2022-04-04

April 4, 2022

Host: Carol Payne

Secretary: Doug Walker

Attendees:

OCIO TSC Meeting Notes

• Technical writer for UX documentation

  • Carol: We've made a proposal to the ASWF, asking them to fund us to hire a tech writer to help us complete and publish the UX guidelines that the UX working group has been working on. John is here to help us discuss next steps.
    
    

  • John: The Linux Foundation has experience bringing in tech writers for other projects outside the ASWF. We have a network of writers that we could connect you with. I've reached out to a few and 2-3 have already expressed interest. The main need is to have a description of the scope of the project. It will take a writer some time to come up to speed on a given project. I recommend you hire someone for a project rather than trying to hire someone by the hour.

  • Michael: How do you communicate the requirements and scope of work to the writer?

  • John: I'd recommend the following: First, look at some work by the writer to ensure they are a good match to the style needed for this project. Second, provide a clear picture of what they will be expected to do. Third, provide some good examples of documentation that are in the style of what you want them to do.

  • Michael: It's been easy for us to discuss the issues related to UX recommendations in the working group, but need to find a way to best explain them and make them accessible to people who don't have the familiarity that we do.

  • Carol: The UX working group already has a long Google Doc that has a lot of good content.  Michael: Yes, and need to decide if it should be integrated with the main OCIO documentation or stay in the Wiki.

  • John: The writer could advise on issues such as how to best deploy the content. The scope of work could also be collaborative, in other words, bring your laundry list of all your ideas and scope out an initial project in collaboration.

  • Carol: How do we arrange for a trial bit of work to ensure it's a good fit? Perhaps we should ask them to revise a section of the main OCIO documentation?

  • Doug: So is the next step for us to meet with some writers and discuss with them?

  • John: Yes, the TAC has been very supportive of the concept so the next step would be to meet with some writers and solicit fixed-bid proposals from them and then use that as the basis to put a specific proposal in front of the TAC. The LF will take care of the contractual details, but need a clear scope and very clear deliverables so that it's clear when it's finished (i.e., when to pay them). At some point, if other projects also want to do this, the board could perhaps approve some ongoing allocation, but for now, it needs to be approved as individual point projects.

  • ACTION ITEM Carol: Michael, Mark, Doug, and I will work on the next steps with John.

• PRs needing review
  
  

  • Patrick: My usual announcement , there are PRs that we are waiting on approvals to be able to merge. In particular, PR #1614 needs approvals, this is a rendering bug and we plan to put it in patch releases.
    
    

• Google Summer of Code

  • Carol: GSoC is starting. Due to some changes on Google and lack of clarity in their promotion and documentation, we have not seen as much interest yet as in previous years. ASWF will be doing a PR blast and an email template is available if you want to push that out to your own networks, particularly schools. This year Google has opened it wider so don't need to be a student (only need to be at least 18 and not in an embargoed country). Even if you don't have time to be a mentor, I'm happy to add you to the mentor email list if you want to get status updates.

• Compatibility Matrix

  • Carol: I still have an action item to take next steps on Liam's compatibility matrix.

  • Doug: Would be nice if companies are able to make updates without having to make a PR. Perhaps put it on the wiki.

  • Michael: Currently our wiki requires adding people to the list before they are able to edit pages, so need more than a simple ASWF account.  Doug: Good point, if it goes on the wiki, need to make it clear how to request access for people that want to make updates.

• Use of GitHub Milestones feature

  • Remi: Would be nice to start using the Milestones feature, as the project has done in the past, to communicate planned updates.

  • Carol: Agreed, I will work with Doug to get that set up, at least for 2.2.

  • Michael: What is the feature list for 2.2?

  • Doug: That is on my list of action items, I'll present more at a future meeting based on my discussion with colleagues and when I was at the HPA conference. I'd like more input from this group, so please let me know your requests for features.
    
    

  • Doug: One of the big features this year, although not the library itself, will be the new configs.  Michael: Would be interesting to add them to the library too.  Doug: Along those lines, I did create issue #1621 for a proposed new feature which is for OCIO to have one or more built-in configs, please add your specific thoughts on that issue or create new issues for other feature ideas.

  • Kevin: We should block off some time at each TSC meeting to do some grooming on the list of Issues/PRs.  Doug: Agreed.

  • Carol: Agreed, that's a good idea. Would be best to prep in advance a list of issues to review by the group to make best use of the time.

• OCIO will be the focus for the ASWF TAC meeting on April 6

  • Carol: Kimball has asked us to be the first project to take part in a new initiative of the TAC, a sort of annual review of the project for the full hour. I have been preparing a presentation, will show contribution stats from a new LF dashboard which is in beta. Will include timeline of releases since 2.0. Will plug the UX and Config working groups. It's an opportunity for the project to give feedback to the TAC, what's working well, what needs improvement.

  • Doug: They may be interested in revising best practices or what they expect of projects.

  • Michael: Will be interesting to see the similar presentation from other projects, we were the 2nd project in the foundation, a lot has happened since then.

  • Carol: For example, is there a benefit to doing a higher level of the CII badge, or not?  It has not been top-of-mind for us for a while as we focus on OCIO specific deliverables, could ask the TAC on their opinion.

  • Michael: Would be interesting to know if the next level is mostly security (which is often not applicable to us) or something with new benefits for our user base.

  • Carol: Yes, will be interesting to hear other projects do a similar review. OCIO has had a ton of momentum from joining ASWF and Autodesk's contributions. Would be useful to discuss how to support projects over the long-term, what help is needed from ASWF beyond CI and legal. More than half of the projects still have not graduated from their incubation phase.

  • Doug: Does the group have any requests around CI or other areas for ASWF support?

  • Michael: One of the great new OCIO features is the Python Package Installer support that Remi added last year. A few other ASWF projects support this too, but would be a great thing for more projects to do. Would be useful to expand the CI pipeline to CD.

  • Kevin: Could improve the testing infrastructure to ensure all projects are compatible.  Michael: There is the docker.  Kevin: Yes, but could be improved.

  • Remi: Do we have a limit on space for artifacts?  Michael: The ASWF has an Artifactory account we could put things on but it is private, so not suitable as a place to put libraries for general public to download. But GitHub has pretty good artifact support now, Thomas has set up the Config repo to use it.

  • Carol: Remi, if you have time to drop by the CI working group, would be interested to know their priorities and if there are new areas of collaboration.

  • Remi: More work could be done on our Wheels, e.g. to include the Python apps. Scaling back the OIIO dependency to only OpenEXR would help.

  • Carol: OCIO is highly regarded in the TAC, we should be vocal about our challenges, e.g. never having enough people, etc.

  • Doug: Totally agree, let's not focus only on the wins.