ICON P-Rep Community Meetings Guidelines

General Discussion
#1

ICON P-Rep Community Meetings Guidelines.

ICON P-Rep Community Meetings are online video meetings hosted each two weeks between the P-Rep Teams via ZOOM. These meetings are separate from ICON Foundation’s Governance monthly meeting and will focus on smaller topics within the community.

All P-Rep teams are invited to participate in the meetings as panelists and any ICONist that would like to participate can do so as a viewer having the option of using the meeting chat to give their opinions on the topics discussed.

The goal of these meetings are:

  • Foster discussions about Governance between P-Reps and have a platform to discuss Governance and ICON overall related topics in real-time and “face to face”.
  • To provide ICONist with a regular video resource to keep updated on ICON overall important topics
  • Allow ICONist in general to see each P-Rep team opinions and recommendations in regard to Governance

How to Submit a Meeting Topic

A couple of days before each meeting a forum post will be published to allow any and all P-Rep teams and/or ICONists to submit discussion topics for the next upcoming meeting.

If you are an ICONist and would like to have access to the meeting you can post a comment in the forum post and request access to it, if you are a P-Rep and would like to be notified automatically before all the meetings leave a comment in this thread to grant you access to the Meeting Announcement channel on Telegram.

To ensure we stay on track, please join the meeting 10-15 minutes ahead of time to test your audio and video (optional). Currently, we allow all P-Rep team members to join but in the future, depending on attendance we might limit participation as a panelist to only one member from each P-Rep team.

ICON P-Rep Community Meetings Resources.

Meeting #1 (February 15, 2020 - 11 PM UTC)

Meeting #2 (February 22, 2020 - 11 PM UTC)

Meeting #3 (March 7, 2020 - 11 PM UTC)

Meeting #4 (April 4, 2020 - 10 PM UTC)

Meeting #5 (April 25, 2020 - 10 PM UTC)

Meeting #6 (May 16, 2020 - 10 PM UTC)

If you have any recommendation about meeting guidelines, or you would like to suggest a rotation of the hour at which the meeting takes place please leave a comment, I will update this comment to keep it updated but since the forum has time limitations on editing comments, the most updated version of this guidelines will always be found in the following GitHub document:

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P-Rep Community Meeting Topics - April 25, 2020
P-Rep Community Meeting Topics - April 25, 2020
P-Rep Community Meeting Topics - May 16, 2020
#2

NOTE: I cannot edit the original mesage anymore so I will continue posting new comments for the next meetings.

Meeting #6 (May 16, 2020 - 10 PM UTC)

#3

Hello,

Quick thoughts:

  1. Seems the “goals” of this meeting has deviated from the “original”. To me, it looks repetitive and not an efficient use of your time. But, your meeting, your call.

  2. Proposal concerning changes to the network should be to all P-Rep, not the foundation.

  3. ICON Foundation still controls ICONex, not VELIC. VELIC helps with the development as stated in the announcement. The foundation makes the decisions. This feedback was received by the foundation for consideration. In the future, please submit feedback via email. But, I think we should have other official channels to receive product feedback. We’ll think about this.

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#4

Thanks for your comments and taking the time to watch our conversations in these meetings.

On point number #1, my personal take is the following (and I understand others might think different). I wasn’t a P-Rep when these meetings first started so I’m not aware of the original goals, putting that aside I’m a strong believer in that more channels for communications are necessary not only between the P-Reps but with the foundation also, Telegram is great for real time quick discussion and generating ideas on the fly, but we need a permanent way of keeping track of ideas and projects, I know that the forum can work for this and this is why I decided to create this forum post, to have one place with all the meeting discussion to facilitate going back and review them.

The zoom community meetings are in my opinion necessary because even though we are a decentralized projects each team working in a vacuum is in my point of view very unproductive, and we all know that ideas and the tone of a conversation can be misrepresented or misunderstood in writing format, so having a video with “face-to-face” discussion is important.

Point #2 I agree

Point #3 email is great and other channels to communicate with the foundation will be even greater. From my perspective as a P-Rep my opinion is that we need first and foremost something simple as a forum post detailing how can we get in touch with the foundation in an official way (a public way might be good too) and how much time should we expect for a reply.

Overall my point of view is that cross collaboration between the teams and more effective communication is something that can help us improve

#5

When I envisioned the meetings initially, and posted the proposal, they were intended to be:

  • Weekly.
  • Aggressively focused on action items.
  • Focused on delegation, execution, and accountability for those action items
  • Followup in subsequent meetings to garner status from previously delegated tasks.
  • For addressing any significant, pressing political issues that needed discussion.

This model also required someone to hunt out and gather topics / issues during the week, by scouring telegram, reddit, and twitter for bug reports, concerns, enhancement requests, governance policy change requests / suggestions - - really anything relevant that needed to be addressed and completed sometime soon.

Even after the first meeting, much of this fizzled out. I put together the first list for the first meeting, and though things got discussed, there was almost no activity during the week to complete the items or ensure forward progress. Brian went and created threads for each item in the community forums, but nobody else really bothered to do anything or complete anything. There was a problem with disinterest and lack of participation that revealed itself almost immediately.

