Open edX Contributors Meetup

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-01-11.

Text Overview

Unfortunately, I won’t be sharing text overviews for the next couple of community meetups. Due to some personal issues I’m struggling with at the moment, I’m unable to consistently finish up and share the text overview.
This is delaying my posting of the recap, unfortunately. Accordingly, I’m choosing not to share the text overviews, for now, in order to better post the video recording 24 to 48 hours after the meetup.

Video Recording

The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda.

Participants

@Andres.Aulasneo
@BbrSofiane
@dave
@djoy
@Felipe
@ghassan
@jmakowski
@pdpinch
@Peter_Koblyakov
@nedbat
@nizar
@sambapete
@sarina
@Zia_Fazal

Next meetup

Tuesday January 25th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-01-25.

Video Recording

The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda.

Participants

@Andres.Aulasneo
@Diana_Huang
@Felipe
@pdpinch
@nedbat
@nizar
@omar
@sambapete
@sarina
@shadinaif
@Zia_Fazal

Next meetup

Tuesday February 8th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-02-08.

Video Recording

The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda.

Participants

@dave
@Diana_Huang
@ehuthmacher
@ghassan
@jalondonot
@pdpinch
@nedbat
@nizar
@omar
@sambapete
@sarina

Next meetup

Tuesday February 22nd at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

1 Like

This is the recap from the meeting on 2022-02-22.

Video Recording

ConMeetup-22-02-22.mp4

The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda.

Participants

@antoviaque
@arbrandes
@sambapete
@nizar
@idegtiarov
@Felipe
@mgmdi
@nedbat
@sarina
@Zia_Fazal
@shadinaif
@jmakowski
@ghassan
@omar

Next meetup

Tuesday March 8th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board .

4 Likes

This is the recap from the meeting on 2022-03-08.

Video Recording

ConMeetup-08-03-22.mp4

The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda.

Participants

@antoviaque
@arbrandes
@sambapete
@Felipe
@mgmdi
@sarina
@Zia_Fazal
@jmakowski
@Diana_Huang
@Andres.Aulasneo

Next meetup

Tuesday March 22nd at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board .

4 Likes

This is the recap from the meeting on 2022-03-22.

Video Recording

ConMeetup-22-03-22.mp4

The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda .

Participants

@antoviaque
@arbrandes
Kelly Buchanan
@Felipe
@mgmdi
@sarina
Julia Zack
@jmakowski
@Dean
@estebanetcheverry
@dave
@idegtiarov
@feanil

Meeting notes

2. Working Groups Follow-Ups:

  • Marketing:
    -Main focus on the Open edX Conference
    -Ongoing tutorial videos for new users
    -Demo Open edX: eduNEXT is already working on that
    -Open edX survey: Open until the end of March

  • Frontend:
    -BTR working group has been recommended as the gatekeeper for new MFEs. Pending proper OEP for this.
    -Frontend working group meeting time will change. There is a survey to decide the best time.
    -Discovery on MFE pain points. Reaching out to several members of the community.

  • Data:
    -Research on next-gen Insights
    -Notes from the last meeting.

  • DEPR:
    -Elastic search
    -Ongoing DEPR projects

  • Product:
    -Kick-off meeting during the conference
    -Getting the community roadmap up and running will be the first objective of the wg for the first three months
    -First milestone - Template for adding issues to the roadmap.

3. Events:

Open edX Conference: There will be a virtual event as well for the people that cannot attend the event.

4. Projects:

  • Node 16: Ongoing hard work. It has been more complex than expected. Call for help from the community in case there is any spare capacity that could be used to push this project:
    Node 16 Upgrade & Shared Browserslist Config - Google Sheets

  • Django events: One PR at a time. Seven new filters to be merged, 6 to go.

5. Improvements and blockers - Retrospective

1. Async channels seem kinda quiet. Is that because everyone’s humming along just fine?

Conclusions:

  • This might be related to the workload from each person’s main job.
  • The discussion around this topic should keep going in Discuss since it seems there is not a clear root cause nor an action point yet.

