[technology-pmc] Making the LocationTech Technology PMC great again!

[Andrea Ross <andrea.ross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear LocationTech Technology PMC Members,

OK, let's be honest, I'm about as far from Trump as you can get. ;-)

A few of you approached Thea and me recently expressing concern about the PMC. Some of these concerns included:
1) Not sure what it's for
2) Not sure people are engaged, which lessens the usefulness, and adds delay to getting work done e.g. waiting for CQ's to be approved by the PMC

These are serious concerns. And we want to help make things better.

There's a lot that could be said here. I'll try to keep this very brief, share a few things that my colleagues and I have put in place to help, but most importantly invite you to participate in the discussion to figure out how to make the PMC valuable and responsive to you.

In general, the PMC has a lot of leeway regarding how it operates. The community is as great or otherwise as you choose to make it. The PMC is one of the few forums that knit the group of different project communities into the larger LocationTech community.

Some of the key things we staff folk are looking for is that a discussion is held to confirm whether or not a given CQ (representing a bit of software to be used) makes sense. Beyond that, you have a lot of room to figure out what makes sense.

While the vast majority of the time, the person asking for the CQ is the expert so yes, of course it makes sense. We have seen a good number of instances where other PMC members have suggestions, comments, and even the odd concern. Also useful is when we coordinate across projects to synchronize timing or load balance effort. This doesn't have to be heavyweight.

One concern was that delay getting CQ's approved by the PMC holds up IP review. Part of this was due to summer time absences, in my opinion. I sense part of this is that folks aren't really sure how to engage, or if they should, and so therefore don't.

The plan so far, and please do figure out what you want to do too:

• Add an automated email when a new CQ is raised, and sending it to the PMC list so folks know about new CQs. Potentially do the same in a PMC slack channel.
• Re-assess who the right people are that should be on the PMC. Most likely, add more people who are keen to help to share the load and respond in a timely manner. Encourage those that maybe haven’t been participating to do so, where it makes sense of course.
• Implement is a safety net. The expectation is that a given CQ should be reviewed within 3-5 days. We’re going to add Thea to the PMC, and her task will be to approve CQs that have been sitting for a  longer than they should period of time (10 days perhaps?). I want to stress that this is not a solution, but a remedy to help ease the pain as the PMC figures out the best way to operate. Hopefully this is the rare exception rather than the norm.

We’re definitely open to more ideas if you would care to suggest how we can help further. Our hope is with some tweaks, the PMC becomes useful and more responsive within the next month.

Kind regards,

Andrea Ross
Director, LocationTech