Contributors Meetup Async Update - February 3rd - February 16th, 2024

Working Groups Core Contributors
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Core Contributor Update: Feb 3rd - Feb 16th, 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

:arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2024-01-09 CC Working Group Meeting Notes

  • The team discussed the importance of conducting a survey to gather feedback and adjusting their timeline or strategy based on the response rate. They also touched upon a working group document and the need for improved coordination and information sharing among the team. Later, Adolfo mentioned the introduction of new MSPs and the problems reported, with Jenna and the product team leading the initiative. The aim is to clarify what will be included in the Redwood product and what won’t, with a focus on ensuring all features are ready in time. An action item was identified in a ticket, which Adolfo confirmed was already being addressed. Towards the end of the meeting, Xavier emphasized the need for technical coordination of a project.
  • Next steps
    • Xavier and eduNEXT will consider working on creating a simple, smaller communication tool handbook for the community.
    • eduNEXT and Adolfo will reach out to Neil to see where he stands on the project.
    • Cassie will follow up with Ali about the UX working group joining the project working group meeting.
    • Ed will add the sprints discussion to the agenda for the kickoff of the Maintenance and Upgrade Working Group.
    • EduNEXT will work on creating a handbook for asynchronous communication with Xavier.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.3. Data Working Group

Chair: @e0d & @blarghmatey

: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: Régis 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

  • Rebecca Rumbel from the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences present how the UPenn Extension Program has build up a large library of video content, and the best practices they’ve learned building educational video under resource constraints like many of us face.
  • You can see the full discussion here 2024-02-12 Educators WG: Balancing Video Production and Available Resources

:memo: Meeting notes

Blockers or Calls/offers for help

  • Looking for any and all documentors!

1.8. Frontend Working Group

Chair: @arbrandes

  • 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
    • Axim:
      • Some axim members have had access to perfomance metrics of the edx.org site which have been very useful for finding performance regressions. Dave Ormsbee (Axim) asks the group how this is handled by the different companies.
        Opencraft - no performance regressions monitoring. They try to upgrade as soon as posible.
        edunext - monitors performance using newrelic, sentry and grafana for the largest service.
      • Axim is looking at ways to maintain the performance monitoring in a future where there is less focus on the edx.org instance and how the key personnel could access the info. Dave will follow up per email.
    • Edunext:
      • Cristhian Garcia has been working on getting aspects to run correctly in large installs. Current step is to move events from celery to event bus. Cristhian reports the aspects library that moves events to the event bus is stable, but the tutor-contrib-event-bus-redis has not been tested for this.
      • Escalation of Ralph might be an issue. At the moment the team is investigating the implications of redis for this.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.10. Marketing Working Group

Chair: Eden Huthmacher

:arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2024-01-17 MWG Meeting Notes:

  • Open edX Conference 2024
    • CFP is closing today - please submit a proposal , if you have not done so
    • BizDev Workshop
      • Participants: Appsembler, Abstract Technology, OpenCraft, eduNEXT, edSPIRIT, and Edly by Arbisoft
      • Topics: Open edX LMS global market standing (compared to its competitors), consumer feedback & buyer personas, analysis of the Open edX roadmap and alignment with consumer demand
  • Next Open edX Meetup
    • Use case of public universities in Egypt adopting the Open edX platform, as well as AI tools integrated into the platform for content creation, and updates on the latest Open edX release, Quince
    • Register here: Open edX Use Cases & Latest Software Release
  • Open edX Provider page updates + Experience Cloud Updates
  • OKR Strategy Review

: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
  • 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

