Steps to run an IRC team meeting for the Arctica Project

What is a team meeting?

Basically, whenever it comes to the situation that more than one or two people start discussing issues relevant to the project's course, relevant to some aspect of the development within the Arctica Project, we call this a (sub)team meeting. If such meetings occur on IRC, we should make sure they are documented for everyone else interested in the Arctica Project.

Saying this, there are at least two types of meetings:

Regular / scheduled meetings
Spontaneous meetings that deserve a protocol

Regular / Scheduled Team Meetings

Step 1: Announcement Mail

Meeting announcements are either send anew or are included in the last meetings summary mail. Let's presume we plan a new meeting from scratch.

Preparations:
- Find a date/time that works for as many people on the project. Please note, that we have various team members living in various time zones. Use #arctica on Freenode IRC or the developers' mailing list for this.
- Once a date/time for the meeting has been agreed upon , visit Time and Date's timezone converter and prepare an event query. The query is used in meeting invitation mails, so that people don't have to think about date/time conversions regarding different time zones that much.
- Generate a shortened URL for that query's result at https://bitly.com/.
Send an email announcement out to the deverlopers' mailing list using the following template.

Subject: Announcement of Arctica Project IRC meeting, <dd>-<Month> @ <hh>:<mm> UTC

 A new IRC meeting of Arctica Project members (and people otherwise
 interested in our project) has been scheduled:

 Date: <dd> <Month> <YYYY>
 Time: <hh>:<mm> UTC, for your local time: <bitly.com-Short-URL>
 Duration: <mm> minutes
 Location: #arctica on Freenode IRC

 Meeting Chair for this meeting will be <Real Name> (<IRC nick>).

 Please propose discussion topics via the Arctica Project's developers'
 mailing list:
 https://lists.arctica-project.org/listinfo/devs

 If you propose a topic, it is expected that you show up and present it,
 or have a substitute participate in the meeting. It is important that
 you're present at the meeting to guide the discussions in the direction
 you want, so we do not spend time guessing what kind of info/answers you
 may be looking for.

 NOTE: Propose your topic by
 <weekday-and-date-two-days-before-the-meeting>. Any topics added after
 that will be considered for the following meeting. The next meeting's
 chair will send out the meeting invitation / reminder with confirmed
 agenda one day before the meeting.

 Bye,
   <Real Name> (<IRC nick>)

Step 2: Invitation / Reminder Mail

One day (~24h) before the meeting, the official meeting invitation (acting as a reminder / update mail) containing the official meeting agenda gets mailed by next meeting's chair via the Arctica Project's developers' mailing list.

Subject: Next Arctica Project IRC meeting, <dd>-<Month> @ <hh>:<mm> UTC
 
 Here's the invitation/agenda for tomorrow's meeting:
 
 Date: <dd> <Month> <YYYY>
 Time: <hh>:<mm> UTC, for your local time: <bitly.com-Short-URL>
 Duration: <mm> minutes
 Chair: <Real Name> (<IRC nick>)
 Location: #arctica on Freenode IRC
 
 Those without an IRC client can access it here:
 https://kiwiirc.com/client?settings=f0806f0b0080f3918e0a42eefdf2073d
 
 Current proposed topics:
 
 - Introduction (5 min)
 - <topic-1>
 - <topic-2>
 - Wrap up and next meeting (5 min)
 
 Please familiarize yourself with the topics before the meeting, as well
 as the common MeetBot commands https://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot (it's used
 for meeting management and logging)
 
 Thanks and see you tomorrow!
 
 Bye,
   <Chairman's full name>

Step 3: Running the meeting

Meeting moderation

Meeting Chair
- The person who starts the meeting becomes the chair.
- Those who become chair can guide the meeting.
- Chairs can be added or removed with #chair nick and #unchair nick.
- The chair(s) control the meeting's report via sending commands to the MeetBot.
Participants
- Everyone else is a meeting participant
- Participants can post during the complete course of the meeting.
- Participants cannot use MeetBot commands.

As Participant

Join #arctica on irc.freenode.net. Those without an IRC client can use the WebIRC application from our friends at Kiwi IRC.
During the introduction phase introduce yourself by typing: #info Your Fullname, What-you-do-in-the-project.
Whenever you feel like contributing, simply type something.
If you present any of the topics from the agenda, you may have prepared some pre-written text that you want to copy-paste into the chat. You can do this, but make sure to limit yourself when copy-pasting such content.

