Turn Death by Meeting into Life by Agenda

Recently someone complimented me in an unusual way: “You have the best meeting agendas,” they said.

I hadn’t ever thought about it because the only thing I ever evaluate is the outcome of my meetings–whether people are engaged, the discussion is productive, and we end on time. Nothing is worse than a meeting with no agenda where the meeting organizer starts with “Well, what should we talk about today?”

“Good meetings” are valuable to the participants, productive, and respectful of everyone’s time. A good agenda is a great way to make sure this happens. Busy people like road maps, particularly road maps that show how their time will be used. A well written agenda sets expectations and helps you to meet them. People feel good when their time is respected and their expectations are met.

A great way to respect people’s time is to make the agenda informative and succinct—a “Cliff’s Notes” version of the meeting to come—the background plot with some possible outcomes. Some good ways to do this are:

1) Each topic with a main heading followed by a series of short bullets explaining what needs to be discussed and decided preceded by a few high-level background bullets explaining the previous history or discussion.

2) Add the person’s name who will speak to or lead the discussion in the topic heading. This honors the expertise in the room and lets the meeting belong to everyone.

3) Honor people’s time by adding proposed times to each meeting topic. This helps to guide the meeting and set expectations about how much time will be spent on each topic. It also makes the agenda a nice scapegoat if the meeting gets off track or runs off the rails… something easily corrected with a suggestion like,

I’m noticing the time. We’ve just spent twice as much time as the agenda specified. If we would like to finish this meeting on time we should reschedule this topic for discussion at our next meeting or agree now which other topics we should drop from today’s agenda.

I like to send agendas out to all attendees no earlier than two days before a meeting and no closer than 24 hours before the meeting starts. It seems that any farther in advance and most people will put off reading it until the last minute, if at all. And if people get it too close to the meeting time they don’t have a chance to read it or prepare their thoughts.

Try these things out and you might be surprised how much better, and more productive, your meetings are.

This article, by John Poelstra, first appeared at Core Source Coaching

Gnome Desktop Full of Files & Directories

Have you ever had the Gnome desktop suddenly show every folder and file in your home directory? Have you ever nuked the ~/Desktop directory (intentionally or not) and wondered later why all of the files and folders in your home directory show up on the Desktop?

This has happened several times to me and I finally figured out what was causing it.  It turns out that the ~/Desktop directory is the important connection.  If you remove it, intentionally or otherwise, be prepared for everything in the first level of your home directory to show up on your desktop.  Recreating ~/Desktop does not fix it.

Compliments of the Ubuntu forums I found the solution:

1) Open ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs with a text editor

2) Make sure this line reads as follows: XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"

Maybe someone else has the solution to this problem: why are 95% of the solutions I find for Fedora in the Ubuntu forums and how can we fix that?

The Curse of Knowledge

A few of the goals I set for myself in 2010 were around making the Fedora release processes better known and understood. I’ve made it a personal challenge–I plan to have a pile of URLs and email archive links to refer any complaints to that might show up on Fedora lists about the release milestones being unknown or unclear.  Of course the only way to do that is to create them so they can be pointed to.

Up until recently I’ve mostly focused on doing this through making the schedules better. A good schedule is only one part of making our releases a success.  Having a schedule does not mean you will meet it.  Having a task listed on a schedule does not mean everyone knows what is required to complete it.  This led to me to work on the Release Engineering SOPs and freeze guidelines.

After living through a number of releases it is easy to get jaded about complaints aimed at how unclear Fedora’s release milestones are–what they mean and when they occur.  Sometimes we have not given people the benefit of the doubt when we should.  Other times it is only the people who know that know–The Curse of Knowledge, made famous in the excellent book, Made to Stick.  And yes, on other occasions, people have just not paid attention.

Here are a few things I’ve done or plan to do during Fedora 13 to make sure everyone has the information they need:

1) Milestone reminders to devel-announce–subscribe to this low volume list if you want important notices and reminders.

