Skip to content

Community Team Meeting Minutes

Jump to bottom
Christian Luhmann edited this page Feb 23, 2024 · 13 revisions

Friday, Feb. 23, 2024

Attendees

Christian, Jesse

Notes Taken By

Christian

Agenda

  • Documentation

Minutes

  • byte-sized (decision tree ala sklearn)
  • FAQs (e.g., https://users.aalto.fi/~ave/CV-FAQ.html)
  • long-form on-ramps/bootcamps. These would be "front to back" exercises illustrating workflow and decisions needed along the way, etc.
    • radon for hierarchical regression
    • count data beta-binomial, Poisson, negative binomial
    • one for survival analysis
    • one for GPs
    • one for mixture models
    • one for statespace
    • one for scan/timeseries
    • one for BARTs?
  • What about videos?
  • Coursera-like?
  • What about little things like Ricardo' automatic logp puzzles?
  • hierarchical modeling challenges
    • then use dims
    • then add a mvnormal
    • we could use use graph inspection to see if you did it correctly
  • like homework, but semi interactive, scaffolded, etc.

Friday, Oct. 27, 2023

Attendees

Christian, Thomas, Jesse, Robert

Notes Taken By

Christian

Agenda

  • Office hours
  • Documentation

Minutes

  • is there a better organization of notebook gallery?
  • bayesian workflow content (maybe not a notebook?)
  • maybe a "best practices" guide/notebook
    • best practices wrt Bayesian modeling
    • best practices wrt to PyMC usage
  • port Stan guide to PyMC? It is permissibly licensed
  • "penalty box" for not-up-to-date notebooks?
  • callout box at the top of out-of-date notebooks?
    • could we automate this via GH actions?
    • maybe callout can be a call to action for contributions to update
  • docathon (currently on calendar for Nov. 17)
  • vignettes in the API docs
  • coords/dims undocumented in pm.Model() (!!)
  • can we link directly to the vingettes in the API documentation? This would allow us to point users directly to the vignettes (many API doc pages are long and the vignettes are all the way at the bottom)

Friday, April 28, 2023

Attendees

Christian, Thomas, Reshama, Ravin

Notes Taken By

Christian

Agenda

  • Started/ing PyMCon cycle 2
  • In-person?
  • Office hours

Minutes

  • Limiting factors on PyMCon? Mentors, marketing, planning, scheduling, etc.?
  • Solutions to some difficulties from cycle 1 were discussed and planned moving forward
  • The issue is how to motivate “organizers” (e.g., people doing the marketing, etc.)
  • What is the ultimate goal if we change the organizational structure?
    • Efficiency, marketing reach, scheduling
  • Things fell through the cracks in cycle 1 (e.g., getting sponsor logos on website)
  • Ultimately, who has responsibility for the various things (social media, event cards, uploading recordings/videos, discourse posts)
  • Sponsor update: ODSC has been invoiced. Other company is “working on it”. A third company is in the works. Reach out to Benevity-company employees
  • Community donations? Crowd-sourcing. Put their photo on the website, etc. OpenCollective can be used to do this.
  • Planning of next PyMCon event is in progress. May happen mid-May, maybe June.
  • Need to advertise CFP

Friday, March 31, 2023

Attendees

Christian, Ravin, Fernando, Reshama

Notes Taken By

Christian

Agenda

  • Finishing off cycle 1
  • PyMCon cycle 1 debrief/planning for cycle 2

Minutes

  • Need to move Hyosub’s event. Ravin will contact him. Apologize about scheduling and communication. Move ~1 month into future. Basically add him to cycle 2.
    • Change date on website
  • Post-mortem & Changes for the future
    • More time between events (~2 weeks)
    • Who is doing what and when?
    • Do we want to use the marketing checklist?
    • Who has primary responsibility for event-related actions? Mentor or e.g., marketing team, etc.
    • Maybe have a “global” calendar of event-related actions (meetup event created, discourse post created, tweet, post youtube videos, etc.)
    • Stricter timing on individual events (when sync and async sub-events can happen)
    • Figure out “backup” mentor plan(s)
    • Figure out a single location to place all web series information. Right now information is distributed across google drive, github, etc.
    • Decision: move everything to github (we’ll figure out how to do things on GH later)
    • Push CFP harder
    • There should be 3 roles: speakers, mentors (not self-mentors), the organizers
  • Cycle 2
    • Hyosub actions (see above)
    • Need to finish reviews
    • Need mentors

