full minutes

Author: SethTisue

minutes/2023/07/26/2023-07-26-julien.pdf

@@ -12,7 +12,10 @@ Scala Center website.
 The following agenda was distributed to attendees:
 [agenda](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/agendas/029-2023-q2.md).
 
-Center activities for the past quarter focused on TODO.
+Center activities for the past quarter focused on language and
+compiler improvements, tooling and developer experience improvements,
+documentation and education, and community and the contributor
+experience.
 
 Details are below and in the Center's activity report:
 
@@ -22,9 +25,13 @@ One new proposal was received this quarter:
 
 * [SCP-031](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/proposals/031-scala-websites-vpn.md): Ensure reachability of Scala websites
 
-The work was already completed by the center before the meeting, and no one objected to considering it "accepted" as well as "completed".
+The work was already completed by the Center before the meeting, and
+no one objected to considering it "accepted" as well as "completed".
 
-Other business discussed included TODO
+Other business discussed included the now-open technical director
+role, fundraising and crowdfunding, certifications, governance, Scala
+2 release plans, and community venues such as conferences, meetups,
+chat rooms and forums.
 
 ## Date, Time and Location
 
@@ -53,12 +60,18 @@ Board members:
 * Lukas Rytz, Lightbend
 * Eugene Yokota, community representative
 
+Krzysztof introduced himself, as (unlike the other subs) it was his
+first time attending.
+
 ## Technical report
 
 Julien summarized Scala Center activities since the last meeting.
-TODO
+He presented from these slides, which concisely show what the
+Center is working on:
+
+* [slides](./2023-07-26-julien.pdf)
 
-His slides and remarks were based on the Center's more detailed Q2
+His remarks were based on the Center's more detailed Q2
 quarterly activity report:
 
 * [report](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2023-Q2-activity-report.html)
@@ -70,45 +83,202 @@ And the Center's Q3 roadmap:
 The following notes do not repeat the content of the report and
 roadmap, but only supplement them.
 
-TODO
+Julien announced that he is leaving the Center soon. This is his
+last board meeting.
+
+A board member asked if it is known yet who the Center's new Technical
+Director will be. Answer: not known yet, but Darja will keep the board
+posted. In the meantime, Julien has already handed over many of his
+specific duties to other team members. For example, Seb will manage
+the MOOCs and Toli is the new SIP chair. Darja will present the
+technical report at the next meeting.
 
 ## Management report
 
-Darja presented this section. TODO
+Darja presented this section.
+
+She thanked Julien for his years of service to the Center. "My heart
+breaks that Julien is leaving. You will be missed."
+
+Johanna's stint at the Center is ending and the series of six blog
+posts she has been working on will begin appearing soon. (A few weeks
+after the meeting, the first in the series, about Goldman Sachs's open
+source efforts,
+[appeared](https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2023/08/23/goldman-sachs-leader-open-source-contributions.html).)
+
+Sylvie is also leaving the Center, to take a different post at EPFL.
+A search for a new part-time administrative assistant is in progress.
+(Since the meeting, a new assistant was hired, to begin work in
+September.)
+
+Ayman Lamyaghri is joining the Center for a six-week internship,
+working on the Scala debugger.
+
+Darja congratulated Xebia Functional for organizing a successful Scala
+Days conference in Seattle, with the Center's help.  Xebia is also
+preparing the September edition in Madrid.  Several Center members
+traveled to North America for the first time, to speak at the
+conference and at two meetups in San Francisco.
+
+Darja also discussed the Center's fundraising efforts and strategy.
+New funding is needed in order to maintain the current team size into
+next year. Ideally enough new funding can be found to actually grow
+the team.  The resumption of in-person conferences such as Scala Days
+is already proving to be a good opportunity to make contacts that we
+hope will lead to new board members and other forms of support for the
+Center.  Some of this occurred in Seattle and even more will occur in
+Madrid.
+
+One board member asked about crowdfunding. Could it be easier for
+Scala users to make a monthly donation to the Center, perhaps via
+Patreon or OpenCollective or a similar platform? Darja said they plan
+to work on that, but in the short term securing large donors is the
+top priority.
+
+Another board member asked if the Center has considered offering
+certifications, as a revenue source. Darja said the extension
+school program might be a channel for doing that, but not this year.
 
 ## Scala 2 report
 
-This was presented by Seth.
-
-TODO
+This was presented by Seth.  He said that the 2.12.18 and 2.13.11
+releases this quarter seem to have been well-received.
 
-Since the last meeting, we opened the
-following Discourse threads for discussion and updates on release
-timing:
+For the next releases, he mentioned the following Discourse threads
+that the team at Lightbend is using for planning and community input:
 
 * [Scala 2.13.12](https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-2-13-12-release-planning/6217)
 * [Scala 2.12.19](https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-2-12-19-release-planning/6216)
 
-TODO
+He said 2.13.12 could be released as soon as August, or not long
+after, partly to address minor regressions, but more importantly to
+ship the work on actionable diagnostics (or "quickfixes") that we have
+been collaborating on with Eugene, JetBrains, and others. The team
+also continues to improve alignment with Scala 3, especially under the
+`-Xsource:3` compiler flag. The team has noticed that more and more
+open source projects are leaving this flag enabled in their builds,
+rather than just turning it on briefly to get migration advice.
 
