Creation of the Maintainers Growth Working Group

[smoya]

The goal of this group is making sure the AsyncAPI community grows in a healthy and sustainable way.

Copying content from #1090

After incorporating the working groups as a possible working system in AsyncAPI, @thulieblack, @AceTheCreator, @alequetzalli, @smoya, and myself (@Barbanio), we propose the creation of the Community Growth working group.

The 4 of us initiated the group, but the group is open to anyone who wants to join.

The group members proposed to me (@Barbanio) as the initial chairperson (rotating role). Following the fantastic scheme proposed by the DX working group, the chairperson will be accountable and responsible for the following:

• Manage the overall vision and direction of the working group
• Oversee the development and maintenance of the roadmap
• Mediate conflicts and ensure a positive and safe working atmosphere
• Monitor and maintain Working group goals
• Communicate Working group achievements

Responsibilities of the members

Active participation in the Community Growth working group
Vote for key decisions (e.g., the selection of new members, chairperson rotation ...)
Influence the working group roadmap
Assist in the onboarding process for new members
Provide insights and expertise to enhance the group's effectiveness

Requirement to join as a member

Active AsyncAPI contribution (maintainer / aspiring maintainer)

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@asyncapi/tsc_members Please react to this with 👍 if you agree, 👎 if you disagree or 👀 if you don't want to vote but want to signal that you're aware and have read this.

[thulieblack]

I would love to join in

[smoya]

I don't have a clear idea on what the process for either inviting someone to join the team or someone willing to join the team should be.

This discussion tackles the scenario of an already created WG and someone wants to join later; you should be a contributor on the roadmap of the WG at the end we left it opened to anyone willing to contribute..
But in this case, when the group is not yet created, seems a bit different. Shall we just accept by good faith? I can say that, if someone like me is in this WG, anyone who contributed to the community could be in as well because. I didn't contributed yet to any of the OKR of the WG because, well... the WG is not yet consolidated. But just starting.

Having said that, I +1 to @thulieblack joining because she is clearly taking care of the community, not only per its role, but because she go extra mile every day on this matter.

[Barbanio]

Having said that, I +1 to @thulieblack joining because she is clearly taking care of the community, not only per its role, but because she go extra mile every day on this matter.

I subscribe to every word about @thulieblack here, +1 from me, too.

[derberg]

yup, there should be no entry criteria as long as you want to help. As in the end what is a cost of accepting anyone? Maybe requirement should be your are not an anonymous person, but human being known from name 😄

for example I cannot commit to be a WG member and contribute on regular basis, but I'd love to join some of your meetings, and share my experience as maintainer and person that onboards maintainers - to make sure that whatever you decide will help me 😄

[Barbanio]

@thulieblack, you are on board, welcome! 🚀

[thulieblack]

thank you

[quetzalliwrites]

Voting YES for making WGs a thing across AsyncAPI.

Also, we should add Thulie to the community WG.

[jonaslagoni]

I dont see a description of what the vision and focus of Community Growth working group is and why it is needed? 🧐

Or did I miss it anywhere? 🤔

[smoya]

If as per vision you refer to a project's vision, you can check the OKRs here.

As an overall, the goal of this group is making sure the AsyncAPI community grows in a healthy and sustainable way.

why it is needed?

There is interest in keeping the community growing in a sustainable way. People who is interested in this topic and willing to work together gathered and is suggesting to create this WG. Just following https://github.com/orgs/asyncapi/discussions/1037.

[jonaslagoni]

Makes sense, thanks for the clarification 👍

[smoya]

I believe 2 weeks are enough for waiting feedback from TSC. As far as I can see, there is no negative feedback.

@derberg Do you believe we can close this now and officialise the creation of the Community Growth Working Group by later merging #1090 (when approved)?

[thulieblack]

Yes, two weeks is done, and we will Officialize the working group this week!

[derberg]

yup, from charter point of view the vote passed

[smoya]

@thulieblack just to clarify, I didnt mention you because could be seen as in conflict of interest (you are member of such a wg). No intention of skipping you!🙌

Btw, happy we can finally move forward! 🚀

[thulieblack]

Don't sweat it 😉

[smoya]

@Barbanio stepped out from the WG recently. We need to find a new chairperson, and I believe we better do it before concluding this discussion.

I suggest current members @thulieblack @AceTheCreator @alequetzalli (and myself) share if they are willing to become the chairperson, then we vote. As a reminder, we decided to keep a rotating chairperson model. We can still keep it, it's up to the WG.

I start: Yes, I volunteer to become the next chairperson.