We also ran into some problems discussing items, because we needed input from the Foundation on “intent” and “purpose” of some things we were hoping to change. Nobody was quite sure if what we wanted to modify in the governance system was supposed to be that way for a reason, and we had nobody present to tell us what those reasons might be. So we ended up talking at length, and then just ending the meetings.

The 2nd and 3rd meetings devolved into “chat sessions” that really had no action items, no followup on past issues, and really nobody had been assigned anything or offered to handle anything anyway, so there was no accountability or forward progress.

Voters weren’t mentioning much and teams in general don’t pay much attention to anything going on (except a handful of us) so we really didn’t have many action items to focus on anyway. A tweet went out asking for people to submit items, but I don’t know that anyone ever did.

It was around this time that Min started commenting on twitter that the meetings were not serving much purpose. Min and I don’t agree on very much, but I think he probably would consider the bullet list above, a way to make them better.

I think the meetings can be viewed as a rap session to discuss things. And that can be a healthy exercsise.

But I know for a fact that each and every one of us on PRep teams feels an overwhelming sense that the Foundation really doesn’t have much interest in what we think, what we want, or what we decide in these meetings. Just as one (of many) examples: We had some outstanding ideas for modifying ICONEX to improve voter participation and allocations. Nobody paid attention or had any interest in what we discussed or suggested. That has put damper on the participation and enthusiasm for the process. We don’t have the authority to carry out most of what we may decide anyway, so without that authority, I wonder what value there is in even deciding on things.

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#6

A few thoughts here in response. Things I agree with first…

  1. Input is needed from the foundation on certain topics, absolutely. We should cover those topics with the foundation during their monthly meeting and try to stick to things that don’t require any involvement/feedback from the foundation on the P-Rep meetings. From time to time these topics can and will still be discussed in the P-Rep meetings, but they probably should be time boxed to ensure items we can control are the primary focus.

  2. On that note, I also agree that the P-Rep meetings can be viewed as a rap session to discuss things. This can be a healthy exercise. It’d be great to not stray too far from the original intent since there’s a lot of important things being addressed in the original vision for these meetings though (action items, updates, resolutions to problems, etc). But yeah, nothing wrong with a little healthy or “less focused” discussion here and there as well. More on this below.

  3. I also agree that we could have more of a follow up on action items for previous meetings. We should add these action items to agendas for upcoming meetings and perhaps even start the meetings out with these topics before jumping to new ones. I know I added a bullet for “follow up on action items from previous meeting” to the agenda for the 2nd meeting when I hosted, but I placed the topic at the end of the agenda and we ran out of time before we got to them, which was a correctable mistake on my behalf. So yeah, maybe it’s best to take action items from previous meetings and make these the leading topics for upcoming agendas to ensure they are covered first.

We can see my mistake below. The highlighted topic should have been the 1st bullet, perhaps:

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Next topic:

You mention that after the 2nd and 3rd meetings (and ones beyond that I presume) devolved into nothing more than chat sessions with no action items.

I respectfully would debate that in the sense that I’m looking at notes from the 2nd, 3rd, and some other following meetings and am seeing 1) preparation/agendas for the calls where participants are submitting topics they’d like to discuss and 2) a recap of the meeting where specific action items are listed.

For example - These screenshots are from the recap of the 2nd call: ICON P-Rep Meeting Notes: February 22nd, 2020

We can see there are multiple action items highlighted and assigned.

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One of these action items was even “assigned” directly to you. So, if you left the 2nd meeting feeling like there were no action items, then it’s safe to say we must do a better job making these things clear during meetings or tracking them afterwards because I’m sure you aren’t the only one who has left meetings with action items that sort of just fizzled out. Perhaps a RACI chart or a Trello board can help to improve this if it’s not made clear enough in the meeting + in the meeting’s recap notes? We need something that makes it clear who has action items and when follow up will be requested or provided on these items would be solid. Just an idea - I’m sure someone out there may have a better idea for tracking and accountability that could be helpful.

Tying this to a previous note in my comment here - This is where it would have been beneficial for us to start the next meeting with “Ok - Let’s talk about progress on action items from our previous meeting”. Definitely a missed opportunity we can improve upon.

Now, when it comes to organizing the agenda: Is it up to one / a few individuals to do that, or is it up to participants + whoever has been assigned the action item(s)? Personally, I’d love to leave it up to all of us and not any particular individuals.

For example, during this last meeting the topic of updates to ICONex came up. My teammate, Norsk, is working on collecting feedback from the community to relay to Velic about desired improvements to ICONex. I know this is an item that Norsk or I should provide an update on during the next meeting, so I can add that as an agenda topic and be ready to cover it at the top of the meeting when it’s my turn to do so (while we’re following up on action items from the previous meeting).

Having said that, if teams don’t post their action items as agenda topics, they won’t be discussed and this is where a team that is tasked with organizing the agenda could be beneficial to ensure items are called out. Hmm…something to think about.