Friday, Feb 24, 2023

Attendees

Christian, Rob, Ravin, Reshema

Notes Taken By

Christian

Agenda

  • PyMCon
  • Office hours
  • Sprints

Minutes

PyMCon

  • Things seem to be on track
  • Bill is up next. Event is an async (GP background post), sync (talk), async (office hours) sandwich
  • Explore the possibility of a GP-centric office hours, inviting Danh and/or Chris F.
  • Sandra is after that. Interview and some detail to be finished off, but is solid.
  • Sponsors are being pursued. Reshama has contact with several, NumFocus is reaching out to a couple more.
  • March 12 as the "deadline" for next CFP cycle
    • This will require a bit of a marketing push
    • This will allow us to review and possibly announce next cycle during the last event of the current cycle
    • We should be framing the CFP (e.g., at the beginning of near-future events) as "the deadline is approaching"
  • Figure out how to reach out to previous submitters to make sure they are still interested

Other things

  • Community sprint is happening on March 30, 2023
    • Latin America/Spanish-speaking focus
    • Translations are ongoing
  • Christian may stream some v3/v4->v5 notebook updating

Homework

  • Not too much

Friday, January 27, 2023

Attendees

Christian, Ravin, Reshama, Fernando

Notes Taken By

Agenda

  • PyMCon
    • Scheduling
  • [Reshama] Data Umbrella PyMC Study Group (Th, Feb 2, 2023)
  • [Reshama] Data Umbrella PyMC Community Sprint

Minutes

PyMCon

  • mentors need to enter sub-events/dates in event development doc
  • mentors should take over ownership of the event cards/panels on the website
  • website cards: where do they link? meetup or discourse?
    • maybe point to meetup “before” event and discourse “after”?
    • discourse is more archival than meetup
  • meetup also assumes that events occurs at a particular date and time
  • decision: discourse is the “hub”. web cards link to discourse post. meetup can be used for synchronous sub-events (e.g., live Q&A). if there are multiple synchronous sub-events, we can create multiple meetup events (1 per)

PyMC 5.0 Release

Homework

  • [Reshama] Figure out date for community sprint for Latin America
  • [Christian] Post new office hours
  • [All] Increased contributors traffic due to GSOC 2023: Need to recruit team members to review PRs by new contributors
  • [Ravin or Christian] add some discourse/meetup instructions to mentor playbook
  • [Fernando] market Dante’s event
  • [GSOC 2023]

Next Community Meeting

Friday, February 24, 2023

Friday, December 30, 2022

Last Month’s Meeting Minutes

Attendees

Ravin, Christian, Guilherme, Christian L, Reshama

Notes Taken By

Rowan

Agenda

  • PyMCon
    • Scheduling
  • PyMC 5.0 Release

Minutes

PyMCon

  • Scheduling: Around the 5th and 19th of each month
    • At least 1 confirmed
  • Event docs - to be filled out
    • January 13th - Touch base with early mentors to run through playbook?
    • Start filling out as soon as possible!
  • Interviews look great!
  • Marketing and implementation of events
    • Market rolling CFP throughout event
    • Avoid having to re-market CFP, continue the inertia
  • Next CFP planning…
  • Sponsorship - on hold until 1/2023

PyMC 5.0 Release

  • Continue to remind people to use 5.0!
  • Watch out for community questions
  • Monthly hackathons - maybe restart on a less frequent basis?
    • People may be interested in contributing to PyTensor
  • Notebooks are all still using 4.0 - eventually will need to be updated
  • Hackathons for first time contributors - highlight beginner friendly issues

Homework

Next Community Meeting

Friday, January 27, 2023

October 28, 2022

Last Month’s Meeting Minutes September 30, 2022

Attendees Christian, Beryl, Reshama, Fernando, Purna

Notes Taken By Beryl

Agenda

  • PyMCon (Ravin)
  • Office Hours (Christian)
    • Need a volunteer and date for next office hours
  • PyData NYC 2022 conference
    • Activities update
  • anything else? Minutes

PyMCon Update (Ravin)

I wont make community meeting. For PyMCon the two things I have to say are

  1. We’re launching CFP November 2nd.
  2. @christian It would be good to make a list of all the things we need to get done in those 4 weeks. Some items: setup a review repo, identify a reviewers team, do reviews etc.
    1. pymc-devs/pymcon_2022#165

Great work everyone, its awesome that we got this far, especially in an easy casual manner that didn’t burn anyone out!

