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Meeting 2026 08 10

amirshehataornl edited this page Aug 20, 2026 · 3 revisions

Meeting - August 10, 2026

Upcoming meetings

Agenda

  • Coordination across openQSE working groups
  • Meeting minutes source of truth and Confluence rendering
  • Tracking milestones and working-group progress
  • Possible longer virtual workshop format
  • Cross-working-group issue and PR workflow

Attendance

Person Institution
Amir Shehata ORNL
Bran Radovanovic ORNL
Sakshi Chhabra IISc
Ryan Landfield ORNL
Yoonho Park IBM
Abdur Rahman Hatim IISc
Smriti Bajaj Dell Technologies
Jiri Schindler IonQ
Andy Stone HPE
Doug Oucharek ORNL
Claudio Siqueira de Carvalho IBM
Nick Wright NVIDIA
Alain Roy IonQ
Josh Moles Snoquera
Jonathan Skone NERSC/LBL
Kevin Kissell Alice & Bob
Ermal Rrapaj NERSC/LBL
Muhammad Osama AMD
Jeff Heckey AWS
Xulong Tang AMD
Yasuko Eckert AMD
Eun Kyung Lee IBM
Martin Schulz TUM

Executive Summary

  • The meeting focused on coordination mechanics for openQSE working groups, especially how to record cross-group dependencies, requests, and decisions.
  • Participants generally supported using GitHub issues, pull requests, teams, labels, and possibly CODEOWNERS-style review routing for formal artifacts and cross-working-group review.
  • Confluence remains useful for informal collaboration, drafts, paper outlines, and low-friction tables, but the group leaned toward GitHub as the source of truth for meeting minutes and formal tracked artifacts.
  • Amir proposed rendering GitHub-hosted Markdown pages into Confluence so GitHub can provide version history while Confluence remains a readable front end.
  • The group discussed the need for clearer onboarding, documentation, style guidance, and expectations so occasional contributors can participate without getting lost in GitHub workflow details.
  • The Monday openQSE meetings were proposed as a place for periodic working-group updates, with roughly quarterly updates from each active workstream.
  • The group discussed tracking milestones and progress in either GitHub Projects/Milestones or Confluence, with a preference for evaluating both and choosing the lowest-effort practical option.
  • Martin Schulz described the MPI Forum's virtual meeting model as a possible template for longer openQSE workshops: several days, roughly four hours per day, with plenary sessions and working-group time.
  • The group agreed that a longer virtual workshop is worth exploring, but should be organized around concrete outcomes and likely after working groups have had more time to mature.

Notes

  • NOTICE: Notes generated using AI; please verify accuracy.

1. Opening and Problem Statement

  • Amir opened by identifying a recurring coordination problem: the working groups are operating on overlapping topics, and one group may need input or requirements from another.
  • He used the resource-interface group needing input from the compiler group as an example.
  • The main question was how to track these dependencies and make the overall effort more cohesive.
  • Ryan Landfield supported explicitly recording how groups interact, noting that some participants act as translators between different technical communities.
  • Amir suggested a simple shared table in Confluence as one possible mechanism, then opened the floor for alternatives.

2. GitHub Issues, PRs, and Cross-Group Review

  • Yoonho Park suggested GitHub issues as a possible tracking mechanism.
  • Nick Wright suggested that two representatives from each working group could periodically sync, especially people who understand the concerns of both groups.
  • Josh Moles supported using GitHub issues and pull requests:
    • Issues could track requests or needed input.
    • Pull requests could carry proposed edits to specs or documents.
    • GitHub teams could represent working groups.
    • A PR touching another group's area could request review from that group before merging.
  • Josh noted two practical risks:
    • Each team needs enough members so one person is not a bottleneck.
    • Requests should be routed to the right teams, otherwise people will be flooded with irrelevant notifications.
  • Jiri Schindler suggested using GitHub workflow features such as working-group teams, subdirectory ownership, and triggers so changes in a given repo area notify the relevant people.
  • Josh noted that Slack integration could remind teams about pending reviews.
  • Martin Schulz cautioned that these systems work only if there is clear documentation:
    • New or occasional contributors need onboarding guidance.
    • Style, policies, and expectations should be documented.
    • Otherwise GitHub-based processes can become confusing quickly.
  • Nick framed the desired process as something between a free-for-all and strict control through a small set of gatekeepers.

3. Meeting Minutes and Source of Truth

  • Amir raised the need for all working groups to keep minutes in a common format and in a common location.
  • Yoonho said some content had already been placed in Confluence but he was open to switching to GitHub if the group preferred.
  • Smriti Bajaj said Confluence works well for collaborative writing, outlines, and paper subsections, and suggested polling the group if needed.
  • Ryan Landfield also preferred Confluence for prose-heavy collaboration while being comfortable with GitHub.
  • Amir proposed a hybrid approach:
    • Store Markdown meeting minutes in GitHub.
    • Render those GitHub pages in Confluence with a plugin.
    • Treat GitHub as the source of truth while Confluence provides an accessible view.
  • Kevin Kissell raised a quality concern about automatically generated meeting minutes:
    • In-person workshop transcription had sometimes been phonetically close but difficult to understand without context.
    • He suggested checking whether the generated workshop minutes are accurate enough before relying on them.
  • Amir said Teams transcripts from fully virtual meetings seem to work better, and asked Kevin to review the compiler and system-architecture workshop minutes for accuracy.
  • The group broadly accepted the idea that:
    • Formal, versioned artifacts such as specs should live in GitHub.
    • Informal collaboration and early drafts can remain in Confluence.
    • Meeting minutes should move to GitHub and be mirrored in Confluence.

