Blaine Buxton: Positronic Vibrations From Alto Dorado

Harvesting Party For Squeak

Ken Causey just announced 100 hour parties for harvesting Squeak bug fixes. I think this is simply a brilliant idea and I hope to attend at least one of these:

Also posted as a story at
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/29.html

No, I don't mean one party that is 100 hours long. I mean a recurring
party every 100 hours.

I'm sure everyone has noticed that the Harvesting process has
bottlenecks. We are largely a community of Doers. It's difficult to
find the time to settle in and take care of some of the mundane issues
associated with harvesting. We also don't have enough eyeballs looking
at code right now even at the best of times. So I would like to borrow
a page from other open source communities and schedule our version of a
bug squashing party. To steal from Kent I would like to 'turn the knob
up to 10' on this concept. Let's have a regular event scheduled in such
a way that everyone has an opportunity to attend at least once a month
or so. 100 hours = 7 days * 24 hours - (3 days * 24 hours) + 6 hours.
By scheduling a 4 hour party every 100 hours each party will occur on a
different day of the week during a different period of the day. With an
average of 7 parties each month taking place on different days and at
different times everyone should be able to find a time to attend at
least one each month.

We can develop the details of what happens at a Harvesting Party over
time but I envision that everyone that has some free time during the
party come to the Squeak IRC channel (#squeak on irc.freenode.net) for
companionship and virtual refreshments. You will start up a Squeak
image with BFAV2 loaded and pick out a BUG or a FIX or an ENH that needs
reviewing or approving or fixing (depending on your abilities and
preferences). When you run into a snag or a question the others
attending the party will be there to provide support and advice.

I floated the idea first to Göran on #squeak and he mentioned that he
had just sent an email to Marcus Denker suggesting a 24 hour harvesting
party to try to move 3.7a along to beta status. So we threw the idea
together and so here's the bang:

The first Harvesting Party will take place from Noon GMT Friday February
20th, 2004 to Noon GMT Saturday February 21st, 2004. A 24 hour party
with a goal to replace that 'a' with a 'b'.

The next Harvesting Party will take place at 16:00 (4 PM) GMT on
Wednesday February 25th, 2004 (100 hours after the end of the big
party).

Each regular schedule Harvesting Party will last 4 hours.

The schedule for the next 7 harvesting parties is (each 100 hours after
the start of the previous party):

20:00 (8 PM) GMT Sunday February 29th 2004

24:00 (Midnight) GMT Friday March 5th 2004

04:00 (4 AM) GMT Tuesday March 9th 2004

08:00 (8 AM) GMT Saturday March 13th 2004

12:00 (Noon) GMT Wednesday March 17th 2004

16:00 (4 PM) GMT Sunday March 21st 2004

20:00 (8 PM) GMT Thursday March 25th 2004

I will handle announcing the parties regularly.

So put on your party hat, limber up your fingers, prepare your mind, and
show up!

Ken Causey

posted by Blaine at 8:26 AM |