PyMCon

  • Website looks great and good to go: http://pymcon.com/
  • Source: https://github.com/pymc-devs/pymcon_2022_website
    • Reshama: it says “website not secure”: opened an issue
  • To do for PyMCon
    • Reveal for Call of Submission on November 2, 2022 for 4 weeks.
    • Recruit reviewers for the submissions. (If there are many good submissions, those that don’t get accepted can be reserved for next time)
    • Have issues for each submission and assign reviewers to the issues.
    • How many reviewers? (Needs to be discussed)
      • Suggestion (Christian): Not current organizers, get a list of interested people and then pick them depending on the work load.
  • Marketing

October Office Hours: recap

  • Tomas presented
  • 8-10 people attended
  • Nov office hours: ? week of Nov 14

PyData NYC 2022 Conference Nov 9-11, 2022

  • Sprint day: Nov 8, 2022
  • CL: available to go and run sprint

Homework

Next Community Meeting

Friday, November 25, 2022

September 30, 2022

Agenda

  • PyMCon
  • Office hours
  • NumFocus summit

Minutes

  • Next office hours will Oct 14, 2022

  • Tomi agreed to do a bambi-focused session of office hours approx. 2 weeks later

  • Highlights from NumFOCUS Summit by Ravin

    • Community was a big topic during the summit.
    • PyMC working sessions was a model of reference.
    • NumFOCUS will scale up on events like PyData.

  • Christian gives an overview of PyMC open source work sessions that occurred summer 2022 (and gave rise to the PyMC study group)

  • Details here: Data Umbrella PyMC 2022 Open Source Report

  • Discussion of events that can increase exposure of PyMC out in the community.

    • Events like PyData (NYC and Global)
    • Host sprints at these events.
    • PyData NYC (pydata.org/nyc2022) is Nov 9-11, 2022.
    • PyData Global (pydata.org/global2022) is Dec 1-3, 2022.
    • Ravin suggested a lightning talk to review PyMC v4, aesara, GSoC, and the PyMCon Web Series
    • Have a PyMC mini sprint, office hours, or Q&A session?

  • Web series

    • TO DO
      • Deploy the website on a new repo, it has enough information and can be deployed.
      • Get Netlify working in the public repo.
      • Get docker running.
      • Open issues on how to make the CFP better.
    • Concerns
      • Is the website fully functional?
    • Proposed timeline
      • Get the website working in a week.
      • Open the CFP for a month, by mid November we might have enough submissions to kick off the web series.
      • If we are publicizing at PyData NYC, then we should sync the CFP/deadline with the conference
      • First event might be end of November.
    • Suggestions
      • Think of bigger PyMC events for the future (In-person or hybrid)

  • Discuss on how to get more people involved in PyMC after GSoC or have more recurring contributors.

    • Invite them for sprints/working sessions?
    • Get other activities happening outside of GSoC and involving them in those activities.

  • Posting meeting minutes

    • Can we share it on Discourse?
    • Also discussed the possibility of having an "admin" repo for this sort of thing

  • Next PyMC Community Meeting: 2022-Oct-28

2022, August 26

PyMCon

  • Christian will submit a PR on the CFP, the review of which can help to polish off:

    • The Review Process
    • How to submit FAQ
    • What to avoid
    • What if my proposal is not accepted?

  • Make sure the submission form includes a question: "if your submission is not accepted this quarter would you want to be considered for the following quarter?"

  • We plan to push for submissions every time we have a PyMCon event (when we have relevant people's attention)

  • The timelines of reviewing, submissions, and the events themselves will all be synced so that we only have a single timeline rather than 3+.

  • Ravin will submit a PR regarding permissions, governance document, etc.

  • Marketing

    • Materials, style guide, logos looking good
    • some ongoing discussion about accessibility of color scheme

  • Website is up and looking great

    • need to figure integrate style guide, etc.

