Retro for Q4 2022 Ensembles

[KellyAH]

Hi @KellyAH, @zspencer, @nirmalathapa, @naomiquinones, @anaulin and @sadiejay, @daltonrpruitt

Thank you all for participating in ensemble sessions from October through December!

• We got a ton done! Marketplace Furniture is 50% done thanks to everyone's efforts and feedback!
• We all learned a lot about each other and grew as people and engineers.

Let's do a little retro to capture how Q4 went.

Feel free to reply to this with:

🎉 - Things you think went really well!
🤔 - Things that left you feeling confused or "fall out" of the learning experience
♻️ - Suggestions for what you'd like to see changed during 2023 Q1!

[KellyAH]

🎉 - Things you think went really well!
🤔 - Things that left you feeling confused or "fall out" of the learning experience
♻️ - Suggestions for what you'd like to see changed during 2023 Q1!

🎉 went well

• Marketplace is 50% done! 🎉
• I got a few small ZC PRs done by myself outside of group sessions. Hope to get more done if I can. 🙏
• Diving head-first into the deep end of Rails by joining the Wednesday dev sessions was exciting and a huge boost to my learning. 🤿
• Rails is getting easier, comfier, and more fun to work in, the more I work in it for my job (as a Jr. Rails dev) and for Zinc Collective (ZC).
• I am excited to have new members to learn from, Dalton 🙌
• I am honored to finally meet and code with Sr. Engineer, @anaulin whom I've always seen so active in ZC. 🙇
• I am grateful to be learning along with fellow Rails newbies like @sadiejay so I don't feel so alone. 😄

🤔 confusing things

• I learn best by "doing", But I may have gotten 🧠 ⚡ 🤯 stressed out from consistently Diving head-first into the deep end of Rails details without any big picture context or mind map/ mental model. Some of it I figured out thru repetition but other parts are still fuzzy because I'm missing mental models or those models take time to stick in my 🧠 .
• Rails feels like a huge 🐋 that keeps kicking my ass at work and at ZC. Everyone is super nice and helpful and supportive but I'm putting a lot of self-pressure on myself because my current job depends on how fast I can learn and push out code ASAP. It's just been so stressful lately due to being suddenly thrust into the Jr. Rails dev role at work after my automation team got laid off.
• I SUX at traditional studying. I just don't have the patience or time for it like I did during my college years. I have tons of coding and rails 📚 and free video/ text courses, but OMG they make me fall asleep 😪 or I can't remember anything I learn from them.
• I can't remember the last time I found Coding to be fun. It has just felt like lonely pain and suffering since my automation team got laid off. This is a problem. 😞

♻️ Suggestions

• I've been in JS land for the past year, so I need to refresh my Ruby knowledge/habits.
• I need to find a way to rediscover the "fun" and "joy" of coding. 👈 most important for me to fix
• As I keep climbing the ⛰️ that is Rails, I need to find fast, effective ways for me to learn with extremely limited time and constantly overloaded mental capacity.
• I should NOT have pressured myself into driving at every group session. It may have burnt me out. And made me a lil scared of Zee. 😅 Let's have other drivers. 🚗

[zspencer]

Re: Driving every session - I think that driving is really powerful; and I also think that asking lots of questions while navigating (and interrupting when the explanation is to deep or shallow) are really great too! Part of the challenge with driving is while it builds muscle-memory; it sometimes doesn't leave a lot of space for curious observations and reflection; especially when we're prioritzing momentum or speed.

Re: Fun and Joy - I agree there! I've been pondering ways to make it more fun while still being productive and educational. It feels like an iron-triangle in a way to me; where it's realy only possible for us to "pick two".

Perhaps what we really want to do is be more intentional at the start of the session; and before picking a driver decide how we want to prioritize:

1. Curiosity Regulation! Do we want to explore the squirrels that pop into our minds, or do we want to stay focused on the task at hand?
2. Productivity Speed! Do we want to fly through this and make a thing?! Or do we want to take it slow and make sure the changes are stable and safe today?
3. Educational Depth! Do we dig deep or take higher-level views of things?

