: don't like mailing archive is largely unusable.
          • Andrew: people being able to send emails! +1 (i.e. implementation problem)
          • Brian: searchable...
          • Ola: -2 on forum (not there), because of notification; if works, is +2
          • Donald: forget it exists (30 in. monitor with refresh)
          • Jason: user-standpoint is horrendous. can't get my head around it. * immediacy and status is missing. * Chris: lost on the mailing list, too. (Good email client)
          • Jean-Marie: going through the archive and transform them to notes on the website * Andrew: that's how the FAQ items were made * Jean-Marie: haven't done it again.
        • Josh: having a medium missing requirements could lose people
        • Jason: yes, redundant
        • Donald: task given to someone for managing each of these
          • QA, trac, forums, mailing-list, blog
          • Recognizing that it is actually effort
        • @Actions
          • Keeping everything
          • Fix notification (some time spent)
          • Integrating the two with a bridge (???)
          • Add this to the Paris agenda!
          • Review archives for FAQ
          • Turn QA into ticket
          • Get a big monitor up on the wall
      • rotating jobs
        • Josh: not knowing what is being watched is stressful
        • Chris: like notes, have some people do support provides continuity
        • Chris: in some cases, no one has a chance to respond
        • Jason: I read in survey point "watching" not responding (make sure it's done)
        • Carlos: make me happy/feel more comfortabe if there were 1-2 people (rotated?) to eaves drop on everything
          • and keep up with what's going on and tell others.
          • having this officially?
          • "Forum conductor"
          • pass off more.
          • Carlos: needs to be a shared job
        • @Josh and Chris due "support conductors"
      • public process
        • Jean-Marie: no project is fully public, we already expose a lot
        • Andrew: concerned that we're making promises in "3 days"
        • Donald: at the moment, everything except the graffle is public
        • Chris: something proprietary public is a bad precedent (graffle)
        • Jason: what do people get?
        • @Action: ok to expose information, but aren't going to put work into it
      • team decisions
        • @Actions
          • devteam is not permanent
          • decisions are added to work-plans. (they are updated!)
          • see above
      • methodology/terminology
        • Jean-Marie: using a tool will help us decide on terminology (come back to this)
      • development environment
        • Andrew: I'm doing different work.
        • Jean-Marie: we discussed that before
        • Chris: seems silly
      • tools
        • (figuring out scale of bar-graph)
        • Andrew: plone is fine for just editing, don't trust the database behind it
        • ...
    • Jason/About pages

      • Time to update them (More realistic page)
      • Funding body should see our actual size
      • Glencoe, etc.
      • @Jason will discuss with Andrew
    • JCB Metadata editorial

      • too inwardly focused
      • focus on where this is all going
    • Will/EM

      • What to do next?
      • EMDB is for storing EM, but extend for all metadata types in workflow
      • Missing link of everything (annotations...) together
      • No way to visualize in web client. (Publishing)
      • Some mentions of editor (protocol/processing data)
      • Colin: What is yr1? Few months into first year.
      • In discussions with Christoph...
        • some different ideas of how to proceed
        • scheduling a regular meeting/talk
        • for use in facilities? Probably. Needs discussion
      • Blurred line between EM project and rest of project (doesn't matter)
      • Looking at existing tools, duplicating this work??
      • Chris: How tied to using it as an acquisition platform?
        • Not so directly
        • Others are more acquisition focused.
        • Separate app (not EMAN)
      • Possibly to link things together (not part of grant)
        • Who should be doing this
      • Big images
        • 4Kx4K, 32bit
        • single plane is too big, memory-wise
        • 4Kx4K, 8bit is still too large for viewing
      • What to do now
        • things required for what's promised + other
        • help a little with a lot, or in one area
        • Chris: expectation from Christoph/Ingvar?
          • What are they developing?
          • Igvar on validation of single particle workflow
          • Various people use same raw data for their map (different algorithms)
          • Quantifying the results of those algorithms
        • Work on BF for EM formats is covered (low-level community service)
          • Data-model, etc. yr1 * almost each center has their own standard * MRC
        • Who's in a good position to answer this?
          • "We use SPIDER"
        • Donald: if the algorithm validation is part of this, then focus there?
          • getting everything in the same store
          • Donald: should be in OMERO
          • EMAN2 is a good highlight.
          • Shows us what we need.
          • Jason: what is the baseline? * Data-in, See data, get something like EMAN working
      • Deliverables, biweekly meetings, ...