2. Getting feedback/reviews for OSPRs is as always a challenge

Conclusions:

  • It is difficult to find someone who has enough experience to review that. It could be useful to have a community expert directory to know who is an expert on what to reach out to the correct person: OEP-56: Architectural Advisory Process
  • Using OEP-55 could be useful.
  • People become experts without knowing they became experts. Building confidence is a point to be considered.
  • If you have done enough to get the community informed about the changes you are trying to implement and even with that, you don’t get enough feedback/reviews, you should trust your gut and go ahead. If it’s broken, someone will raise her hand and put a spotlight on it.
  • Encouraging people to review even if they are not experts is a great way to start acquiring expertise
  • Having reasonable deadlines in place for a review could be a good approach to encourage people to do it and also to resolve the blocker in case the lack of reviews and feedback is preventing the PR from being merged. At the end of that deadline, you should feel comfortable getting the PR merged.
  • Even if you don’t have the ability to provide an improving review it does not mean you can’t give a review

3. I’m difficulty assign something from BTR board to myself or moving issue assigned to me from in progress to Done. How we can improve these how I can perform these tasks myself?

Conclusions:

  • If you don’t have the right access to the repository where the issue is you cannot self-assign or assign that person. However, if that person comments and says “you can assign this to me”, that person will get the issue assigned.

Further information: Core Contributor Sprint Retro - March 4-18th

Next meetup

Tuesday April 5th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board .

4 Likes

Thanks for the extended notes, @jalondonot! I know from experience they’re not easy to distill. IMHO they’re very useful, though: scanning text beats scanning video any day of the week.

1 Like

@jalondonot Thanks! Great recap, especially of the points of the sprints retro – I posted it and replied about its elements at:

1 Like

Great! Planning to keep doing it :grin:

1 Like

Sorry for the delay! Here is the recap from the meeting we held on 2022-04-05.

Video Recording

ConMeetup-05-04-22
The chat log can be found on the meeting’s agenda .

Participants

@antoviaque
@arbrandes
Kelly Buchanan
@Felipe
@mgmdi
@sarina
Julia Zack
@jmakowski
@Dean
@estebanetcheverry
@nedbat
@idegtiarov
@feanil
@sambapete
@djoy
@Andres.Aulasneo

Meeting notes

2. Working Groups Follow-Ups:

3. Events:

Open edX Conference: There will be a few talks that will be streamed. The details will be specified in the agenda of the event.

4. Projects:

Django events (@mgmdi - @Felipe): One PR at a time. 4 PRs to go out of the 7 PRs from the initial scope of the project.

5. Improvements and Calls/offers for help (@antoviaque)

“I want more visibility into the development/support status of components, especially MFEs. If a legacy frontend is being rewritten as an MFE, I think there should be a DEPR ticket for the legacy frontend from the get-go.”

Conclusions:

  • There is no clear nor a specific roadmap or approach for this but the issue is well identified and the working groups are open to any suggestions. The DEPR working group will discuss this at the next meeting to improve the visibility of what is being removed and what is replacing it.
  • The process for deprecating should be revisited considering that the real community using Open edX around the world is larger than the one that is actively participating on the community channels.
  • A deprecation digest might be a good idea. Improving the information radiators that are currently in place seems to be a good approach for this.
  • Deprecations should be included in the roadmap and prioritized in terms of user and product impact

"Discuss posts (Core contributors sprint & meetup) have helpful information, but I haven’t found the time to read through them thoroughly. So I should include that as part of my CC tasks.

I reviewed a PR (since it fixed an issue I was having) and then realized it already had an assignee on the Jira board (I then @ the assignee to let him know). What should we do in that case?"

Conclusions:

  • Tagging the assignee and letting her know you gave a review is the best approach for this scenario.

Further information in Core Contributor Sprint Retro - March 18th-April 1st

Next meetup

Tuesday April 19th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board .

4 Likes

Sorry again for the delay! Here is the recap from the meeting we held on 2022-04-19.

