17:59 #startmeeting Xubuntu community meeting 17:59 Meeting started Mon Nov 24 17:59:56 2014 UTC. The chair is knome. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/meetingology. 17:59 17:59 Available commands: action commands idea info link nick 17:59 o/ 18:00 #chair pleia2 18:00 Current chairs: knome pleia2 18:00 i'll get a mouse and then we can start 18:00 o/ 18:00 hi 18:00 mice are important for Xubuntu meetings 18:00 Indeed 18:00 * pleia2 has a vervet 18:00 #topic Open action items 18:01 bluesabre did improbe widget naming 18:01 knome has completed the QA processes change but needs to send it out to the list 18:01 #action knome to send a proposal for the QA process to the -devel ML 18:01 * meetingology knome to send a proposal for the QA process to the -devel ML 18:02 exploratory testing mail is sent 18:02 did I see the last draft? 18:02 and i've scheduled this meeting 18:02 elfy, yes, you've seen the one that's last 18:02 k - thanks :) 18:02 i haven't integrated the last bit yet, but i got an ACK from ochosi so it's merely a small merge 18:02 so that's it for the action items 18:02 #topic Team updates 18:03 #info knome worked on responsive design for the website 18:03 #info pleia2 has been in contact with Unixstickers, they have a Xubuntu t-shirt now! http://www.unixstickers.com/tshirts/linux-and-tux-t-shirts/the-ultimate-xubuntu-linux-tshirt 18:03 * skellat just had the electricity go out & is on emergency power for broadband uplink 18:03 * skellat departs to start recovery 18:04 pleia2, if you are ordering one, let's see how it feels like and if it's ok, then add that to the website 18:04 #info Marketing blueprint for Vivid is finally filled out, discussion later this meeting https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/xubuntu-v-marketing 18:04 #action knome and pleia2 to update to update the website once the t-shirt quality is checked 18:04 * meetingology knome and pleia2 to update to update the website once the t-shirt quality is checked 18:04 to update to update? 18:04 #undo 18:04 Removing item from minutes: ACTION 18:04 knome: will do, trying to get them to toss one in with the QA sticker order (I'll pay for it if needed, but same shipment would be good) 18:04 #action knome and pleia2 to update the website once the t-shirt quality is checked 18:04 * meetingology knome and pleia2 to update the website once the t-shirt quality is checked 18:05 pleia2, sure. i think it would be fair to use the community funds to cover that 18:05 (the shipping, that is) 18:05 let's see how it goes and if you need to pay something, run it through ochosi/team 18:05 any other team updates? 18:06 #info QA checking and updating tests as they come up 18:06 #info QA not much commenting done on the exploratory testing idea - will mail -dev list with more details 18:07 elfy, did we set up a testcase for those reports yet? 18:07 a seperate one? 18:07 yes, since exploratory testing doesn't really fit in the "do X, Y, Z" mindset 18:07 (s) 18:07 or did we decide not to file one 18:07 err, to set up one :P 18:07 I don't see much point tbh 18:08 ack 18:08 i'm fine with that 18:08 there ARE places for people to report 18:08 yep 18:08 any other updates or shall we move on? 18:08 I'm done 18:08 let's move on then 18:08 #topic Announcements 18:09 not really an announcement, but similar in nature... there has been some activity going on to awake the xfce team 18:09 if you are willing to help there (as well), see https://wiki.xfce.org/people 18:09 oh yes, I should social media their links now that it's a weekday 18:09 re: surveys 18:10 basically, we've signed up the xubuntu team in QA; not meaning we'll do all xfce QA 18:10 nice to be consulted 18:10 but to tell the team that we are available if they need help 18:10 since we have a pretty large userbase 18:11 cool 18:11 so, until they ask for anything, we don't need to do anything :) 18:11 (unless we want to) 18:11 elfy, and of course that'll go through the xubuntu procedure, and we'll only do testing when it makes any sense to us 18:12 so no worries! :) 18:12 well given that - I've got something to say I think 18:12 sure, go ahead 18:12 I'm done, I'm losing interest rapidly 18:12 :( 18:12 I'll carry on for this cycle - but I'll not be doing it again 18:13 is it just lack of testers? 