    Meeting Minutes (from Brian)

    In Attendance: Josh, Chris, Brian, Andrew, Ola, Colin, Will, JM, Donald, Scott, Melissa, Jason

    1. Agilo

      • Looks like we can go back from Agilo if we need too.
      • Chris updated Agilo last week and it went a lot smoother.
      • Chris needs to get some licenses from Agile42. By Thursday Chris should be able to get us our real licenses.
    2. Presentation based on the Survey

      • We can could dotmocracy.org for our surveys in the future.
      • Previews:
        • Brian: Some concern to make sure we 'vet' who we preview to and explain to them carefully what to expect.
        • Jason: As long as the feedback is helpful, even if its negative, its worthy.
        • Ola: We haven't done 'preview' before so we need to define what that is.
        • Carlos: For us to do this we need to keep track of a large number of 'previewers'
        • JM: Lets define what we mean by preview
        • Jason: I think we can decide on a case by case basis who to give previews too and what to focus on during the preview.
        • Josh: Do we need to document what previews are out to who?
          • Jason: No lets just keep doing what we're doing.
      • Job Rotation:
        • Jason: Some folks are good at note taking and agenda making. Nice to know who those folks are! We should keep them where they are.
        • Josh: The important thing is that notes are noticed and reviewed.
          • JM: We should review them. Jason: At the beginning of next meeting we should agree to them.
          • Brian: Lets just do it via nitpick/email.
        • Josh: The Agenda maker is not so much an 'agenda maker, but someone who has a 'snapshot' of what's going on. If we continue to use one person the agenda tends to get copy/paste-like.
          • Jason: a person who knows the scoop is important but that shouldn't be the agenda maker.
          • Josh: Perhaps we should rotate this every iteration?
          • JM: This might be too ambitious at this stage.
          • Josh: OK, lets table my idea for now.
        • Chris: No chair as such, but everyone must read the notes.
      • Working Week:
        • Ola: The issue here seems to be what is an 'ideal day'. Is this only development?
        • Jason: It seems our estimates need to include all effective work?
        • Brian: How do meetings fit into this?
        • Andrew: It makes a difference in our long term projections if we have a 30 or 24 hour week (to cover our meetings, etc).
        • Chris: We are trying to guestimate some hyper-variable thing.. lets just do what we're doing as 'best estimates' and we can adjust after.
        • Brian: The goal is to become 'estimate aware' so we can gain accuracy, then we can work out project management after.
      • Meeting Notes:
        • Summary: At least a summary should be posted for any meeting. Mini-groups will continue to use tickets for their summaries.
        • Will: Bullet points OK but they should be clear, accurate, and most importantly, understandable later on.
      • Community Feedback:
        • A response in 24 hours actually means within a working day. As long as we are cognizant of other folks 'working days' and time zones.
      • Mailing List vs Forum:
        • Andrew: It would be nice if we had better mailing list searching, organizing, and archiving.
        • Ola: Without notification forums are not very good. Fix that and my vote would be +2. Donald/Jason agrees.
        • JM: We should really go through the mailing list archive and pull out FAQ stuff again for the forums.
        • Josh: What we need is something that acts as a forum and mail list and does all!
        • Donald: We have a lot of ways of talking to people maybe we should be assigning folks to various jobs.
        • Jason: Lets ask the question, "What's the best way to communicate with you?" at Paris.
        • JM: Until then we all need to be diligent about checking forums / mailing list.
        • Chris: Having the same people responding to community is a benefit to them, although a burden.
        • Carlos: Likes the idea of having 'watchers' to keep an eye on the community messages.
        • Jason: Josh and Chris 'conduct' the forums now.. we can see about rotating that.
      • What Data Should Be Public?
        • There doesn't seem to be a need for us to 'create work' by formatting things for public consumption as opposed to using what we have now.
        • Sounds as if we keep things 'as they are'
      • Distributed Team Decisions
        • All decisions will be recorded as comments in tickets or meeting minutes.
      • Terminology
        • The terminology we use will most likely be decided on the tools we decide to use.
      • Development Environment
        • People will use whatever tool is 'best for the job'
        • (We will need to review tool requirements in the future)?
    3. Will's Presentation: EM Directions?

      • Currently experimenting with doing part of the EMAN2 workflow in OMERO.
      • Blockers:
        • 4K x 4K 32-bit images are too big for OMERO. Won't import (too big for memory).
        • Storing results in OMERO.
        • Importing EM Data.
      • Questions & Comments:
        • Chris: What is the expectations from Ingvar / Christof?
        • Jason: Seems we need a EM data standard for the next step with Bio-Format
        • Jason: Perhaps we need to contact some of the single molecule labs here in the UK?

    Action Items:

    • Andrew will research how to best set up the agendas
    • We will review the 'action items' from the previous meeting at the beginning of the next meeting.
    • Andrew: review FAQ and update from the mailing list / forums.
    • Jason: Website needs to be updated to accurately reflect the 'ome' team page.
    • Jason & Will: Write Christof.
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