Video Recording

ConMeetup-19-04-22

Participants

@antoviaque
@arbrandes
Kelly Buchanan
@Felipe
@mgmdi
@sarina
@jmakowski
@Dean
@estebanetcheverry
@nedbat
@idegtiarov
@feanil
@sambapete
@djoy
@Andres.Aulasneo
@estebanetcheverry
@braden

Meeting notes

2. Working Groups Follow-Ups:

  • Marketing (@estebanetcheverry ):
    -Main focus on the Open edX Conference
    -Ongoing tutorial videos for new users are expected to be ready by the end of April.

  • BTR (@nedbat):
    -The Nutmeg branch got created this week!
    -The testing process is underway
    -Release notes on the way
    -Request for help:
    Dean is leading the testing effort. If you think you might be able to lend a hand, reach out to him!
    Testing Open edX release

  • Frontend (@arbrandes):
    -Recap from the last meeting.
    -Adolfo will be leading the Node 16 Upgrade project from now on. Reach out to him if you have any questions about it!
    -If there is a case where any of the current MFEs stops supporting Node 12 or Node 14, the BTR would consider moving the whole Tutor stack to Node 16.
    2U is currently working on an automatic Snake Case to Camel Case conversion
    frontend-platform is finally getting an upgrade to React international to version 5.
    -Adam is working on a possible dependency licensing issue

  • Data:
    -They hope to gather at the Open edX Con!

  • DEPR (@feanil):
    -tCRIL and Racoongang will accelerate a lot of the DEPR work which will be included in Olive

  • Product (@jmakowski):
    -First session during the conference. Hopefully, people that are not attending the conference will be able to join the session virtually! @jenna will provide the details.

3. Events:

-Open edX Conference: It is finally happening! stay tuned for news and updates at https://con.openedx.org/

4. Projects:

-Django events (@mgmdi - @Felipe): We missed the deadline for cutting Nutmeg. The remaining filters will be backported to Nutmeg and included in Olive.
-Open edX Documentation Restructure (@feanil)
*Request for help:

5. Improvements and Calls/offers for help (@antoviaque)

Improvements

“I wish there were a snapshot of the technical settings and feature toggles from the Maple release, so I could diff them nor the nutmeg release notes. (edx-platform technical reference — edx-platform Technical Reference documentation”

Feedback:

  • That particular Readthedocs site is generated from edX Platform. So, he should be able to go to the older masterbranch and just regenerate those docs locally.

“It was a little bit tough to onboard as there’s so many communication platforms, but the more I learned the more it all makes sense. The onboarding courses will be super helpful to future participants.”

Feedback:

  • This is already being addressed.

Calls/offers for help

"Not yet but soon I might want people to help me write config files related to Backstage into various repos. | @feanil "

" I would love to get an overview of the current work on frontend plugins. I’m trying to keep in touch with the latest changes. | @xitij2000 "

Feedback:

  • Adolfo will get in touch with him.

" I need help to think of new test cases for the Test Plan. At present there are only basic test cases for the Studio and LMS.What about unique XBlocks, plugins, devops, global admin, and other areas that we need to create test cases for? It would be great if people can review the test cases then add their suggestions to the SUGGESTIONS tab in the sheet. I will bring this up in the meetups too. | @Dean "

Feedback:

  • Probably, these missing test cases will be figured out during the testing process.

" I’m hoping that this blockstore PR gets merged this week or next week, and then backported to nutmeg | @pdpinch "

Feedback:

  • It should have been merged on Thursday.

Further information in Core Contributor Sprint Retro - April 1st-15th

Next meetup

Tuesday May 3rd at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board .

2 Likes

Hi all! Here is the recap from the meeting we held on 2022-05-03.

Video Recording

ConMeetup-03-05-22

Participants

Meeting notes

2. Working Groups Follow-Ups:

Marketing (@Eden_Huthmacher @estebanetcheverry ):

BTR (@nedbat @Dean ):

  • The Nutmeg testing process advance is around 58.1%. During the next days, the number of test cases will increase to widen the scope of the testing process.