4. Working-Group Cadence and Milestones

  • Amir proposed using Monday meetings for regular working-group updates and coordination.
  • Yoonho asked how many working groups should be considered.
  • Amir listed five active or proposed workstreams:
    • System architecture
    • Resource interface
    • Compilers
    • Control electronics
    • Runtime
  • Yoonho suggested that quarterly updates from each group would be a reasonable cadence.
  • Amir then asked how milestones and progress should be tracked across groups.
  • Abdur Rahman Hatim noted that both GitHub and Confluence have project-management tools, and suggested GitHub for low-friction milestone tracking because it already supports milestones and projects.
  • Claudio Siqueira de Carvalho noted that GitHub labels could identify workstreams.
  • Smriti suggested that someone should demo the project-management option before asking the group to adopt it.
  • Doug Oucharek agreed, noting that he is comfortable with GitHub for code but less familiar with GitHub project-management features.
  • Doug pointed out that a Confluence table is easy to edit and may be simpler for some participants.
  • Amir proposed evaluating both GitHub and Confluence tooling and choosing the easiest option for milestones.

5. Longer Virtual Workshop Format

  • Amir introduced the idea of holding a longer virtual workshop, motivated by the productive but compressed openQSE Days meeting.
  • Martin Schulz described the MPI Forum model:
    • The forum meets four times per year.
    • Two meetings are hybrid and two are fully virtual.
    • Virtual meetings reserve roughly four hours per day for three to four days.
    • The schedule includes plenary time, working-group sessions, issue discussion, ticket review, and formal decisions.
  • Martin said the format is intense, but productive because it gives sustained focused time rather than isolated one-hour meetings.
  • Yoonho noted the time-zone challenge, especially with U.S., Europe, and Asia participation.
  • Martin said the MPI Forum typically uses late European afternoon and U.S. morning, but times could rotate if needed.
  • Amir asked whether multiple workstreams meet in parallel during these events.
  • Martin said the schedule depends on need:
    • Some time can be reserved for parallel workstreams.
    • At least part of the meeting is usually plenary.
    • Workstream outputs can be brought back to the plenary for broader discussion or approval.
  • Nick Wright suggested beginning with the intended outcome:
    • The group should identify the right topic and desired result before choosing timing and attendees.
    • A generic longer workshop is attractive, but topic selection matters.
  • Amir proposed waiting roughly two months so working groups can build momentum and then revisiting workshop planning with clearer topics.
  • Yoonho supported that timing, noting that the interface workstream had only recently started biweekly meetings.

6. Plenary Sessions and Workstream Outputs

  • Martin explained how the MPI Forum uses plenary sessions:
    • Formal readings and decisions are prioritized.
    • Working groups can bring topics to plenary when they need broad feedback.
    • A distinction is made between informal presentations for feedback and formal readings that lead to votes or approvals.
  • Amir asked whether a requirements or analysis document could be brought to plenary before it becomes a full proposal.
  • Martin said yes, and described that as a normal pattern:
    • A working group discusses internally.
    • It presents a draft or issue to plenary when it needs feedback.
    • It then takes that feedback back into the working group.
  • Yoonho said a unified interface proposal from the interface workstream would be a good example of a plenary topic once mature enough.
  • Amir suggested that even preliminary analysis documents might be useful plenary topics when they need feedback from other groups such as telemetry or compilers.
  • Jiri supported adopting a structure that has worked in related standards or forum activities rather than inventing a new process from scratch.
  • Martin pointed the group to MPI Forum meeting agendas as examples of how plenary topics and priorities are organized.

7. Global View of Issues and PRs

  • Amir confirmed that meeting minutes should move to GitHub and be rendered into Confluence.
  • For milestone tracking, he said the group should compare GitHub and Confluence options and arrange a demo.
  • For cross-working-group interaction, Amir raised a concern that a large number of issues and PRs can make it hard to maintain a global picture.
  • Josh said GitHub supports filtered PR views using search syntax, such as PRs assigned to a person or mentioning a person.
  • Amir asked whether those filtered views could be embedded or mirrored into Confluence for a single easy-to-read page.
  • Josh said he believed that was possible, but would need to test the GitHub-Confluence integration.
  • Muhammad Osama noted that filters help with views by person, label, or similar criteria, but may not fully provide the big-picture status of a project.
  • Muhammad suggested:
    • Using GitHub Copilot or similar tooling to summarize recent contributions.
    • Associating work with milestones or releases.
    • Using release notes to summarize major technical progress.
    • Using CODEOWNERS so changes to a given folder automatically request review from the relevant working-group owners.
  • Muhammad also noted that the big-picture narrative may still be best communicated through meeting presentations and the associated minutes.
  • Amir concluded that the group may need a hybrid system:
    • GitHub for detailed issues, PRs, comments, and traceability.
    • Confluence or meeting summaries for the global view.

8. Immediate Decisions and Next Steps

  • The group agreed to move meeting minutes to GitHub.
  • Amir said he would send the location where minutes should be placed.
  • Amir said he would record a short video showing how to render GitHub-hosted Markdown in Confluence.
  • The group will evaluate milestone tracking options next.
  • Amir will work with Josh, Muhammad, and others interested in the GitHub workflow for cross-working-group interaction.

9. Key Takeaways

  • GitHub is the preferred source of truth for formal minutes, specs, reviewable artifacts, and tracked cross-group requests.
  • Confluence remains useful for readable rendering, informal collaboration, early drafts, and low-friction shared tables.
  • Cross-working-group coordination should be recorded explicitly, preferably through issues, PRs, labels, teams, and review routing.
  • The process needs clear onboarding and style guidance to avoid excluding contributors who are less familiar with GitHub workflows.
  • A longer virtual workshop is worth pursuing, but only once working groups have enough concrete topics and desired outcomes.
  • Plenary sessions can be used both for formal decisions and for working groups to request broad feedback before a proposal is final.

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