  • Communication channels needed on website:

    • CFP
    • COC violation reporting mechanism
    • General contact (open questions about how this would work)

  • Put together an example library of common submission types and the activities (and timing) needed for each:

    • "Traditional talk/presentation"
      • speaker records video
      • video posted to pymc_devs youtube channel
      • link to video posted on discourse
      • questions posted to discourse thread are compiled for some period of time (e.g., the week after the video is posted)
      • speaker records "Q&A" session in which he/she answers the compiled questions
      • speaker does live/synchronous post-talk Q&A session on discord
      • etc.

Other (non-PyMCon) Community Business

  • Reshama asked about getting volunteers for the PyMC OS Study Group
  • Now that the Data Umbrella Summer Sprint is done, need to schedule PyMC office hours
  • Get Tomi to schedule bambi-specific office hours

2022, July 29

Agenda

  • PyMCon

Minutes

  • Still targeting a September-ish "roll out" for the CFP
  • Submission form: agreed to use google forms→google sheets
  • Review process: blinding is a bit of a logistic headache,
  • Blinding/not may interact with the evaluation/assigning of mentors pipeline
    • who are reviewers?
    • how many?
    • are they evaluating above threshold/not or something more continuous?
    • how do mentors get assigned to submissions?
    • are mentors blinded to the submissions they are assigned or do they select based on familiarity/expertise?
    • states of submissions: no, yes now, maybe later
    • add to submission: if you are not selected for the current cycle, would you like to be considered for a future cycle?
  • assign pool of N mentors to top N submissions - everything can stay blinded up through this step
  • so reviews/evaluations need to be reasonably continuous
  • does every reviewer review every submission? we need at least decent coverage and “workload” per reviewer may depend on # of submissions/reviewers

2022, June 24

Minutes

  • We need to add contributors to Data Umbrella/PyMC sprint site
  • It may be helpful to create project board for various PyMC events/activities

2022, April 29

Todos from last time

  • None?

Agenda

Minutes

  • Office hours

    • Ravin will host the next office hours
    • Christian will figure out the office hours after that
    • Office hours every 3 weeks or so seems doable for now?

  • community manager

    • not entirely clear about proposal, need more info (Thomas?)
    • Thomas clarified and we discussed that social media/marketing were really the obvious community manager responsibilities that we have no concerted effort on
    • decided to hire a social media "person" to handle much of the manual aspects of these duties
    • Labs has hired a marketing intern and we may be able to use use this person for PyMC tasks as well
    • Thomas is evaluating this person (new hire) and will loop back once this is done
    • The rest of the team can contribute to sketching out boilerplate for recurring events/notices/posts
    • Team can also monitor and maintain a queue of items to be handled by social media person: events, office hours, blog posts, talks/videos

  • PyMC uncon

    • Thomas, Ravin, and Christian volunteered to "shepherd"/lead submissions/selections
    • Ravin will finalize website
    • rolling CFP or deadline(s)?
      • deadline focuses attention/interest
      • rolling/no-deadline is more flexible and may be less intimidating

2022 March 25

ToDos from last time

Agenda & Notes

  • GOVERNANCE.md edits

  • Discourse Questions

    • Adding categories
      • only Admin, Community Team
    • Delete other peoples posts
      • only Admin, Community Team
    • Moving posts between categories
      • only Admin, Community Team, PyMC Core Team
    • Who can edit other people’s posts
      • Admin, Community Team, PyMC Core Team
    • Pinning posts
      • Admin, Community Team, PyMC Core Team
    • Announcements
      • Only Admin, Community Team, PyMC Core Team can post a new topic
      • Any person can add an new post to an existing topic
      • Subscribe by default for everyone
    • Tags who can add?
      • People in Trust Level 4 can add tags (users)
        • Make a more precise proposal
        • And if they answer things
      • Everyone in PyMC Team can edit tags
    • Who can edit posts?

  • Office hours?

    • Debrief from last time
      • Do NOT post to twitter
    • technical side (platform?)
    • Schedule going forward?
      • discuss on slack, ad hoc meets are possible, keep momentum

  • Status of v4 when answering questions (i.e., when do/don’t we recommend the beta?)

    • bring up at general meeting

  • Anything else going on to be aware of?