  • Request for help:
    Dean asks for help to upgrade Tutor plugins. They require some collaboration from the community to test them. Dean has already reached out to Regis to clarify the next steps on this point. He also found some resources that might be useful if you are interested to help:

    *How to upgrade a Tutor plugin - Maintainers - Overhang.IO

    Tutor plugins:

We need volunteers to upgrade the rest of the plugins. You can upgrade a plugin, and optionally you can also become the maintainer of that plugin for future versions! :slight_smile:

  • cookiecutter-tutor-plugin ( :broken_heart: Not yet upgraded. Maintainer: Kyle McCormick)
  • tutor-android ( :broken_heart: Not yet upgraded. Maintainer: Régis temporary)
  • tutor-discovery ( :white_check_mark: Already upgraded to Nutmeg. Maintainer: Régis temporary)
  • tutor-ecommerce ( :white_check_mark: There is a pending Pull Request from Pierre, tbc if it worked. Maintainer: Régis temporary)
  • tutor-forum ( :white_check_mark: Already upgraded to Nutmeg by maintainer Ghassan Maslamani)
  • tutor-indigo 1 ( :broken_heart: Not yet upgraded. Maintainer: Régis temporary)
  • tutor-mfe ( :white_check_mark: Already upgraded to Nutmeg by Régis and the new maintainer is Adolfo Brandes)
  • tutor-minio ( :man_technologist: Not yet upgraded but eduNEXT is working on it (Jhony). Maintainer: Régis temporary)
  • tutor-notes ( :white_check_mark: Already upgraded to Nutmeg. Maintainer: Régis temporary)
  • tutor-webui ( :broken_heart: Not yet upgraded. Maintainer: Régis temporary)
  • tutor-xqueue ( :man_technologist: Not yet upgraded but eduNEXT is working on it (Felipe and Gonzalo). Maintainer: Régis temporary)

Frontend (@arbrandes):

  • They are planning to change to time for people to be able to join more easily. Stay tuned!

Data (@Andres.Aulasneo ):

  • They held the wg meeting at Open edX Con. It seems there were many newcomers that would help the group to work on the sprint 0 and have a clear work roadmap.

DEPR (@feanil @dave @idegtiarov ):

Product (@jmakowski):

  • They finally held their first meeting during the conference!
  • Several interesting and deep topics were discussed at this meeting, such as the core of the platform and product definition, the decision process definition, and what the next steps are for this working group to push the product roadmap and ensure the discussion around it keeps moving forward. You might find the meeting notes interesting in case you did not have the chance to attend :slight_smile:
  • If you are interested in participating, please do not forget to answer the survey Jenna created to determine the best time for the meetings to come.

3. Open edX Con:

  • There seems to be a consensus among the community that it went really well!
  • Notes from the Friday discussion of Tobie Langel’s points
  • Xavier prepared a thread to gather some of the feedback people might have about the Open edX Con. Please let the community know how it went for you to make sure we keep improving this event which remains to be a key space for the community.

4. Projects:

5. Improvements and Calls/offers for help (@antoviaque)

  • Xavier has prepared a great recap of what was discussed at this point of the meeting:

6. Additional Topics

TOC Follow-up (@antoviaque @Andres.Aulasneo ):

  • There have been 2 informal meetings, to get to know each other a little bit better
  • The members have different backgrounds and perspectives that could enrich the discussion
  • It is still at the introductory stage. No big decisions have been made yet.
  • It would be great if we can increase the engagement of the TOC members inviting them to join the contributors’ meetup from time to time. Xavier will bring this up to the next TOC meeting.

Last Wednesday was the 7th anniversary of EDUlib! congratulations to @sambapete and all the people involved :smiley:

Next meetup

3 Likes

Thank @jalondonot you really are on top of things and it’s truly helpful information with all the links etc.

2 Likes

I’m glad you find it helpful! I just added the Tutor plugin links from the email thread with Regis, Dean.