  • Meeting notes for the last TOC meeting in December. It includes discussions related to the recent issues 2U has been experiencing - which weren’t fully known back then, but some of the consequences were discussed . It also had discussions related to the Open edX conferences .
  • TOC Election Wrap-up
    • The main discussion initially revolved around the close of the TOC election. Due to a potential issue with spam settings, the voting was reopened for an additional week. There were a few additional votes, but only a couple of votes in the learner category, resulting in an insufficient vote count to rank the candidates, after one incorrect vote was nullified. The outcome of the election remained unchanged with Nacho Despujol, Régis Behmo and Xavier Antoviaque getting elected. The election’s execution was acknowledged to have had issues this year, and hopes were expressed to execute it better in the future.
  • Open edX Release and Maintenance Discussion
    • Ed announced that the first version of the Quince release was tagged and expressed gratitude for contributions, particularly to the whole BTR group, as well as Peter Pinch from MIT. The next release, Redwood, is expected in June and will likely include features around modular learning and taxonomy, which are currently in beta testing.
  • Open edX Conference Venue Proposal
    • Ed brought up the topic of the Open edX conference venue for 2025, sharing a proposal to co-host with the MOOC conference at a yet-undisclosed location. While there were concerns about the location and logistical details, the idea of co-hosting with the E-MOOCs conference seemed favorable due to past success in Madrid. Stefania and Xavier offered to help with the organization and candidature review.
  • Open edX Conference in Cape Town
    • It was suggested to focus on attracting more people from the African continent to the conference in South Africa, considering the region’s potential for growth and need for education solutions like Open edX. The importance of considering a flexible pricing model to encourage diverse attendance was also stressed.
  • Maintenance and Sustainability of Open edX
    • The meeting concluded with an in-depth discussion on the maintenance and sustainability of the Open edX project. Concerns were raised about the financial burden of maintenance and the risk of relying exclusively on funding sources from edX/2U and Axim, and the importance of a maintenance strategy to ensure the platform’s long-term viability was stressed.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.15. Translation Working Group

Chair: Eden Huthmacher

:arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2024-01-17 Translation WG Meeting notes

  • Review language performances: Translation Working Group
  • Status of OEP-58 and transition to from edx-platform project to openedx-translations project - what is the timing?
  • If it takes another release then MFE’s need to be shifted to the edx-platform project
  • Leverage translation memory to ensure smooth transition (strings should be added as reviewed in the migration)
  • Aspen strings are embedded in the openedx-translations project only.
  • for Quince, work out of the Quince Release project, for Redwood, openedx-translations project
  • will run a sync today between edx-platform and openedx-translation project
  • Simlink strategy - Please update entry for your dedicated languages - what about browser languages such as en.MX Relevant doc: Language Codes - TX WG -Simlink Strategy

: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

  • Tuesday Feb 20th - Join the meetup here!
  • Friday March 1st - Async update
  • 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.

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Core Contributor Check-in: Feb 3 - 16, 2024

:stopwatch: Core Contributor Hours

It’s reporting time. Drum roll please…


There was a total of 186 hours of contributions reported, which is about 346 hours less than the previous sprint of 532.75 hours.

Sprint Productivity
Sprint Productivity1334×622 34.1 KB

The overall checklist response rate was 31% for this sprint, which is a 14% decrease from last sprint.

Response Rate
Response Rate1264×506 28.6 KB

:notebook_with_decorative_cover: Summary of Responses

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

@antoviaque

  • Is calling for more maintainers! See this and this post for more information

@Zia.Fazal

  • Needs a reviewer for this PR

@pdpinch

@ali_hugo

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

@ali_hugo

  • Finds it difficult to access recordings of meetings she’s unable to attend, and not all of them have meeting notes

@pdpinch

@Cassie

  • Had to ask for permission to view the latest Core Product Working Group meeting recording. It would be cool if these were publicly accessible

3. What did you accomplish this sprint?

@antoviaque

  • Attended and drafted public notes for TOC Meeting
  • Met with maintainer volunteers
  • Prepared TOC presentation for upcoming Meetup
  • Monitored & posted meeting summaries and transcripts with Otter
  • Edited small videos from interview for Upstreaming onboarding course
  • Recurring:
    • Forum moderation

@Felipe

  • Reviewed update to openedx events
  • Merged PR#34160 about the survey report banner
  • Determined list of repos edunext is interested in maintaining
  • Attended Maintenance, Large Instances and Campus Working Group meetings

@ali_hugo

@Zia.Fazal

  • Reviewed ERB PR
  • Created PR in edx-platform to enable EnrollmentService for xblock runtimes

@chintan

  • Moderated various topics on forum and answered some of them

@Cassie

  • Took part in a call with the Open edX Marketing Team and 2024 Conference Coordinators
  • Met with Eden to discuss a presentation to sell conference sponsorship
  • Reviewed the proposed Midnight Theme by Arbisoft
  • Reviewed The Open edX Product Review Process
  • Completed the previous sprint’s CC Check-in process and post

@mgmdi

  • Worked on BTR and Maintainership

@jill

@pdpinch

  • Did some planning and preliminary reviews, but not much of note. Has spent more time asking questions this spring than answering them.