As Meeting Chair

Start the Meeting and Set the Topic

Join #arctica on irc.freenode.net.
Start the meeting with #startmeeting Arctica Project IRC meeting, <dd>-<Month> @ <hh>:<mm> UTC at the agreed upon starting time of the meeting. This will be the meeting name.
Set the channel's and meeting's topic via the first usage of the command: #topic Arctica Project IRC meeting, <dd>-<Month> @ <hh>:<mm> UTC
Then loop over the meeting's agenda with #topic agenda top-1, #topic agenda top-2, etc. Do this in the timely order of topics as listed in the invitation mail's agenda. Normally the first item that follows up is: #topic Introduction (5min)

Assign Items to the Current Topic

The following commands should only be used by the meeting's chair. Except for the #info command during the introduction phase.

#action somebody will read the entire Internet
- If the specified nick says something during the meeting it will get the action assigned.
- The task is recognized to the nick even if it doesn't write anything with the #some nick command.
#info To summarize some information presented throughout the discussion
#idea Announce some idea
#link here is some {url} with useful information about about xxx
#help Look for somebody who knows about xxx
The last item can be removed with #undo.
#agreed To agree on something (only chairs can agree on items)

End the Meeting

Don't forget to wrap up the meeting and agree on next meeting's time and date. As the meeting's chair, you normally want to use this command five minutes before the end of the meeting: #topic Wrap-up and planning of next meeting (5min)
End the meeting with #endmeeting when the meeting time is over.

Once the meeting has ended, an email will be sent out to the meeting's chair containing URLs to the meeting's summary page and backlog. The sent out mail template will be personalized and then forwarded to the Arctica Project's developer's mailing list.

Step 4: Wrap-up Mail and Announcement of Next Meeting

The meeting's summary mail is always sent to the meeting's chair. The chair then is responsible for personalizing that mail and including information on the next agreed upon meeting. Example:

Subject: [Minutes] Arctica Project community meeting <this-date> + planning for next one <next-date>
 
 Thanks to everyone who attended today's meeting! We had a long but exciting
 meeting filled with great discussions and positive news. If you missed it,
 or if you want to relive it, here are the minutes/logs:
 
 <copy-paste-automated-MeetBot-message-text-here>
 
 The next meeting we have planned for <YYYY>-<MM>-<DD> @ <hh>:<mm> UTC.
 Meeting Chair for that meeting will be <ReaL Fullname> (<IRC-nick>).
 
 Please propose discussion topics via the Arctica Project's developers'
 mailing list:
 https://lists.arctica-project.org/listinfo/devs/
 
 If you propose a topic, it is expected that you show up and present it,
 or have a substitute participate in the meeting. It is important that
 you're present at the meeting to guide the discussions in the direction
 you want, so we do not spend time guessing what kind of info/answers you
 may be looking for.
 
 NOTE: Propose your topic by
 <weekday-and-date-two-days-before-the-meeting>. Any topics added after
 that will be considered for the following meeting. The next meeting's
 chair will send out the meeting invitation / reminder with confirmed
 agenda one day before the meeting.
 
 Bye,
   <Real Name> (<IRC nick>)

Spontaneous Meetings / Discussions

Step 1: Agreement on starting the IRC MeetBot

While being in the middle of a discussion, people on IRC might realize that the discussion is worth a MeetBot session. Immediately, you should agree upon that what you are doing is actually a spontaneous meeting.

The person most experienced with the handling of the MeetBot shall spontaneously become the meeting's chair and immediately start the meeting via the MeetBot commands as described below.

Step 2: Introduction

People attending shortly introduce themselves via: #info <Real Fullname>, <What you do in the project>

Step 3: Provide discussion backlog

The meeting's chair is responsible for providing a quick summary of the discussions backlog before continuing the discussion. Make sure the context of the current discussion becomes clear to third party readers.

Step 4: Running the Meeting

For detailled instructions how to run the actual meeting, see above.

History of meetings

You can find the history of all meetings at http://arctica-project.org/meetbot/arctica/log/.