[fmvilas]

You got my vote too, @smoya 🛩️

[smoya]

@AceTheCreator @alequetzalli do you volunteer as chairperson? Anyway, your input is needed 🙏 🙏

[quetzalliwrites]

No, I don't see the need to nominate myself since Sergio already got plenty of votes. I am happy to vote for Sergio too 💪🏿

[smoya]

Actually I believe @fmvilas is already doing the chairperson role so I suggest you @fmvilas officialize this 😅. Not sure what others think about it 🤔

@thulieblack @alequetzalli @Mayaleeeee @AceTheCreator @fmvilas

[quetzalliwrites]

Oh! Not sure what to say 😅! But sure, if you prefer to step down, I am happy to nominate Fran too.

[fmvilas]

I'd love to join the working group too 🤚

[smoya]

I guess more than welcome; the group is open to all people interested!

[smoya]

cc @Mayaleeeee @alequetzalli @AceTheCreator @thulieblack

[fmvilas]

👋 Everyone! Thanks for joining the meeting today. Here's the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG_m_KfN9XI.

For those of you who didn't join but are still interested in participating, feel free to leave comments in this discussion and/or joining the next meeting (will share a link once we decide on a date/time but in the meantime you can join the #community-growth-wg channel on Slack).

[fmvilas]

As per discussion on the last meeting, please take some time to reply to the following question:

What should be the purpose/vision/north star of the Community Growth Working Group?

I'm pinging @smoya @alequetzalli @AceTheCreator @thulieblack @Mayaleeeee @miqui @derberg @jonaslagoni because they were part of the call but, if you're reading this, please don't hesitate to leave your opinion too.

[lmgyuan]

May I ask what would the Community Growth Working Group be doing exactly? I can see that it will help maintain a healthy and sustainable growth of the community, but what things would it do to achieve it? For example, would it host weekly meetings to hear community concerns? Maybe it could appoint a person to monitor the health and sustainability of the community? Also, what does being healthy and sustainable mean? Is it about encouraging more activity in the community? Just some ideas and definitely down to hear what other people think : )

If any of the things mentioned above has been discussed elsewhere, I will greatly appreciate it if someone can share the links with me!

[fmvilas]

@lmgyuan yeah you're not alone 😅 The whole meeting yesterday was around these questions. We want to clarify and agree on what exactly should be the purpose of this working group (WG). If at all. Another option is that the WG is scoped down and even renamed as @derberg suggests below.

[smoya]

After reading both @derberg and @thulieblack comments below, I believe their words here make a lot of sense. I wrote 2 lines in https://github.com/orgs/asyncapi/discussions/1094#discussioncomment-9083507.

[derberg]

Tbh, seeing so much confusion around the topic, I suggest to start simple with only one goal, one single goal, nothing else.

• we have ideas in https://github.com/orgs/asyncapi/discussions/948
• I also mentioned one of that goals many times during AsyncAPI on Tour last year (here Madrid recording: https://youtu.be/fuqMIlnzrv4?t=637)

Nobody questions that organization-wide we need to increase the number of maintainers.

So maybe instead of Community Growth Working Group just setup Maintainers Growth Working Group with just one simple goal: helping grow list of maintainers.

Advantage of such solution:

• we postpone any longer discussions about how Community WG should cooperate with @thulieblack that is already a Community Manager with goals for 2024 defined
• you have a perfect setup of a working group focused on one single goal, easy to understand
• it will take you few months to complete it, will give you an opportunity to work together towards a goal, learn how organize WG
• since many WG members will be focused more on community work this way, it will be easier to sit down again in few months and define next goals for WG, next goals for 2025 together in a group and maybe for 2025 you will say, hey, we need to switch from WG and actually introduce SIG and call it Community SIG
• This WG meetings could be organized together with existing Community Meetings organized by @AceTheCreator so you could share a meeting, also listen to other topics that would help in future decisions for new goals

Another big advantage of just focusing now on Maintainers Growth Working Group is that there are already many different initiatives in place that we just need to maybe coordinate in WG to make it more visible:

• we experiment with new maintenance setup in website that from my perspective works perfect from code ownership perspective - new maintainers, so much better coordination. But we do not do it under one WG, so we do not regularly discuss how it works, we do not document it, we did not check numbers, is it working for docs triage? - we don't share
• we started pulling some repos into generator repo to improve maintainance costs, have less repos, and more people from generator-realm in one repo, organized together. The same happens in Parser-js with @smoya . But these are individual initiatives - we do not coordinate them from one place, no documentation, no measurement
• with @AceTheCreator using GSoC we experiment with concept if "maintainership" where instead of "features" ideas we will do a maintainer onboarding, experimenting with what people need to know, what learn, what initial training they need, what are maintainer duties. At the moment it is just our experiment, and if we put it up for coordination through WG - it will help maybe to document the whole process for future, as one of solutions for existing maintainers: yo, you want more maintainers? one way is to do it through our dedicated paid program, AsyncAPI Maintainership, here you have all the guidelines, tips and tricks how to pick right candidate, how to onboard - etc

and we can do much more...