2) Posting to devel-announce when a milestone has been reached.

3) Periodic reminders of upcoming schedule tasks to each of the teams–contact me if you want more details added to the schedule reminders for your team.

4) A matrix of important schedule milestones and what they mean–are there any missing or is the presentation unclear?  Let me know.

5) Creating SOPs for every Release Engineering task necessary to create a release–Jesse Keating is writing one new one each week I’m formatting them for the wiki.  We could use help from others too.

While I’m at it, it probably wouldn’t hurt to mention that the next significant schedule milestone for Fedora 13 will be Feature Freeze on Tuesday, February 9, 2010.

What other reminders or information about the Fedora 13 release process would be helpful to have?  What are you doing to make Fedora 13 the best release ever?

Rescuing Lost Web Form Input

One of my favorite, must-have Firefox plug-ins is It’s All Text.  Not only does it make writing long entries in web forms pleasant, it can also save your bacon.  Just today I wrote a long email in Gmail using It’s All Text and then accidentally navigated to a new web page.  Returning to the Gmail window, most of what I had written was gone, but there was still hope.

Navigating to ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/itsalltext I found a text document that contained everything I had written and saved upon exiting the text editor. You might have to look through a few files, but hopefully you can use the date and time stamp to make an educated guess.

$ ls -la ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/itsalltext
-rw-------. 1 user user 1065 2010-01-22 17:59 fedoraproject.org.2u2r2r1z2u.txt
-rw-------. 1 user user 2190 2010-01-22 16:46 fedoraproject.org.2z2x2b392z.txt
-rw-------. 1 user user 1220 2010-01-26 09:42 mail.google.com.241i21262s.txt

After opening mail.google.com.241i21262s.txt I simply copy and pasted the text right back into Gmail and sent the message.  The key is to save frequently while the text editor is open and upon exit.  I’m not sure how long It’s All Text keeps these files around, but I have yet to need a file that wasn’t there.

Note: I just encountered a strange problem trying install It’s All Text into the latest version of Firefox in Fedora 12 (3.5.6).  It looks like the latest version is built for Firefox 3.6 so you might have to wait a little bit until it is official released as an update to Fedora 12, if you don’t have it installed already.  I attempted to install an earlier version of It’s All Text, but it failed too.

Fixing Networked Cloned Guests

I’ve been running very minimal server installs under KVM to experiment with different web services.  As a result I rely on /etc/init.d/network to handle networking.  After cloning a guest in virt-manager on Fedora 12, networking does not work on the cloned guest.  Here are the steps to get back in business:

1) Edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 (or whatever your network adapter is) to reflect the new MAC address of the new virtual network card. The new MAC address can be found under the Information icon in virt-manager for the guest you are working with.

2) Delete the file and rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

3) Reboot the guest

This is a known issue being tracked as bug 524269.  The cloning feature is great.  Someday I hope we have similar snap-shotting functionality like VMware Workstation and VirtualBox.

Thanks to Sven Lankes Tom Horsley on the Fedora virtualization list for helping me out.

Is Collaboration Overrated?

This quote struck me from an interesting article called World Wide Mush by Jaron Lanier in the Wall Street Journal:

Here’s one problem with digital collectivism: We shouldn’t want the whole world to take on the quality of having been designed by a committee. When you have everyone collaborate on everything, you generate a dull, average outcome in all things. You don’t get innovation.

If you want to foster creativity and excellence, you have to introduce some boundaries. Teams need some privacy from one another to develop unique approaches to any kind of competition. Scientists need some time in private before publication to get their results in order. Making everything open all the time creates what I call a global mush.

There’s a dominant dogma in the online culture of the moment that collectives make the best stuff, but it hasn’t proven to be true. The most sophisticated, influential and lucrative examples of computer code–like the page-rank algorithms in the top search engines or Adobe’s Flash–always turn out to be the results of proprietary development. Indeed, the adored iPhone came out of what many regard as the most closed, tyrannically managed software-development shop on Earth.