Hi all! Here is the recap from the meeting we held on 2022-05-17.

Video Recording

ConMeetup-17-05-22

Participants

Meeting notes

2. Working Groups Follow-Ups:

Marketing (@Eden_Huthmacher @estebanetcheverry ):

  • Upcoming Open edX Meetup on Thu, June 9th at 10 AM (EST), register on Eventbrite and spread the word: https://openedxmeetuprg.eventbrite.com
  • Submit a review for Open edX at: Write A Review For Open edX - eLearning Industry
  • Members can volunteer to be reviewers and contributors to the How-To’s videos.
  • The first version of the videos is going to be done in each member’s Open edX instance, but for the second version, the videos are intended to be in the sandbox.
  • Each member will choose a video topic and start working on it.
  • Esteban has volunteered to provide support in a video comparison of Open edX and Moodle

BTR (@nedbat @Dean ):

  • The Nutmeg release testing process is going well! The progress is around 85%. Nevertheless, they still require help from the community to get this done by the end of the month.
  • Request for help:
    Dean Upgrading and testing the remaining work. They require some help from the community to achieve the goal of getting this process done by the end of the month. Please reach out to @dean in Slack to see how you can help!

Frontend (@arbrandes):

Some action items were decided during the Open edX Con!

Data (@Andres.Aulasneo @e0d @mafermazu ):

  • They changed the time of the WG bi-weekly meetup to Wednesdays at 12h00 UTC.
  • You can find the notes of the last meeting here!
  • The discussions they are holding are still in an exploratory phase. If they reach a more specific and detailed proposal on something, they will probably reach out to the community through Discuss or an OEP.

DEPR (@feanil @dave @idegtiarov ):

  • You can find the notes of the last meeting here!
  • Raccoon Gang team is making good progress on the DEPR project for Olive.

Product (@jmakowski):

  • They are running a survey to set a meeting time that could fit a majority! if you are interested in contributing to this group, check it out!

3. Events:

  • Most of the Open edX Con videos have been released! watch them here
  • Mark your calendars to join us virtually on June 9th, 2022 between 10 AM and 11 AM (EST) in Gather to learn about Raccoon Gang’s K-12 use of the Open edX platform in Ukraine!
    More info here.

4. Projects:

  • Django events and filters (@mgmdi - @Felipe): Few remaining PRs to be merged! the team will make sure they are properly backported to Nutmeg.

5. Improvements and Calls/offers for help (@antoviaque)

  • Xavier has prepared a great recap of what was discussed at this point of the meeting:

6. TOC Follow-Up (@e0d , @antoviaque )

  • The priority right now is getting the TOC off the ground and functional.
  • The idea of the TOC is not being a group of all-seeing deciders, but providing guidance and overseeing as a last resource.
    • A thread has been created where members of the Open edX community could ask questions about the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC).

Next meetup

2 Likes

There’s now a public Google calendar for Open edX working groups. I don’t know who owns the calendar invite for the Contributors’ Meetup these days, but you can add “Open edX Working Group calendar” to the event, and it will show up on the public working group calendar.

1 Like

That’s great! do you have the URL of the public calendar, Ned?

Hi all! Here is the recap from the meeting we held on 2022-05-31.

Video Recording

ConMeetup-31-05-22

Participants

Meeting notes

2. Working Groups Follow-Ups:

Marketing (@estebanetcheverry ):

  • Upcoming Open edX Meetup on Thu, June 9th at 10 AM (EST), register on Eventbrite and spread the word: https://openedxmeetuprg.eventbrite.com
  • Members can volunteer to be reviewers and contributors to the How-To’s videos.
    -There have been several international events that the Open edX community did not attend as a group. There might be an opportunity to improve our presence in this type of event, as a community.
  • Request for help:
    Please submit a review for Open edX at: Write A Review For Open edX - eLearning Industry

BTR (@nedbat @Dean ):

  • The Nutmeg release testing process is going well! The progress is around 90%. They expect to meet the release deadline.

