Contributors Meetup Async Update - November 25th, 2023 - December 8th, 2023

Working Groups Core Contributors
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Core Contributor Update: Nov 25th - Dec 8th, 2023

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

:paperclip: Latest news

:memo: Meeting notes

1.2. Contributor Coordination Working Group

Chair: Jorge Londoño

:paperclip: Latest news

  • Debugging persistent grade issues: Last meeting, Dave Ormsbee (Axim) offered to connect with Peter Pinch later to check on the issue
  • Follow-up - How do we make sure strings in frontend-app-communications are sent to Transifex?
  • MFEs documentation & reviews
    • Action items from the last meeting:
    • Product working group should be involved, so that it’s not just a technical decision to include a MFE
    • BTR should be involved to validate that the MFE should be accepted or not
    • To help increasing the cross-over between working groups (such as BTR and product), it would help to do more async communication, which would help to include members of other groups in discussions, without having to attend many meetings or monitoring many Slack channels.
  • Product & UX meeting
    • Last core contributors update: “The Paragon Working Group would like to get members of the Product Working Group (and others in the community) more involved in UX discussions. This will allow individuals outside of 2U, not only to keep tabs on design updates, but also to help guide the design of Open edX. The idea is to start a cross-functional meeting for context/knowledge sharing around design. Anyone interested in getting involved?”
    • Previous core contributors update: Discussions about setting up a betatester program

:memo: Meeting notes

1.3. Data Working Group

Chair: @e0d & @blarghmatey

:paperclip: Latest news

  • :arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2023-11-15 Meeting notes
  • Funded Contribution Updates:
    • New ClickHouse / Superset expert in the works to do schema / performance review and security pass
      • Possibility to re-contract with Rory and/or add another person to work on reports as v1 requirements land
  • Aspects product updates:
    • Updates on stakeholder interviews, common themes, and plans to move Aspects forward

:memo: Meeting notes

1.4. DEPR Working Group

Chair: @feanil

:paperclip: Latest news

  • :arrow_down: Past meeting notes DEPR Meeting Notes (2023)
  • Admin note: can someone run the 30 November meeting?
    • It seems like this
  • courseware_studentmodule work
  • Do we have a process for removing code that we don’t think is actually accessed from the frontend?
    • Just go through the DEPR process as normal
    • For 2U-checking, we have ways to do some observability work to check for whether or not codepaths are used.
  • Improve DEPR process for toggles · Issue #283 · openedx/edx-toggles
    • Covered if we want to require the toggle_depr_ticket field.
  • Likely incoming DEPRs for obscure video features.
    • New version of the video player
    • Will need to communicate out within 2U and 2U partners
    • Can we check for New Relic information about usage?
  • Bok Choy update:
    • We’re getting closer and closer to removing bok choy from openedx
  • Python 3.11
    • Targeting Redwood
    • Hoping to start this in January

:memo: Meeting notes

1.5. DevEx Working Group

Chair: @Rebecca_S_Graber & @kmccormick

:paperclip: Latest news

:memo: Meeting notes

1.6. DevOps Working Group

Chair: RĂ©gis Behmo

:paperclip: Latest news

  • Shubham Nagpal says: Hi Team Please provide you assiatance on How can I overcome the challenge of implementing path-level security in Open edX with EKS, considering that a classic load balancer doesn’t offer this feature, i can block the ips throught ACL but not the path is there any work arround.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.7. Educators Working Group

Chair: @john_curricume

:paperclip: Latest news

  • :arrow_down: Past meeting notes 2023-11-13 Educator WG
  • Lessons from Language MOOCs, Dr. Haohsiang Lao, Director of the Chinese Language Program at MIT
    MITx - Chinese Language in Culture
    • 4 skills in learning a foreign language:
      • Speaking
      • Reading
      • Listening
      • Writing
    • Elements of the MITx Chinese Language courses
      • Storytelling – keeps good amount of returning students
      • Linked textbooks with MOOC course
      • Live sessions - 3 live sessions per week
      • Drill session
    • Course involves three types of videos:
      • Animation video
      • “Real-world” conversational video
      • Lecture video
    • Fact VS Act
      • Fact – students can do self study, we put it into the materials that the students can study on their own
      • Act – drill session or live session
    • Appearance of chatGPT – ChatGPT can act as guide for speaking and writing skills
    • Microsoft Edge – has a wide variety of pronunciation variations, it provides at least 12 versions of native speaker
  • Polling for Future sessions: Jamboard shared to determine future priorities: Educators WG 11/13 - Google Jamboard

:memo: Meeting notes

Blockers or Calls/offers for help

  • Looking for any and all documentors!