To which I say, “What about the Linux kernel?”  Lanier raises some interesting points and includes some compelling examples, particularly the iPhone, but overall his article feels too “all or nothing”–that all mass collaborations in all settings always turns to mush.

There are a number good aspects to the open model that Lanier has overlooked, particularly the number of hugely successful and widely used open source software programs–all of which by definition, are free.

Lanier’s criteria for the “best stuff” is confusing.  “Sophisticated and influential”–maybe, but “lucrative?” It seems odd to make monetary success part of the criteria when the whole point is making these these programs freely available.

A “design by committee” approach for strategic leadership does turn to mush.  This is why I believe the leadership bodies of the Fedora Project, particularly the Fedora Board and Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), have an obligation to lead and that all of Fedora cannot decide Fedora’s strategic direction together.  These leaders can and should solicit input and ideas from all of the Fedora Project.

Goals for 2010

Studies have shown that written goals have a higher chance of being met.  I have found this to be true and am being more deliberate about setting them for 2010.  I like the idea of setting goals better than I like the idea of “New Year’s resolutions.” Goals sound more serious to me and I think of as something written down versus casually resolving to do something in the new year.

I keep a sporadic written journal on paper.  I love using composition books (the ones from high school science classes) for this purpose because they are sturdy and durable and slightly smaller in size than a regular notebook.  Over the years I’ve gone back and forth between paper and computer, but for the past 7 years or so it’s been all paper.

I keep the first two pages blank and write my goals on the first page, with the second as a spare for easily accessible notes.  I don’t write my goals down every year, but the years I have it’s amazing how many get done.  The year I was most successful was the year I reviewed the goals page every week or two.   This was a casual review to remain focused, not a compulsive “I have to meet my goals or it is the end of the world.”

I don’t create incredibly long lists, usually seven or eight items that I add to periodically throughout the year.

Some of my 2010 goals:

1. Weigh 170 lbs by December 31, 2010–approximately 10 pounds less than now
2. Play 365 games of chess–that’s one game per day or more if I skip a day or two.  I play timed, 20 minute games on Yahoo.  Ping me on IRC if you want to meet up and play.
3. Provide organization and leadership to closing the outstanding Fedora Board topics about Fedora’s strategic direction–do all I can to resolve these topics by the end of my board term.
4. Provide clear and consistent reminders to Fedora development about upcoming Fedora 13 milestones each week or as applicable
   
5. Help create 25 new Release Engineering SOPs.  Our current goal is to create one each week so that we have links to an SOP for each Release Engineering Ticket.  Let me know if you want to help out too.
6. Post 52 times to this blog in 2010–at least one time each week.  Also setting a stretch goal of 104 times which would mean one extra post per week.

Words for 2010:

Chris Brogan’s idea of selecting three words to represent things you want to pursue in the coming year is a nice a nice compliment to setting goals for the year.

1. Focus–spending more time on fewer things to make more time for 10,000 hours.
2. Passion–identifying and cultivating my core passion(s).
3. Consistent–internally consistent with the things I stand for, think, and do.

What are your “goals” and “words” for 2010?  Link back here or add to the comments.

Image by: Obi-Akperee

Grieving With Others

When was the last time something on Fedora Planet made you cry? I mean really weep.

It hadn’t happened to me until I read Russell’s post. Russell, my heart and prayers are with you and your wife. I particularly appreciated your link to the article on how people can help.

I’ve only met Russell once, but I’ll never forget him. It was at FUDCon in Raleigh, NC, January 2008. During a hackfest for testing Anaconda, a guy walked in with a roller cart and a large backpack. He said he’d brought 10 laptops from work to test Fedora on. I don’t think we gave all those laptops the work out that they deserved, but I appreciated his heart and was impressed that he hauled all of that gear to FUDCon.

I love that Fedora Planet carries more than just news about Fedora. It gives a human face to all of us. I want to hold on to the human part more because it is easy for me to lose sight of it in Fedora, particularly when people hold positions I don’t agree with.

