Contributors Meetup Async Update - February 17th - March 1st, 2024

Working Groups Core Contributors
,
1

Core Contributor Update: Feb 17th - Mar 1st, 2024

Use the jump links below to view the section that interests you:

  1. Working Groups Updates
  2. Events
  3. Projects
  4. Next async update and meetup

1. Working Groups Updates

Working Groups Calendar

1.1. BTR Working Group

Chair: @jalondonot

Blockers or Calls/offers for help

:memo: Meeting notes

1.2. Contributor Coordination Working Group

Chair: Jorge Londoño

  • The team addressed the impact of recent layoffs and reorganization on the project’s maintenance, including the increase in the “elephant factor” and the need for adjustments to facilitate broader participation. The team also considered a proposal from Axim to improve the current open edX release process, including the idea of assigning maintainers the responsibility of fixing bugs reported by the BTR after the testing process is completed. The team also discussed the importance of maintaining a bug-free repository and the responsibilities of the repository maintainer. The team also discussed the introduction of a management tool to prevent micromanagement and foster goal-setting discussions.
  • Next steps
    • Sarina and Adolfo will discuss and align the expectations for maintainers in the new strategy.
    • Omar will consider contributing to BTR QA and may coordinate with the testing manager.
    • Jorge will write a brief post explaining the OKR framework and providing examples that could work for the community.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.3. Data Working Group

Chair: @e0d & @blarghmatey

  • Aspects V1 Product Requirement Document in progress
  • Event bus updates
    • Brian Mesick have been doing some work on prototyping a Tutor plugin that will let people easily configure and run the Kafka or redis backends, test changes, and experiment with the event bus. Looking for feedback on the direction and desire for such a tool.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.4. DEPR Working Group

Chair: @feanil

:memo: Meeting notes

1.5. DevEx Working Group

Chair: @Rebecca_S_Graber & @kmccormick

:arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2023-12-04 DevEx Meetup Notes

:memo: Meeting notes

1.6. DevOps Working Group

Chair: RĂ©gis Behmo

:paperclip: Latest news

Announcement: The DevX Working Group is dissolved! :boom:

Announcement: Join the Tutor Users’ Group :handshake:

  • It’s become clear that there is an acute need to support new Tutor users and plugin developers. It’s also clear that Tutor maintainers benefit from hearing feedback from people who are using the tool.
    So, Kyle will host one-hour users’ group every other week for sharing help, tips, and feedback on using Tutor and developing Tutor plugins. Bring your questions, and get ready for some live debugging! Expert or newbie, all are welcome.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.7. Educators Working Group

Chair: @john_curricume

:arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2024-02-12 Educator WG

:memo: Meeting notes

Blockers or Calls/offers for help

  • Looking for any and all documentors!

1.8. Frontend Working Group

Chair: @arbrandes

:arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2024-02-15 Frontend Working Group Meeting Notes

  • The Frontend Working Group Meeting focused on discussing the utilization of React Query within their projects, transitioning away from Redux for state management. Adam Stankiewicz led the presentation, highlighting React Query’s advantages, including simplified server state management, automatic refetching, and improved maintainability. The group explored React Query’s ability to handle server-side state efficiently, reducing the need for complex state management solutions like Redux. Attendees discussed how React Query streamlines API call handling, offers built-in loading and error states, and allows for efficient data fetching and caching. The conversation also touched on best practices for using React Query, such as query key management and the distinction between client and server state. The meeting concluded with an acknowledgment of React Query’s potential to simplify frontend development workflows, with members expressing interest in adopting it for future projects.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.9. Large Instances Working Group

Chair: @braden & @Felipe

  • Updates from each org on the call - 2U, Edunext, OpenCraft, Raccoon Gang
  • OpenCraft:
    • No new updates. The Open PRs by @GĂĄbor Boros are still waiting for engineering review. Jhony Avella already approved a couple of them.
  • Raccoon Gang:
    • Max is experiencing problems with Kubernetes 1.28 and node selectors. Labels are not assigned on time in AWS to schedule workloads in specific node groups. Using Bottlerocket images fixes the problem. The issue is still being investigated.
  • Edunext:
    • Important pushing on the maintenance working group side of things to support more OpenedX repositories.
    • Tried to connect Prometheus with superset using Trino to translate PromQL queries to SQL. It still needs to be more battle-tested.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.10. Marketing Working Group

Chair: Eden Huthmacher

:memo: Meeting notes

1.11. Maintainers

Chair: Edward Zarecor

:arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2023-09-07 Maintainers’ Meeting notes:

:memo: Meeting notes

1.12. Product Working Group

Chair: Jenna Makowski

  • UX/UI Working Group
    • Mike introduced Paragon, showed the doc site, and explained how it works. He pointed out the two themes (the edX and Open edX theme. The themes will be kept separate to allow for variation. In the future, community members may be able to create their own themes, and see what the Paragon components might look like in their brand colors etc
    • Cassie mentioned that the Open edX theme could do with some modernizing. The group agreed. As there is currently no Figma library for the Open edX theme, Mike suggested that a good first step could be to create a Figma library that matches what’s on the doc site. Once that’s done, we can look at modernizing the library (perhaps even as a joint activity during our meetings - perhaps once a month). We will need to discuss ownership, governance, approval process, and decision makers (amongst other things)
    • Mike offered to give more community members access to the 2U Figma account; Ali will collect the email addresses of everyone who needs access and share them with Mike
    • Brian described some of the benefits of a design system from a development point of view
    • Doug gave a mini Figma workshop, running through the steps of how to use the Paragon library on a file
    • Jenna asked what should happen if one of us has a suggestion for improving an existing component, or for creating a new one. Brian said that that person should get in touch with the Paragon Working Group, explain their idea, and discuss the way forward with them
    • Jenna mentioned that the way libraries work in Figma could be a good source of inspiration for the Content Libraries project
    • Asma did a quick presentation of the designs for the Tutor “Midnight Indigo” theme. She confirmed that the designs meet the contrast ratios required for accessibility
    • Brian explained the level of customization offered by the Card Paragon component
    • We ran out of time for the last item on the agenda, so Ali shared a link to the Studio Search Prototype and asked for feedback on Slack
  • LTI/Learning Tool WG Meeting
    • Santiago Suarez:
      • Scott Dunn can connect you with Caesar on the engineering work that Pearson has done
      • Fox Piacenti, Giovanni Cimolin da Silva, Piotr Surowiec connect on the engineering work that Opencraft has completed
      • Hopefully we can identify where the gaps are with the existing engineering work and what needs to be completed in order to realize the UX/UI work that EduNext is doing currently
      • I updated Scott and Zach about what I’d seen of the Edunext work so far and let them know that Santiago would connect with the respective engineering folks to identify where further work is needed to reach out goals
    • Anna Aldric: will connect Scott with Turnitin/1Edtech folk that are working on LTI features that may become available.
    • Scott Dunn: We can consider LTI provider work for the next phase of this WG, after course authoring, if there is community interest.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.13. Security Working Group

Chair: Feanil Patel

:arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2023-07-26 Security WG Meeting

:memo: Meeting notes

1.14. TOC

Chair: Ed Zarecor

  • The TOC members discussed the development of privacy-preserving educational research platforms, with a potential project partnership and funding for Open edX. They also shared updates on Open edX adoption and community involvement, and strategies to improve the long-term sustainability and extensibility of the platform. The board members discussed challenges and strategies for maintaining open-source repositories, including identifying which repositories to maintain and which to deprecate, the need for maintainers, and the impact of breaking changes in non-maintained repositories. They emphasized the importance of transparency and fairness for maintainers in open-source projects.
  • Action Items:
    • Xavier to check if Otter has a setting to warn participants about recording/transcription prior to the meeting
    • Axim to send a proposal for transitioning 2U developers to core contributors rather than direct commit access, as well as reviewing 2U roles, access and permissions.
    • RĂ©gis to open a discussion on the forum about open course material, and share the link with the TOC mailing list.
    • RĂ©gis to investigate the state of Open edX extensibility and propose improvements to existing mechanisms, leveraging the work of other contributors
    • George to share the list of repositories 2U will maintain with Feanil and the maintenance working group once it is approved internally

:memo: Meeting notes

1.15. Translation Working Group

Chair: Eden Huthmacher

  • Review language performances - performance went down due to the transition from edx-platform to openedx-translations project - machine translations have been activated for all languages, except for Portuguese (Portugal).
  • Update on transition from edx-platform to openedx-translations project - transfer 133 languages and make edx-platform read-only.
  • Updated enhancements as part of OEP-58.
  • GH Board review

:memo: Meeting notes

2. Events

  • We are excited to announce the 2024 Open edX conference! The conference will be held at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa and will take place between July 2nd and July 5th, 2024. Register here to secure your seat!
  • Would anyone like to highlight any past or upcoming events? Let us know in the comments!

3. Projects

Are there any new or ongoing projects you’d like to discuss? Get the conversation started in the comments below.

4. Next async update and meetup

  • Friday March 15th - Async update
  • Tuesday March 19th - Join the meetup here!
  • Details and draft agenda on Confluence

:speech_balloon: Anything to add?

If there’s anything else you’d like to mention, please let us know in the comments below.

1 Like
2

Core Contributor Check-in: Feb 17 - Mar 1, 2024

:stopwatch: Core Contributor Hours

Me again, and it’s


100%

With the flair and energy of this guy :point_up_2: let me dig into the numbers.