18:13 when it comes to milestones I'll not be spending hours of my time to make sure everything gets tested 18:13 elfy, sad to hear that - and if there is anything we can do to help you get motivated, let us know 18:13 so if there's not enough done I will say that we need to not release said milestones 18:14 hmm 18:14 to me, that sounds fair, and maybe we should have done that already when any single person did most of the tests 18:14 well - announcing in here that *we're* going to be helping xfce with testing without bothering to mention it to me just brought my thinking further forward than it was 18:15 hardly a motivating thing to hear 18:15 :\ 18:15 * knome shrugs 18:15 as i mentioned, it's just to let them know that we're available if they need, and we can cooperate with them at that point 18:15 even so 18:16 anyway - I said what I needed to - so we can move on 18:16 ok 18:16 any other announcements? 18:17 can i have a word as a xfce person? 18:17 sidi: please 18:17 for me the goal of this move is not to even ask the distros to do free QA 18:17 but you guys especially at Xubuntu, already do testing 18:17 and i think its clear that @xfce there is no longer any CI or testing running 18:18 yet, we have many downstreams and cant keep up with you guys' own progress 18:18 xub is one of the main 18:18 along with debian and arch, which afaik do no testing 18:18 so when you guys successfully tested some software, it's good to let us know 18:18 when you didnt, we already believe you will file reports 18:19 but its useful for us to know when the software was last tested 18:19 and what is never tested, especially 18:20 as i see it, it's like a part of our regular testing routine 18:20 we use some 4.11 components already, so that's the organic testing we are running for xfce 18:21 the only question that is really useful to the xfce devs, and especially to people like me who commit to triage some reports, is "when was this feature last working?" 18:21 right now i need to test every bug report myself but i sometimes dont have the right setup 18:22 if you guys for instance know that libxfce4ui features worked as expected in 10.foo.bar, and then i realise on my git arch that they dont, i can more easily trace the regression 18:22 so there ought to be a xfce.org place where downstreams can tell us what last worked. 18:23 it's up to you whether it's achievable or not given your workload, no pressure of course 18:23 just wanting to avoid duplication 18:23 i totally agree with that 18:23 * pleia2 nods 18:23 it's certainly a laudable aim 18:23 makes sense 18:23 sidi: I think having you here will help a lot, can be easy for communication to break down as we're doing tests on our end and forget to tell Xfce 18:24 and since we file bug reports and link them to upstream too, it isn't really far off from this point 18:24 well, so far, telling xfce has been kind of hard, because people working on it have been scarce 18:24 yep 18:25 maybe this new project to get things going on will help with that 18:25 pleia2, it really needs to flow down to up rather than the other way around. i'm a former xub so i know where to find you lot, but it's hard for me to keep up with all the downstreams, there even are some that i'm not aware off. you guys and girls are doing an amazing work keeping up with bug reporting and pre-triaging your users' bugs 18:25 it'd be good to also share testing outcomes, and if you feel we cant deal with your info properly then you can suggest better ways 18:26 Sharing test results might require that we adopt your testing framework 18:26 to me it makes sense distros test different features/user tasks 18:26 i think the biggest thing that we need from xfce is that bug reports are actually processed, eg. fixed ;) 18:26 i believe xfce should host a web UI for testers to report trivially 18:26 mmm 18:26 elfy, how do you keep track of testing results at the moment? 18:26 frankly it's hard enough to get people to report what they do 18:27 ~10 users last cycle reported test results 18:27 sidi, iso.qa.ubuntu.com and packages.qa.ubuntu.com 18:27 sidi: currently http://packages.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/milestones/327/builds/82959/testcases 18:27 testing is a PITA indeed. 18:28 we've even been improving the testing trackers so that the information is more easy to get out 18:28 thats cool 18:28 do you know if there is a public web API that would allow us to pull this? 18:28 so its all the same to you but we can unify this with other downstreams who start testing? 