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

@chintan

  • Will continue moderating forum
  • Find more information about Maintenance Working Group (FYI @antoviaque)

@pdpinch

@Cassie

  • Put together a presentation to sell Open edX conference sponsorship

@ali_hugo

  • Move the survey questions into Typeform and (maybe) start sending it out to CC’s

@jill

@antoviaque

  • Answering issues and blockers for Core Contributor sprints
  • Prepare and participate in TOC Panel Meetup
  • Conference Planning
  • Follow-up on PR delays
  • Follow-up on OEP for escalation process to TOC

5. What went well this sprint?

@chintan

  • Met with Xavier and learnt more about Maintenance program

@antoviaque

  • Lots of progress discussing maintainerships, and transitioning parts from 2U to other community members

@jill

  • Was able to find lots of OSPRs that needed reviewers!

@pdpinch

  • Good work planning the Redwood release in advance of the RC (Release Candidate) cut

@ali_hugo

  • Community progress ironing out the Product Review process

: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 .

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Thanks @Natalia_Choconta !

For code core contributors: You can help unblock the review of the PRs that are currently blocked! Now all core contributors with rights on a code repository can review any of the PRs that are ready for review.

@Natalia_Choconta For the maintainers section, there is a new formal Maintenance working group that formed, chaired by @feanil , which replaces the maintainers pilot. It doesn’t yet have the full working group info page, but there are notes of weekly meetings available at https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/COMM/pages/4031447158/Maintenance+Working+Group

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@Cassie This is great to read! Kudos for the additional contributions, and for reporting them :slight_smile: It also looks like a pretty productive sprint - which I agree with, things have been moving along well recently.

@Cassie I don’t think that one is from me? But I would be interested in knowing more about what’s needed.

@itsjeyd I know you are already on top of working through the big pile of PRs to review currently - but when you announce the recent changes and try to get core contributors to help, could you highlight those PRs in particular, besides linking to the list on github? That might help accelerate finding someone, and help people intimidated by the long list.

@ali_hugo @Cassie @jmakowski Would you be able to help here, and take on those reviews?

@ali_hugo How helpful have you found the Otter transcript & summary in those cases? And are there meetings where you are also missing the Otter notes?

@jmakowski I think this is is set on your side, for the recording? I don’t know much how Hangouts works for this - but would it be possible to make the meeting recording accessible publicly by default, or if not to do it manually when linking to it from the meeting notes page?

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Hey @pdpinch I took a look at this and it is marked Waiting on Author and I don’t see any conversation with any reviewers or PR managers. Perhaps tag Michelle or Tim for advice on how to get a review, and explain why you need a 2U reviewer?

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Moving forward, let’s use the Product Review Process before we get to coding/submitting.

The Axim team has not allowed Otter in the past few meetings (this is not the thread to debate this; I’m simply stating what has happened the past few weeks). The Axim meeting owner should be turning on recording as well as transcript, and making them available on meeting notes page. We can use ChatGPT to summarize the transcript - Adolfo has been doing it for FWG. It’s not possible to default the recording to public :frowning: but a quick reminder if we forget should suffice!

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I’d be happy to take these on :slightly_smiling_face:.

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I appreciate that @antoviaque!

Good catch @antoviaque - this is an error on my part - pulled from a past report. So please ignore the human error :see_no_evil:

Thanks @ali_hugo - happy to help you!

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Product Working Group already exists. BTR is now added! cc @pdpinch

image
image1327×411 51.2 KB

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Thanks @sarina. I commented and tagged Michelle and Tim as you suggested, but then I saw that there’s also a conversation in Debugging persistent grade issues · Issue #106 · openedx/wg-coordination · GitHub that seems more active.

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| sarina Sarina Canelake Core Contributor
February 20 |

  • | - |

Cassie:

Moving forward, let’s use the Product Review Process before we get to coding/submitting.

I opened a Product Review issue to go with feat: footer legal links by asadali145 · Pull Request #403 –

Please let me know if that meets the need (for a Product Review) and then I’ll go ahead and open another one for feat: allowing studio asides for course-authoring MFE

I wouldn’t consider either of these new features, but instead poorly-known features that were lost in the move to MFEs. I’d like to get them into the Product Review flow so that they can be properly maintained.

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@pdpinch Is the above :point_up_2: what you’re referring to?

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@antoviaque Sure, no problem.

CC @braden, as this concerns the PR that we were talking about here.

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