[Matplotlib-devel] Contributor experience and community meetings

Hello :wave:,

As some of you may know, recently we have been awarded a joint grant for NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib and Pandas, aiming to improve contributor experience and hopefully explore and execute actions that help sustain and improve our communities. You can read the full grant proposal here [1].

As part of this grant I will be collaborating with Matplotlib and Pandas, working as a Contributor Experience Lead. I just started dedicating some time to Matplotlib in March, and already received a warm welcome by the project maintainers. I look forward to engaging with the rest of the community more proactively soon!

One action that we think might be beneficial to the project is considering the Matplotlib Community Meeting [2] frequency and time. We recently had a request to change the weekly meeting time, and we’d like to take the opportunity to see if we can find a time slot that works for more people.

For this, we must first decide on a time and date. If you can, please answer this availability survey with your preferred times, by the end of April:
https://www.when2meet.com/?15401465-rmuaG
The specific dates are less important important, simply mark times of the week when you are usually available.

Depending on the poll results we can figure out frequency, but initially we would be happy to keep a meeting every week, alternating time zones if we feel this would include more people. Later on, we might add dedicated, less frequent, meetings for recurring topics such as triage, and so on.

We will keep using the hackmd that Matplotlib has been using for the agenda and notes: https://hackmd.io/jd_7FjxNQ4y7XgNknvmvGQ
Feel free to add to this hackmd anything you think might be worth discussing to the agenda. Of course, the maintainers have the final word here, but I’d like to offer help with coordination, and whatever else you all feel might be helpful :relaxed:

Please let me know if there are any questions, concerns or suggestions - I am looking forward to getting more involved and helping in any way I can.

Cheers,
Noa
(she/היא/sie)
@noatamir [3]

[1]
https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/Advancing_an_inclusive_culture_in_the_scientific_Python_ecosystem/16548063

[2]
The Matplotlib Community Meeting is a regular sync meeting for the project’s maintainers which is open to the community. Everyone is welcome to attend and contribute to conversations.

[3]
https://www.github.com/noatamir