18:28 sidi, there is some API, you should talk about that in #ubuntu-quality 18:28 i signed up as a tester yesterday, the docs are very good 18:28 knome, noted 18:29 habhatti: I know you did \o/ 18:29 * sidi will let people continue their meetings 18:29 thanks for the info 18:30 so anyting else under announcements? 18:30 sidi: it's a community meeting :) 18:30 thanks sidi 18:31 ok, let's move on 18:31 #topic Discussion 18:31 so I have a few marketing things 18:31 no items on the agenda, so anybody want to bring up something 18:31 there you go, just #subtopic it 18:31 #subtopic Vivid Marketing 18:32 I saw a talk at a conference recently about marketing open source projects, woo 18:32 a few things I learned: 18:32 1. We need a press contact address on our website, all we have are dev and user list addresses 18:32 I added this to the blueprint as something to work with knome on 18:32 could that be another mailing list? 18:32 I dunno 18:33 for general contacts 18:33 I fear it would end up dead and people wouldn't post to it 18:33 directing that at anybody alone sounds bad 18:33 "no one uses this, must be a bad address" 18:33 well, I am the marketing lead 18:33 so I could take requests and share/respond as appropriate 18:33 if it doesn't sound like too much work for you, then ok 18:33 pleia2: but who'd know it was *dead* ? 18:33 shouldn't be 18:33 elfy: list archives 18:34 i guess one more idea 18:34 surely if foo is mailing us at it - then it would be active when it needs to be? 18:34 we really should set up @xubuntu.org emails, even just aliases 18:34 elfy: I doubt we'll have many folks contacting us 18:34 now feel free to continue :) 18:34 make list archive private? 18:34 :P 18:34 but right now they don't have a great way to contact us at all 18:34 knome: list members only perhaps 18:35 aside from tweeting at us or something, which is very meh 18:35 pleia2, something like that. 18:35 knome: that could work 18:35 pleia2, that would work even if you are on holiday or so 18:35 yeah 18:35 and it would be easy enough to pass on 18:36 xubuntu-contact @ lists.ubuntu.com maybe? 18:36 and discussion related to the requests could be done on the list 18:36 or contacts 18:36 sure 18:36 and i can be a list admin too 18:36 ok, I can submit the request to Canonical IS to set it up 18:37 please add me as a requestor 18:37 will do 18:37 ta 18:37 alright, next thing I learned 18:37 2. We should have a better idea who our users are 18:38 in my head, I think these are just random people who install Xubuntu on their personal machines, but I routinely bump into all kinds of developers and interesting people using Xubuntu for work at conferences 18:38 web dev here, switched because of unity 18:39 so it might be nice to come up with some Personas for various users (developers, classrooms, etc) to make sure our Strat Doc meets their needs 18:39 my first inclination is to create a short user survey which pretty much just asks users how they'd classify themselves user-wise 18:39 like, one question 18:39 Developer, User, Educator, Student, 18:40 if we set up some user surveys, maybe we could ask the participants if they would be ok to be mentioned on the website 18:40 to create a parallel series to "Xubuntu at..." 18:40 could be 2-3 people per article 18:40 ooh, yeah, maybe "if you wish to be contacted about your usage for a possible blog post, put your name and address here" 18:40 that'd be nice 18:40 yep. 18:40 one question isn't enough, i think. unless the question is "please write 500 words describing yourself" 18:41 ali1234, it's a start. 18:41 ali1234: I want to keep this simple, otherwise people won't do it 18:41 we need to start somewhere :) 18:41 well i won't answer a one word survey which is so open-ended 18:41 as i told sidi... we really want to avoid open-ended questions unless we really need a lot of open-ended data 18:41 takes too long to write something. i can blast through multiple choice questions in no time 18:41 ali1234: based on surveys I've conducted in the past, I think you're in the minority 18:42 ali1234, you won't answer a survey with one question and a dropdown box? 18:42 sure, but unless there's like 100 items in the drop down that won't tell you anything useful 18:42 my short surveys always do considerably better than long ones (like, 10x as well) 18:43 anyway, this is just a baseline, currently we know pretty much nothing about our users :\ 18:43 i would go with 5-10 different groups. 