1.8. Frontend Working Group

Chair: @arbrandes

:paperclip: Latest news

  • Paragon Upgrade and Other Scope Changes: Need help with the scope updates, how can I engage Fed-BOM and others to help? We need to update package.json @edx/paragon it uses @openedx/paragon and upgrades to the latest version.
  • Shout-out to Piral preso on this week’s FSG: If you’re interested in Piral and how we’re thinking of using it, check out the recording.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.9. Large Instances Working Group

Chair: @braden & @Felipe

:paperclip: Latest news

:memo: Meeting notes

1.10. Marketing Working Group

Chair: Eden Huthmacher

:paperclip: Latest news

:memo: Meeting notes

1.11. Maintainers

Chair: Edward Zarecor

:paperclip: Latest news

:memo: Meeting notes

1.12. Product Working Group

Chair: Jenna Makowski

:paperclip: Latest news

:memo: Meeting notes

1.13. Security Working Group

Chair: Feanil Patel

:paperclip: Latest news

:memo: Meeting notes

1.14. TOC

Chair: Ed Zarecor

:paperclip: Latest news

Executive Summary

  • TOC Membership Changes: Virginia Fletcher replaces Julie Davis (2U), Samuel Paccoud (FUN) leaves
  • Conference Plans: Announcement imminent, the conference will be held later than usual
  • Mobile App Development: After the TOC approved to adopt the Raccoon Gang apps as the official mobile apps, progress has been made. There was a kick-off meetings with 2U and Raccoon Gang, as well as a comprehensive gap analysis.
  • Maintenance Funding: Discussed better spreading maintenance funding burden, as most currently falls on 2U, prompting discussions about the distribution of workload within the community. Opportunities for non-profit organizations to take on certain maintenance tasks were discussed.
  • Elected Representatives’ Term Extension: The TOC proposed and agreed to extend the representative term from one to two years to ensure representatives have sufficient time to be productive. Implementation starts with the current 2024 election.
  • Election Nominations: The TOC reviewed and approved the candidates for the 2024 community elections.
  • Front End Plugability Summit: A Front End Plugability Summit will be organized with the intent to resolve difficulties in adapting the front end to business-specific needs. Recommendations from the summit will be presented to the TOC.
  • Pull Request Review Delays: Significant delays in pull request reviews are hampering certain projects. Proposals were made to improve this situation, including expanding the core contributor program and improving pull request monitoring.
  • Forum Thread Discussions Summary: Various proposals were raised in the community forum, including expanding the maintainer program, involving edX/2U employees, improving pull request monitoring, and creating lighter roles for contributors.
  • Core Issues: Overburdened repository maintainers, misalignment with organizational use cases, and lack of predictability for external contributors were identified as significant problems. Having multiple reviewers and defining core repositories were proposed as solutions.
  • Stats: The core contributors’ capacity was summarized, with about 50 active contributors performing between 200 and 300 hours of work every two weeks.
  • Root Cause Analysis: Ancient project biases, late proposal reviews, the shift from proprietary to open, and the continuous delivery of repositories were identified as root causes of the issues.
  • Encouraging Participation in the Core Contributor Program: Issues were raised about the perceived value and benefits of becoming a core contributor, especially for those who already have merge access. Identifying platform parts that can be kept internally was suggested to accelerate velocity.
  • Open Source Project Deployment and Contribution: Proposals for managing automatic deployments from pull requests were explored. A reference version from the community’s standpoint was suggested.
  • Next Steps: The meeting agreed on creating a catalog of potential changes, pushing for earlier product reviews, improving the extension points and the platform’s plugability, identifying core repositories, encouraging community involvement and contribution, and exploring ways to clarify the open-source project’s social contract. The feasibility of delegated reviews and automatic deployment by 2U was to be discussed internally.

:memo: Meeting notes

1.15. Translation Working Group

Chair: Eden Huthmacher

:paperclip: Latest news

: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 Dec 8th - Async update
  • Friday Dec 22th - Async update
  • Tuesday Nov 26th - 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.

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