I could imagine a world where each ensemble has different feels based upon what we decide; and having those intentions be explicit allows peers in the ensemble to "callback" to those intentions.

Thoughts?

[KellyAH]

I agree. Before each session lets:

1. Decide on the Driver.
2. Decide on the priority: a. education focused, b. project progress, c. exploratory curiosity Q & A, d. etc.

Just as we code with intention, we should try to get into the habit of managing our sessions with intention.

[zspencer]

🎉

• I've been enjoying having @KellyAH and @anaulin consistently in the Wednesday sessions!
• I appreciated @sadiejay and @daltonrpruitt jumping in in Q4 2022 and hope to see them through Q1 and beyond!
• We've made some amazing progress on 🥔🗜️✨ Gizmo: Marketplace #831!!!
• @anaulin's regular tidying and honing has been amazing!!
• @cjoulain's demo!!! WOOO! DEMOS!

🤔

• I'm still not sure how to build momentum outside of sessions; I think some of it is due to cruftiness; and some of it is due to lack of clear engineering and product trajectory

♻️

What might it look like if some of the folks who have been in the ensemble a while (@KellyAH? @nirmalathapa? @naomiquinones) wrote outlines or rough-drafts for docs like:

1. Setting up a Local Convene Environment
2. Rails for Convene Contributors
3. Tailwind for Convene Contributors
4. Pundit Policies for Convene Contributors
5. ViewComponents for Convene Contributors
6. Designing and Building a piece of Furniture

And then @anaulin and I reviewed them? These documents would be more expansive than CONTRIBUTING.md/README.md/ARCHITECTURE.md which are intended to be light-touch/easily-updatable/skimmable docs rather than deeper tutorials.

[KellyAH]

I'm still not sure how to build momentum outside of sessions

The easiest way I've found to do solo convene work on my own is to...

1. only grab small tasks that actually interest me. This reduces the change of getting overwhelmed.
2. "strike while the iron is hot" - pick up and start workin on a task ASAP while I'm still excited about doing it.
3. Break it into small pieces so it's easier to work on/get started.
4. Also when reviewing PRs I just ask questions and don't suggest any code changes until I'm sure it's a mistake.

wrote outlines or rough-drafts for docs

I like writing docs. Not everyone does. Last time I wanted to modify the readme I got a little "yelled at" due to an understandable difference of opinons.

If ya'll need any specific docs written/modified just let people know so we can discuss as a team, the doc's scope, tone, audience etc before we start writing it. IMHO That would save alotta writing time.

[anaulin]

🎉

• I've loved seeing more folks popping up at the Wednesday ensemble, and working together! shoutout to @sadiejay @KellyAH @daltonrpruitt @naomiquinones and possibly more folks that I am forgetting at the moment (live shot of my brain right now: 🧀)
• I am pleased to see us refining how we think about how Convene is built, iterating on the internal design (e.g. how we build Furniture) and not being afraid to throw out earlier experiments if we feel they no longer serve us
• I was delighted by having a product huddle and demo with more folks and a potential client, thanks @cjoulain for organizing that!

🤔

• I continue to not have a lot of motivation to work on Convene outside of sessions. I think for me a big part of this is not being convinced that we're "going anywhere" with the current work, which doesn't feel like something that is easy to fix, other than trying to move things forward and see if they shape up (or not).

♻️

• Having smaller tasks available (something that can be knocked out in ~1 hour, say) might make it easier for me to make contributions outside of ensembles.

[zspencer]

I think smaller tasks are a great idea; but I also don't know how to organize smaller tasks particularly well. I appreciate having our broader pieces of work like #831 or #973 in a "Product Garden" style doc; which exposes what work is remaining; but I'm not at all opposed to having smaller github issues like a grab-bag of "Pebbles" or using # TODO in the codebase.