18:43 yeah, I'll draft up an etherpad we can collaborate on with options 18:43 great 18:43 #action pleia2 to contact Canonical IS to set up xubuntu-contacts mailing list 18:43 * meetingology pleia2 to contact Canonical IS to set up xubuntu-contacts mailing list 18:44 #action pleia2 to draft etherpad for user self-classification survey 18:44 * meetingology pleia2 to draft etherpad for user self-classification survey 18:44 ok, so that brings me to my last item 18:44 :) 18:44 3. We should figure out if we're truly meeting the needs of our users 18:45 right now we tell them to help us in the dev process early on in the cycle to talk about default options, etc 18:45 but no one does this 18:45 even if they make it to the table, they often don't have the expertise to review our strategy document and help us effectively 18:45 so i guess the question is: how do we make participation easier but at the same time, useful for the team 18:45 yep 18:46 I'm thinking another survey around March or so 18:46 and the other question is 18:46 asking things like "what do you install after installing xubuntu" 18:46 yes, a basic survey now would inform later ones 18:46 how should we process the data from our users, eg. if 15 people say they want libreoffice installed, should we just do that? 18:46 what do we supply that you remove/don't use 18:46 if we really do have an avalanche of libreoffice, that tells us something important 18:46 yep 18:46 knome: no, it's a data point 18:47 we don't have to 18:47 there was a survey on reddit the other day, it had an avalanche of libreoffice 18:47 how do we make sure it's not only the vocal minority? 18:47 knome: well at the moment the vocal minority do make their choices :) 18:47 i guess it ultimately boils down to: how do we stick to what we think is "xubuntu" and at the same time, listen to our users 18:47 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cHinunM_sGz9CUABKVSxWy5dLJAuGYcNRVc9GJ976r4/viewanalytics 18:48 if we do whatever the users say, xubuntu will soon have this, that and the other software and won't fit on a 1GB USB 18:48 knome: well, right now we have no idea except from people who yell at us :) 18:48 i think if you find out more about your users, you'll probably end up with requests for things that are sensibly minimal 18:49 habhatti: agreed 18:49 surely it's better to have some data than just team hoping we're making sensible choices 18:49 correct 18:49 elfy: that's what I'm thinking 18:49 i don't disagree with that 18:49 we don't have to be influenced by the outcome, but it's a start 18:50 yea 18:50 i'm just wondering that how will we know at the end of the day if libreoffice should be installed or not 18:50 maybe, maybe not 18:50 I think we won't know until we give it a try 18:50 and if we just stick to what we have decided so far, how does it help to even ask users? :) 18:50 sure, i'm just bringing out some food for thought 18:50 we won't know that unless we ask 18:50 it's always positive to solicit feedback 18:51 giving users a voice is important, even if it's only one piece of many in our decision 18:51 builds a sense of community 18:51 knome: because it's not a dozen people's voices hopefully :) 18:51 how many replies did sidi get? 18:51 the other question related to preference on software is that how much has xubuntu-core helped people 18:51 we can make that clear in the survey too, "many considerations impact our decisions in direction, this survey seeks to bring in the direct user feedback piece" or somesuch 18:51 ^ 18:52 knome: yeah, maybe break out the default apps into a checkbox question? 18:52 and how many would consider that a fair option for getting the system they want, instead of having libreoffice installed by default for example 18:52 "select tools you use" 18:52 maybe 18:52 anyway, I want to do this in March, so I figure we can start this work in Feburary after we have results from the first survey 18:53 yep, agree with pointing out that it isn't a shouting competition and the group who shouts the loudest, wins.. 18:53 can etherpad up and discuss it more then 18:53 knome: yeah 18:53 please do so 18:53 that's all from me :) 18:53 any other discussions? 18:54 not from me 18:54 and thanks to everyone for being so engaged \o/ 18:54 :) 18:54 #topic Schedule next meeting 18:54 ali1234: this is an interesting survey, would be nice to see coorelation with default apps on their respective system (are they just using what's installed, or?) 18:55 ochosi is up next for XPL 18:55 #nick ochosi 18:55 #action ochosi (for XPL) to schedule next meeting 18:55 * meetingology ochosi (for XPL) to schedule next meeting 18:55 #endmeeting