Frontend (@arbrandes):

Data (@Andres.Aulasneo @e0d @mafermazu ):

  • You can find the notes of the last meeting here!

DEPR (@feanil @dave @idegtiarov ):

  • You can find the notes of the last meeting here!

Product (@jmakowski):

3. Events:

  • Mark your calendars to join us virtually on June 9th, 2022 between 10 AM and 11 AM (EST) in Gather to learn about Raccoon Gang’s K-12 use of the Open edX platform in Ukraine!
    More info here. This will be the first of several monthly events to stay tuned!

4. Projects:

  • Django events and filters (@mgmdi - @Felipe): Few remaining PRs to be merged! the team will make sure they are properly backported to Nutmeg.

5. Improvements and Calls/offers for help (@Dean @braden )

  • Dean and Braden prepared a great recap of what was discussed at this point of the meeting:

If you think you can lend a hand to any of the core contributed that are blocked with their contributions, feel free to reach out to them.

Next meetup

Oops, I should have included it! It’s on this wiki page: https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/COMM/pages/46793351/Working+groups

I think this link works: Open edX Working Group Calendar

2 Likes

Hi all! Here is the recap from the meeting we held on 2022-06-14.

Video Recording

ConMeetup-14-06-22

Participants

Meeting notes

2. Working Groups Follow-Ups:

Marketing (@estebanetcheverry ):

  • The creation of the Open edX vs Moodle video comparison is in progress. Led by Esteban and Eden. This is the document where they have put the key information it should contain.
  • A list of How-To videos is available here. The idea is that everyone records the videos with the themes they select to collaborate on. Then the videos will go through a revision phase and, finally, they will be edited to give them the same visual identity.
  • Updates and testing of the Open edX Sandbox are in process.
  • The creation of videos that tell the story of Open edX is also pending.

Request for help:

Please submit a review for Open edX at: https://elearningindustry.com/directory/elearning-software/open-edx/reviews/new

BTR (@nedbat @Dean ):

Frontend (@arbrandes):

Data (@Andres.Aulasneo @e0d @mafermazu ):

  • You can find the notes of the last meeting here!

DEPR (@feanil @dave @idegtiarov ):

  • You can find the notes of the last meeting here!

Product (@jmakowski):

TOC (@antoviaque):

  • They will schedule the next meeting soon.

Request for help:

Xavier is looking for some feedback on TOC Community Members Elections - Brainstorm thread

3. Events:

  • @nedbat do you have further information about the monthly events you mentioned during the last meetup?

4. Projects:

  • Django events and filters (@mgmdi - @Felipe): Few remaining PRs to be merged! the team will make sure they are properly backported to Nutmeg.

Request for help:

They require some review to [BD-32] feat: Open edX Filters backport by mariajgrimaldi · Pull Request #30583 · openedx/edx-platform · GitHub

5. Improvements and Calls/offers for help (@Dean @braden )

  • @Dean and @antoviaque prepared a great recap of what was discussed at this point of the meeting:

Highlights:

@ghassan: “When I suggest a change to a repo (Open a PR). Which I don’t have commit history with, the tests won’t run, unless someone trigger them. I found that to be really unproductive for me… Specially when I can’t replicate the tests locally i.e. codecov. Is there anything to be done to enhance this experience?”

  • @sarina said it is a security matter. There is no way to change this policy, at least for now. It seems getting help from a maintainer or being a maintainer would be the proper approach to do it. Investigating how the CI infrastructure works could be something the community can take a look at, and it might be the next logical step.https://github.com/openedx/open-edx-proposals/pull/290

@Andres.Aulasneo: “K8s should have a dedicated space for collaboration. There are many things that are not working, or that need special consideration to implement.”

  • For now, taking a look and raising your hand in the Discuss thread where this is being discussed seems like the best approach.

If you think you can lend a hand to any of the core contributors that are blocked, feel free to reach out to them!

Side note: We now have an Open edX Working Group Calendar!

Next meetup

2 Likes