[teampractices] Offsite meetings

Fri Apr 3 02:11:43 UTC 2015

On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 7:38 PM, Grace Gellerman
<ggellerman at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I would check with Rachel Farrand to see if it's an option to book a
> location for less than a day.
>
> Then if there is a substantial agenda, I'd book a pilot offsite for a full
> day.
>
> If the team found it useful, ask when they'd like to meet offsite again and
> for how long.
>
> Craft some options, iterate, and let the team inspect and adapt ;)

Flying somewhere for a day probably won't work very well. Teams in
Platform tend to have multiple remoties and often multiple
international team members.

> On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 1:34 PM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>> I have been asked to make some recommendations about frequency and
>> duration of offsite gatherings for the teams I am coaching. That topic
>> seems highly intertwined with the WMF culture, which I'm still just
>> starting to learn.
>>
>> What would be the best way for me to get to the point of putting
>> together a recommendation?

The guidance that has been flying around in the budget meetings is
that teams can have one "formal" offsite a year and one "informal"
offsite. There has been some pressure to make the formal offsite
adjacent to an existing event that a significant portion of the team
would already be traveling to such as All-hands, the EU hackathon or
Wikimania to reduce flight costs. The standard that I've heard for an
informal offsite is that there is no venue rental needed. An example
would be gathering the team in a place where one or more team members
lives and hacking from a living room or a co-work friendly space in
the area.

Personally I think having an "offsite" in SF is not really an offsite
since the portion of the team that lives in/near SF will probably head
home at the end of the day instead of hanging out with the remoties
who are trapped in a hotel. Having folks be away from home for more
than 12 days can be a burden as well depending on their home
situation. The combination of these two things makes me personally
think that an offsite in conjunction with All-hands is the worst case
scenario.

Bryan
-- 
Bryan Davis              Wikimedia Foundation    <bd808 at wikimedia.org>
[[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]]  Sr Software Engineer            Boise, ID USA
irc: bd808                                        v:415.839.6885 x6855