• I need help with https://github.com/orgs/asyncapi/discussions/1073 to make proper submissions for open source funds
• There are also many EU programs we can try to apply to - we just need to brainstorm how we can plug our work into one of those

so yeah, I suggest just forget about Community Growth Working Group with wide scope and first setup working group that has just one goal and WG like Maintainers Growth Working Group or Maintainers Onboarding Working Group

side note, we already kinda have an unofficial working group for AsyncAPI Conf on Tour - Thulie organize regular meetings, we do related job, regularly meet, started working on tasks list, everyone have some duties, website development, sponsorship and others. Sharing just as a kinda example that being focused on one goal makes more sense maybe

[lmgyuan]

I agree! This is a lot clearer and makes it easier for people to understand. Its clarity is also important for the working group to really plan and take actions for the goal.

[smoya]

I agree with the fact it is more like a SIG what we are trying to come up with than a WG, which usually is something kinda temporary. And I also agree starting with a reduced-scope WG will help us focus and coordinate efforts efficiently.

So, I have really not too much to add here but just saying +1 to focus in a little area, such as growing maintainers and in consequence, call the WG Maintainers Growth WG or similar.

[quetzalliwrites]

I'm leaning toward updating our WG to be a Maintainers Growth WG. It certainly seems more appropriate and reduces the scope confusion.

[thulieblack]

If we are still going with "Community Growth," we need to realize that all community initiatives, including other working groups, will fall under the CW-WG. Is this the responsibility that the working group is willing to focus on?

And to fully understand the working group's purpose, we must understand what problems we are trying to solve.

For instance,

• If the focus is on growth, what will revolve around it? What are the areas for improvement? Is it about attracting more contributors or users?
• If the focus is on sustainability, how do we plan to engage sponsors and financial investments such as Bounty, Conference, Swag Store, and Marketing? How do we plan to enhance the community case studies, onboarding guides, and similar resources?

Instead of inventing something new/from scratch, why not build on the community needs?

Currently, the priority is growing Maintainers, and the WG can leverage Barbano's research to achieve this goal. While some may consider community-building goals to be "ineffective", but we have been working on ways to push this topic forward on a basic level.

Furthermore, we need to realize that not all maintainers get paid or work full-time. So, as much as we want to focus on maintainers' growth, we must also find ways to retain and prevent burnout. Currently, we have the Bounty Program to tackle this, but we can explore other open-source project funding programs.

Overall, I agree with Lukasz that we should focus on one area.
It'll also give us time to learn how other community initiatives function and eventually find ways to improve them collaboratively.

Another area of focus could be educational content, training videos, and courses. That is one way to sustain and grow the community, and we can work on it jointly as a working group.

It all goes back to what I mentioned earlier: we have initiatives in the community that we can pick up, prioritize, and improve.

[fmvilas]

Recording of our last call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gQrpEsKs5E.

So far we agreed that:

1. We should rename the working group to Maintainers Growth Working Group.
2. Our main objective is to help growing the number of maintainers in AsyncAPI repos.

Next steps:

1. Renaming to Maintainers Growth WG (@fmvilas)
2. Create a GH project and track all the discussions we’re having (@fmvilas)
3. Work with maintainers to define what maintainer means for each case. (@fmvilas will create the initial task)

Next meeting: Monday, April 22nd at 14:00 UTC (#1174)

[quetzalliwrites]

👍🏻 looks correct to me!

[miqui]

Thanks for sharing @fmvilas . Sorry, I am a bit late in providing my feedback. I like what I heard in the meeting recording (4/15/2024). Maintainer WG, the discovery playbook, and what it means to be a maintainer in this community. IMHO, a very good organic approach.

[fmvilas]

Recording of our last call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Aw7-gYrJyY.

Decisions:

• We'll start with the automations help that @derberg suggested. @smoya will be chair 🪑 and @alequetzalli co-chair 🚗

Action items:

• Change the WORKING_GROUPS.yaml format so they can contain multiple chairpersons. (@smoya)
• Create a discussion introducing this working group, its purpose, and ask the community to reach out to us if they want help growing the number of maintainers in their repos. (@AceTheCreator)
• Make noise about the discussion above ☝️ so it reaches more maintainers. (@thulieblack)
• Come up with a new date and time for the next meeting. (@alequetzalli)

You can find all the action items above as tasks in the GitHub Project: https://github.com/orgs/asyncapi/projects/33/views/3.

[smoya]

Change the WORKING_GROUPS.yaml format so they can contain multiple chairpersons. (@smoya)

PR in #1187

[smoya]

Added @alequetzalli as co-chair 🚗 in https://github.com/asyncapi/community/pull/1143/files#diff-bb4def3783fa90ce6938aa7b9ad416f7c6bb3b7583773dd9645a842fdda46e12R111 🚀

[smoya]

Recording of our last call (Still processing...)

Moved notes to #1197

[smoya]

The Working Group is got official now when #1143 got merged.

I believe we can close this discussion!