One last point - You mention: “I wonder what value there is in even deciding on things.” - I agree with this. I guess I’ll just say that I personally think we should limit our focus to things that we can control. An example of this might be the ICONex wallet. Velic is now in control of the development for the wallet. As mentioned above, Norsk, has taken up an initiative to gather community feedback and share it with the Velic team.

https://www.reddit.com/r/helloicon/comments/fr28hq/iconex_uiux_upgrade_idea_collection_icon/

This is great, but we might ultimately find that the Velic team opts to disregard these suggestions that come in from the community. The ICONex development effort is now up to Velic. They own this task and are responsible for it.

What can’t we control? The changes Velic makes to the wallet. We can ask. We can suggest. We can demand. It doesn’t mean Velic will or won’t be receptive. We can’t control it.

What can we control? Telling existing/new users to utilize MyIconWallet, for example, instead of ICONex to ensure they see things like a randomized voting screen. If we collectively see a better product elsewhere we can certainly use the power of P-Reps and the collective community to point existing and new users to what we view as the superior wallet as frequently as possible.

So yeah, I guess I’m saying that I agree - We should work to quickly identify what we can and can’t control. If there’s an unmovable object (ICONex wallet updates) we shouldn’t spend too much time trying to figure out ways to make it budge. We should, instead, focus our efforts on circumventing the obstacle and finding new solutions that are within the grasp of P-reps and the collective community.

Quick note - We may find that Velic is quite receptive to the community’s feedback about ICONex. We should know soon. If we find they are receptive and collaborative then great! Let’s keep putting time and effort into the task. If we find they aren’t receptive and collaborative, then let’s shift our focus towards something we can control.

Sorry for the book. Just wanted to agree with a few of the things you posted and add a few other thoughts and suggestions. Hopefully, we can continue to try to find and create value in these meetings before we abandon them completely. It takes time and effort. Let’s keep at it until we know for sure there’s not any value here.

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#7

Please read my comments above. Again, ICONex is controlled by the foundation, not VELIC. Also read the original Medium announcement. But, you get the right idea. The foundation can take in your feedback, but has no obligation to.

Second, P-Reps collectively and ultimately control everything. If the majority of P-Reps don’t like ICONex or MyIconWallet, then P-Reps should mobilize its given resources to create another one.

P-Reps just need network approval (not foundation approval) to do anything. For example, if you don’t like IISS, then propose another system, get it approved, and start building/implementing it. This is what decentralization is about.

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#8

Thanks for the correction, Min. My mistake.

The article mentions:

  • VELIC takes over ICONex and ICON Tracker from ICONLOOP

  • ICON Foundation is excited to announce that VELIC has agreed to dedicate its engineering resources and take over ICONex and ICON Tracker development.

I think that’s what led to my confusion and misunderstanding. I was thinking they perhaps had more control (“Take over”). My mistake. :+1:

But yes, same page about decentralization. If people don’t like something that exists, they are welcome to voice their feedback, but ultimately their best/most productive coarse of action would be to build something they believe is better.

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#9

I would like to make some comments that I believe are important, first of all a reasonable disclaimer, my intention is to improve our meetings or most specifically the actions and results that come from these meetings, this is not intended as a way of point fingers at teams or the foundation, I believe honest criticism is important in order to improve

With that said, I think that we are playing the blaming game without first proposing ways to effectively improve our dynamics and secondly we are not being realistic about our expectations about the results from these meetings.

I would like to address the expectation part first, we have had 6 ZOOM meetings and I think is not realistic to expect high or top productivity in this short timespan, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for it.

TOP companies across the world struggle with these same problems on a daily basis, even companies that have been structured for decades are always finding ways to improve communication and increase productivity, this is not an easy task by any margin and to think we can achieve it in a matter of 6 ZOOM meetings is unrealistic in my opinion, and is even more difficult for us in my opinion because of the decentralized nature of this project, traditionally structured companies have regular meetings between workers and management, and this is one of the tasks of a management branch, find ways to effectively communicate between the member of a company or a project and to delegate and structure them in such a way that having reasonable productivity from each member is effectively achieved.

On the point of playing the blaming game, I believe that any criticism is an opportunity to improve, but it would be better if we all share or point not only the problems but also the solutions to those problems.

To summarize, I realize that these meetings can improve and can improve a lot, but in order to do so we need to structurize ourselves in a way that makes this achievable, but not only commenting on it but actually acting on it.

I believe that a list of steps to improve would be as follows:

  • The first step is having an appropriate and unbiased host and moderator and I completely believe that @CoreyC is the perfect candidate for this, he has been doing a great job

  • Have a member taking notes from each action in a live setting not after the meetings are done, this will allow the annotator to ask questions on how the proponent of said actions would want to have those actions tracked and what plans those he suggest to achieve them, does he/she needs support from other teams? does he/she needs funding? etc.

  • Create a team in charge of contacting the action item proponents to keep track of their improvements and updates on those actions.

  • Start each meeting with a recap of past action items and discuss them first if more help is needed to achieve them.

  • and finally have a forum post, maybe a forum section dedicated to publishing all these information

With all these said and done my last recommendation is to also have a little patience if we structure ourselves in this way I believe that we will realistically can start to expect to notice true improvements every time we have a meeting.

I would also like to make a point that if you all believe this can be done I’m happy to be an active part of these steps.

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