  • PyMCon 2022 https://docs.google.com/document/d/19jWCd4OmwTksdIuLP7K6RWSCLepPQcdj4SB5cWfIASM/edit#

2022 February 4

Agenda

  • Welcome Martin Ingram 🎉
  • Finish the team goals (plus update/fix the description and name in the governance)
  • Discourse
    • tags/topics
    • labeling questions as "solved"
    • how to ask a question
  • Office hours?
    • pre-sprint?
    • post-sprint?
    • ongoing?
    • technical side (platform?)
  • Feedback on the website? https://pymc-devs.github.io/pymc.io/
  • PyMCon 2022?

Notes

  • Governance document needs to be updated with the name of community team (currently refers to the "discourse" team) and the team mission
  • On discourse will begin to try and "nudge" towards marking solved topics as solved. If it is clearly solved, then feel free to go in and mark it. If it's unclear, we can ask.
  • Christian has started a "how to ask a question" document. Ultimately it can go in documentation under community.
  • We may be able to insert the how to ask a question link and other related information into the template discourse users see when creating a new topic (need to investigate).
  • With v4 coming, we may need a way to distinguish v3 vs. v4 discourse topics. Sub-categories? Just tags?
  • PyMCon 2022 planning to begin "next month"? So March? Check in with Ravin.
  • Office hours
    • Data umbrella often uses office hours to facilitate sprints
    • Pre-sprint (1 hour): answer questions if users have already tried some of the initial contribution steps (e.g., the sprint cheat sheet)
    • Post-sprint (1-hour): deal with open PRs, reviews, helping to finishing up/follow up, etc.
    • Pre-sprint office hours should be 1 week before sprint (next week)
    • Post-sprint office hours should be 1 week after sprint (otherwise it collides with other team meetings)
    • Poll to make sure people can staff office hours
    • After the sprint, we will try out recurring office hours
    • To retain momentum coming out of the sprint, we can keep the office hours contribution-focused in the short-term
    • After that we can broaden to other topics
    • e.g., we can have someone(s) give brief presentation(s) then open to Q&A
    • We could also have nominal topics for each meeting (e.g., time series, GPs, etc.) though we wouldn't have to stick to them if people have other things they want to discuss.

ToDos

  • Update governance document
  • Poll re: staffing of pre-/post- office hours
  • Explore discourse custom topic templates
  • Leftovers from last meeting
    • Initiate asynchronous discussion about 1 vs. 2 communities
    • Start a document about improving discourse management (Ravin)

2022 January 6

Agenda

  • What is the community team?
    • Discourse
    • What else?
    • PyMCon?
  • StackOverflow?
  • PyMCon
  • Discourse
    • Help desk (current discourse activity)
    • Recurring events/activities?
      • More entries in the "Sharing" topic (e.g., blog/notebook posts/discussions/breakdowns?)
      • Q&As?
  • Paid Discourse account?
  • Team procedures
    • Delegation of discourse questions to team members?
    • Elevation of discourse questions to github issues?
    • "sub-optimal" questions (see this pymc-examples issue)

Notes

  • What is the Community Team?
    • mission = grow the community
    • also "marketing" of pymc (e.g., twitter)
    • PyMCon seems like a community-related activity even if it involves people beyond the community team
    • The community team is primarily focused on discourse and answering user questions there
    • Community team is responsible for making sure discourse is functional, but isn't exclusively answering questions (others can answer questions, and team members have other responsibilities)
    • Get energy/momentum infused into the community generally and discourse specifically (e.g., get the community pitching in to answer questions, discuss, etc.)
    • Short-term goal seems to be to get discourse management "in order" (i.e., efficient)
    • Longer-term goals can incorporate other spaces and wider community
  • Improving the efficiency of discourse management:
    • We should probably start utilizing discourse tags/labels more/more optimally (e.g., liberally assign tags to posts)
    • first priority is that ever Q gets some sort of response (even if it's tagging someone)
    • tag/delegate questions to team members
  • Do we want one community or two?
    • Two is roughly developers and users
    • One is everyone
    • The answer to this question influences lots of other choices (e.g., do we use github discussions for development-related discussion or do we use discourse?)
    • Having the community see more developer "presence" on discourse might be good
    • github issues are sometimes more appropriate for discourse and certainly vice versa

ToDos

  • Solidify mission statement
  • Initiate asynchronous discussion about 1 vs. 2 communities
  • Start a document about improving discourse management (Ravin)

Relevant docs:

Clone this wiki locally