Define and document process for running Sustainability Team meetings

[gusaus]

Now that the team is well represented (but not yet defined #2) I think we should be able to tighten up the meeting format by looking at what other teams/channels are doing (ideally with input from some of the folks on our team with experience running meetings). We should figure out and document the following things:

• Day/Time/Frequency
• Roles
• Decision making process/structure

If for some reason it doesn't exist already... possibly an outcome of this task could be a template or documentation that all teams could reference for their meetings!

Related tasks

• Create meeting agenda template #34

[gusaus]

Skimming though the recent meeting in #training I realized there was this issue template we could use as the basis for a template in this repo. Of course we'd need to know how to clone or replicate a GitHub template, but it shouldn't be too difficult for the Github savvy project manager we still need to find!

[gusaus]

With regards to Day/Time/Frequency, I think there's enough projects on our roadmap and internal todos to keep having weekly meetings.

I will say the current day/time makes it difficult for people in my part of the world (where the meeting is happening at 4AM) to attend in real time (unless we're having trouble sleeping). To make the meetings more inclusive (in a global sense), I'd suggest having them five hours later than they currently are being scheduled (if possible).

Understanding that would mean interfering with weekend activities (for current attendees), I'd suggest moving to a different day.

Looking at when all the other Team meetings are being held, it looks like Tuesday is the least crowded in terms of meetings happening at that time.

Would 5:00PM (17:00) UTC work on either of those days (Tuesday - Thursday)?

Seems like if the four reps are taking turns managing, it would be realistic.

[gusaus]

Circling back here as the suggestion in #20 (comment) was discussed during a recent meeting https://make.wordpress.org/sustainability/2024/04/08/sustainability-chat-summary-april-5-2024/

• There is a concern about the workload that our team can take on compared to those with sponsored distributors (in terms of following their methodologies).
• There is a consensus on the benefits of adapting the Training Team template to our possibilities and needs in order to facilitate the work of managing meetings.
• Proposal to a different approach form meetings: conceive them as a moment to compile updates and share the work done during the week, rather than to move projects forward.

As noted in this related discussion a meeting template should enable contributors (including recent graduates from the Contributor Mentorship Cohort) to create a clear/consistent agenda that will surface active roadmap projects, along with active discussions, priority admin tasks. Obviously our scope and scale is different than the Training team, but we can fork/clone/replicate https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/blob/trunk/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/04-meeting-agenda.md and customize to fit our own needs.

[gusaus]

Circling back to this as it looks like a unilateral decision has been made to have meetings every other week so team reps could spend time contributing to projects. Problem is contributing to projects is out of scope of responsibilities (see this related comment) and a weekly cadence is most likely necessary for maintaining a high-level perspective and awareness of all roadmap projects and getting more of the 318 #sustainability channel members and 81 people pledging time involved.

As mentioned in the previous comment and related discussion, we should be able reduce or remove the reps responsibility of running meetings and posting summaries.

Maybe this is an opportunity to have focused meetings happening every other week. For example the current time (ideally on a different day) would focus on Environmental sustainability. Then a different team could run a meeting (every other week but at a different time) focusing on Economic and Social sustainability.

Seems like a good balance that would grow the team while enabling our reps to manage at a high level and contribute to projects they care about.