I agree that it will feel easier to invest time outside of session when we have a real connection with production; which is why I've been focusing as much of my "attention-well-regulated spoons" on #831 (Marketplace) and my "just fucking around while distracted spoons" on #898 (Journal). I'm dog-fooding Journal on beta.zeespencer.com, and that's been really great for finding little things that could be improved while puttering about.

(Note: Why the heck does Github issue bodies expand the issue number into the full title (very hot, love it) but everything else leaves them as obnoxious numbers?!?)

[KellyAH]

not being convinced that we're "going anywhere" with the current work

1. What would make it feel like the project is "going somewhere"?
2. Do you mean it's not providing value to any real customer's yet?
3. Or the project too open-ended and vague in its purpose/value?
4. Maybe it should be more streamlined/focused/stragetic?

iterating on the internal design... not being afraid to throw out earlier experiments if we feel they no longer serve us

As a rails newbie, I currently do not question the overall design of the app. I'm waiting until I better understood what is "Rails convention" and what was "going off the Rails".

Also, Rails is doing so much heavy lifting behind the scenes and making it look easy with its conventions that I still find it VERY DIFFICULT to picture in my head how some code changes are affecting the app flow, data flow, database records, user experience, etc. Hopefully that will come the more I use Rails.

I also don't know how to organize smaller tasks particularly well.

1. Should we try to break down a task together to see what is doable chunks?
2. Also doesn't Github have a project board we can use with status lanes so we can make task tickets? would that help?

[KellyAH]

Touching on @zspencer 's comment about:

how to build momentum outside of sessions

After pairing with @anaulin on 1/25 on #1060, she thanked me for getting the CI improvement work started... and I felt immense relief and gratitude that I was able to help in some way. That I had not failed by getting stuck on the work. 🙇‍♀️ ❤️

🤯 I came to a few epiphanies

1. 🪄 Starting something is still valuable. ✨ We are not always expected to be able to finish 100% of the work by ourselves. 👈 Maybe if we as a group reminded ourselves of this more, there might be more contributions 🤷‍♀️
2. The 1 thing holding me (and perhaps others) back from contributing more solo work, besides the obvious reasons (1. Limited Time. 2. Limited 🧠 🔋 brain power/mental energy)...

😨 Is a deep fear and shame of starting work but not being able to finish it on my own. Of starting work, committing to it, and then "flaking out" 🤦‍♀️ later on due to Life/coding issues. Of biting off more than I can chew, outright failing or "turning in" incomplete work for review to the ZC group.

Maybe only I feel this way. But it would be interesting to hear from others if they feel the same or different.

CC: @naomiquinones @nirmalathapa @daltonrpruitt @sadiejay

[zspencer]

I agree with what you're saying Kelly, and I'd like to share some of my thoughts!

Part of what Zinc strives to be good at is being OK with taking on what Contributors and Maintainers safely can. A lot of organizations optimize for "you hold it and you hold it all the way to the end" and I think that makes a lot of sense when you're A) getting paid and B) working quite a few hours a week and C) highly cross-skilled. My perspective on Zinc's goals are:

1. To support under-capitalized, solidarity-economy organizations with non-extractive alternatives to software products and services
2. To nurture the skills of people who are interested in goal 1.
3. To collborate at a sustainable pace in a mutually beneficial, enthusiastically consensual way.

To that end, I think it's much more healthier for Zinc to care less about people being fully independent and care more about creating "beautiful seams" for people to contribute at and between the following steps:

1. Identifying and recording work that would be helpful to our community of contributors and clients.
2. Starting on work contributors believe to be helpful and carrying it forward until stuck.
3. Bringing started work to a low-cost conclusion.
4. Connecting our work to our community of contributors and clients.

From my perspective, the "work" of Zinc is incomplete until every person on the planet has access to secure housing, quality healthcare, continuing education, and healthy food. Choosing what we pick up, hold on to, or let go of as we work in that direction is also part of the work.

TL/DR: All labor is valuable; so long as the person performing the work is striving towards our goal in a way that is healthy for them independent of our ability to provide them with financial support.