We’ve achieved a lot in Fedora with technology that allow us to be in different physical spaces. Situations like this are a definite reminder of its limitations–when human presence is needed most.

Core Fedora Functionality

I’ve been banging the drum about the Fedora Board resolving its discussion about the target audience for Fedora’s primary distribution.  Ultimately it is a bigger conversation about the strategic direction of the Fedora distribution and what it wants to be in the future–one year, two years, five years from now, etc.

To put this discussion in the right context it seems like a good idea to be clear about what we need the Fedora distribution to be today.

To the surprise of many of my friends I haven’t used Windows at my day job since 2004.  There are edge cases where Windows provides a better user experience and more functionality (Exchange/Outlook calendaring and email versus Zimbra), but for the most part I can do my job just fine with the applications provided in Fedora.

These are the applications I depend on every day:

• Gnome desktop
• ssh
• vpnc
• cvs
• vim/gvim
• OpenOffice
• terminator
• irssi
• screen
• TaskJuggler
• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• Rhythmbox
• Twinkle

This is the functionality I expect and depend on from my notebook every day:

• Suspend and resume works every time
• Hibernate and resume works every time
• NetworkManager resumes a wireless network connection after every suspend or hibernate

What about you?  What are the core programs and functionality you depend on working in Fedora?

The Fedora Board So Far

As we start into 2010 and development of Fedora 13, it seemed like a good time to reflect on the the first half of my term as a Fedora board member.  I would would be interested to see other board members blog their thoughts too.  The first half of my appointed seat on the Fedora board is over and I’m looking forward to finishing the rest of my term as strongly as possible.

Two topics stand out to me.  The first is the new trademark policy and the dedication that Paul Frields showed towards driving this topic to its conclusion while improving and molding the policy to the needs of the community along the way.  The second is the board’s attempt to bring clarity to the Fedora Project’s mission and vision.

I feel good about the work I have done championing clarity around Fedora’s target audience and what Fedora is.  A few of the threads I have started on fedora-advisory-board list have sparked long discussions.  This was good, but my perception was that only half of the board substantively participated in the discussion.  As a result I did not feel that we were unified in our beliefs and actions on this important issue to Fedora.

I am disappointed that the board has not made a more concerted effort to bring closure to the topic of Fedora’s Target Audience.  This is a complicated and tedious issue to work through, but without extra time put in outside our three scheduled conference calls each  month, this topic will never be brought to proper closure, particularly when there are other topics on the agenda.

I believe it is the job of the Fedora board to provide vision and leadership.  Right now a big part of this vision needs to be who the Fedora distribution is for.  This isn’t to say these ideas and leadership can’t come from others in Fedora.  It is great when they do.  Ultimately though, the Fedora Board is accountable for providing a vision for the future, conveying that vision in a compelling way to Fedora, making changes to that vision based on feedback from other project members, and making sure the right things are in place for success.

It is what we have been appointed or elected to do.

We are coming up on one year of the “What is Fedora/Target Audience” topic being on the board’s agenda as an unfinished issue.  There are any number of valid explanations for why this has happened and why progress has been slower than anyone would have desired.  It is time to make the “past the past” and set a clear game plan for resolving this issue by the end of the first quarter of 2010.

Another year will expire unless the board makes a concerted effort to refine this issue into actionable pieces and put it to rest.  This will require more time outside of our weekly conference calls, but like most good things that happen in Fedora, they usually require extra time and effort.  It is time to make this issue a priority even if it means meeting more than one time each week.

I am preparing to propose to the board that we meet at a special session each week on a separate day from our regular meeting day.  Our discussion as a board on the topic of Fedora’s target audience each week has been spotty from week to week with less than active participation from every board member in the discussion.  This has spanned two board terms which removed some of the original board members from the discussion and added new ones.  Now we are about to do that for a third time as the composition of the board changes again.

This last reason is reason enough that this topic should be resolved before Fedora 13 is released.