 ## Community report
 
-TODO
+Eugene shared some thoughts about how to encourage more activity and
+communication in the Scala community, both online and in person.  This
+sparked a lively and wide-ranging discussion among the board.
+
+Eugene said there have been multiple challenges around this in recent
+years, notably the pandemic of course, but also Twitter's decline as a
+central point for sharing, as some users have departed for Mastodon
+and elsewhere.  "It's currently unclear where communication in general
+happens."  He recalled past eras of Scala where meetups and Twitter
+were key for people to connect with each other, and community projects
+flourished as a result. Today there's Reddit, there's Discord, but
+there's no central "what is happening" kind of place. "People are
+retreating into smaller circles," their colleagues or their
+open-source collaborators, with less mingling with people they
+wouldn't normally be in contact with. However Reddit is "a pretty good
+mix of people," including new people asking questions about Scala 3,
+about what libraries to use, and so forth.  Reddit, however, is
+currently being threatened with boycotts because they blocked access
+to third party apps.
+
+After someone takes a Scala Center MOOC, or reads _Programming in
+Scala_, Eugene said, what to do next isn't always clear. Maybe we
+could provide some guidance about projects whose source code is
+educational to read. The established projects are often too big, too
+overwhelming (for example, Lichess). Are there medium sized projects
+we could direct them to?
+
+Eugene: I think it does help if there's a place you can ask a question
+and the hit rate is high. Discord is pretty good for that. There's
+people hanging out, and there's people who are helpful who will try to
+answer sincerely. Maybe we could highlight more that the Scala Discord
+exists and people are hanging out there? Connecting with other people,
+and learning new things, that's what makes people stick around in the
+community.
+
+Seth agreed that chat on Discord (and Gitter before it) has been a
+real bright spot in our community in recent years. "Things have been
+really good there," he said. Especially during the pandemic, it was
+important that we had that. But I can't think of an action that would
+help.  But he agreed with Eugene that meetups were also hugely
+important, pre-pandemic. "So many of us got involved with Scala
+through meetups." So anything we can do to encourage meetups to get
+going again could be really helpful.
+
+Darja said the Center is trying to foster meetups by traveling
+together to European cities, by train usually, and doing
+events. "We've noticed a huge enthusiasm on the ground. Us coming
+would jumpstart things."  The tooling summit also helped get Scala
+Italy restarted as a conference.  "There is enthusiasm out there that
+we need to ride and encourage even more." The first action point is
+that we will have a community panel at Scala Days, led by Zainab Ali,
+who is very active in getting the London meetup going again. The panel
+will talk about attracting newcomers and retaining newcomers and
+improving diversity.
+
+Darja also emphasized that the IT economy is not in good shape right
+now, and as a result, companies that used to answer "yes" often say
+"no" now. She's hearing that from other conference organizers as well.
+
+A board member observed that one challenge is that many companies
+don't have office space anymore. Could we share information around
+that, maybe have a database for locations around the world, where free
+meeting space is available, which companies are interested in
+sponsoring, that kind of thing?
+
+Another board member observed that Scala itself is in a new phase
+where it's not as new and fresh anymore, compared to the early era
+Eugene recalled. Scala is more established, so it may be normal that
+it's somewhat harder to attract people to meetups.
+
+Darja: In Madrid we got in touch with Juan Manuel Serrano Hidalgo who
+is teaching Scala at a university there, and he secured a university
+building in central Madrid for the SIP meeting and tooling summit and
+Scala Spree. He also got in touch with local companies. Once you
+stumble upon someone like that who is very enthusiastic, activity can
+really spread like wildfire, in the most positive way.
+
+Another board member suggested promoting the Scala Discord at the
+events in Madrid, so people know it's somewhere active they can go.
+They also mentioned that non-English-language chat servers for Scala
+exist and some are quite active. These are linked from the [Scala
+community page](https://scala-lang.org/community/).
 
 ## Proposals
 
 ### SCP-031: Ensure reachability of Scala websites
 
-The text of Lukas and Seth's proposal is here:
+The text of the Lukas and Seth's proposal is here:
 
 * [SCP-031](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/proposals/031-scala-websites-vpn.md)
 
-TODO
+During the technical report section, Julien summarized how Fabien
+Salvi at the Center resolved the issue. "We deployed a new
+infrastructure that uses a reverse proxy in front of the EPFL network,
+fixing the reachability issue."  This was also covered in a [blog
+post](https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2023/07/12/website-overhaul-and-reachability.html)
+published on July 12.
+
+Since the work is already done, we didn't vote formally. There were no
+objections from the board to considering the proposal both accepted
+and completed.
 
 ## Other topics
 
-TODO
+### Governance page (SCP-030)
+
+At the request of a board member, Chris asked about the status of
+[SCP-030](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/proposals/030-governance-page.md),
+"The governance page for Scala".  Darja said that an initial round of
+work was completed in time for Scala Days Seattle, and then they plan
+to make further improvements in time for Scala Days Madrid.
 
 ## Conclusion
 
-TODO
+The company presentations will resume next quarter.
+
+Some board members will be at Scala Days Madrid, but others won't, and
+there are many other events on the schedule that week, so we won't try
+to hold an in-person meeting. But there will be a dinner for board
+members, perhaps in combination with the SIP (Scala Improvement
+Process) committee.