There was a total of 447 hours of contributions reported, which is about 261 hours more than the previous sprint of 186 hours. Nice!

productive
productive1422×622 33.9 KB

The overall checklist response rate was 47% for this sprint, which is a 16% increase from last sprint.

response
response1338×494 29.2 KB

:notebook_with_decorative_cover: Summary of Responses

1. Do you need any help? Or is there anything you’d like to collaborate on?

@pdpinch

  • Asks if there is documentation on xBlock Asides? If not, perhaps the community could write some?
  • Asks if xBlock Asides are still used for tagging?
    See this discourse post for more information

@Zia.Fazal

  • Still needs a reviewer for this PR

2. What should we improve? Are there any blockers?

No answers

3. What did you accomplish this sprint?

@jill

@chintan

  • Started attending Maintenance Working Group Meetings
  • Asked @feanil and @antoviaque how to become more involved in maintenance
  • Moderated forum and changed some topics from ‘Development’ / ‘Community’ to ‘Site Operator’

@pdpinch

  • Opened my first product roadmap issue: #324
  • Started working on a product roadmap issue to go with #452 - which is more of a bug fix than a feature, but since the feature isn’t well documented it seems worth bringing it to product attention

@ali_hugo

  • Worked on a design for an Open edX stand for use at conferences
  • Sent the “Improving the Core Contributor Experience” survey to all CC’s
  • Attended WG meetings: UX/UI and Core Product

@jyliugithub

  • Worked on a Mandarin translation for the platform
  • Joined the Transfex monthly meeting, and Marketing Working Group meeting
  • Did content research for the Bizdev workshop at Open edX conference
  • Joined the content development discussion for the Bizdev workshop

@farhaanbukhsh

  • Started looking for PRs to review
  • Volunteered maintainership for some repos

@Felipe

  • Reviewed a PR about the team feature course-authoring #669
  • Attended the Large-instances, Contributors and Maintenance WG meetings
  • Reviewed PR edx-platform #33952
  • Reviewed the ORA2 ADR for extension points
  • Filled in the CCs Survey
  • Attended the community event in Gather

@estebanetcheverry

  • Joined the Open edX Meetup
  • Recorded and edited the video for Open edX Meetup and Educators Working Group
  • Joined the Open edX 2024 Conference meetings
  • Joined the Marketing Working Group meeting
  • Worked on the Wikipedia update task

@juancamilom

  • Focused on work related to ORA and grades Improvement for campus based courses (Unidigital)

@Cassie

  • Worked on Sponsor Slide Deck for Open edX Conference
  • Worked on Open edX Conference Social Media designs
  • Worked on Learning Technologies Stand Design
  • Joined the CC, UX/UI Working Group Meetings
  • Filled out the CC Survey (thank you for putting that together @ali_hugo)
  • Completed the last CC Check-in report

@john_curricume

  • Video Production Post-Meeting Report
  • Documentation Planning

@Zia.Fazal

4. What do you plan to work on in the upcoming sprint?

@Cassie

@pdpinch

  • Finish reviewing PR #34220
  • Writing a product roadmap issue to go with #452 and #34026
  • Creating maintenance plan for edx-notes-api
  • Fixing a bug where users are unable to dismiss the upgrade message
  • Looking for more PRs to review

@chintan

  • Helping with maintenance
  • Continuing to moderate the forum

@ali_hugo

  • Monitoring survey responses and encouraging everyone to complete the survey

@jill

  • Working on Conference talk preparation
  • Maintainership: looking for repos to help with
  • Start documenting Aspects scaling #78

5. What went well this sprint?

@Zia.Fazal

  • Learnt how course block structures collect/transform cycle

@pdpinch

  • Had a nice review from @arbrandes on #403 (now waiting on product review)

@chintan

@ali_hugo

  • A number of CC’s have already completed the survey

:speech_balloon: Questions or comments?

Please add any questions or comments you might have below. We’d love to hear from you!

And if you’d like to take a peek at the full report, see it on Listaflow .

4 Likes
3

@Natalia_Choconta @Cassie Thanks for the recaps! :+1:

@itsjeyd @braden Can we help here? I know the pile of pending pull requests is big, but could we prioritize this one for @Zia.Fazal ?

Also, how could we pick up the pace of getting the pull requests listed there assigned to core contributors? I know we have a task this sprint in OpenCraft’s core contributors to each assign PRs to review - can we work on assigning more, and also suggesting additional core contributors for the remaining ones, outside of OpenCraft?

4

Sure, I can review that one. And yes, we’re already working on that. Let’s see how it goes this sprint and then we can consider next steps along those lines.

1 Like
5

@antoviaque Adding to what @braden said, @Michelle_Philbrick and I also started pinging CCs directly on OSPRs needing review, to hopefully get them unstuck sooner.

1 Like