ASWF TAC Meeting - 18 May, 2022

Video Conference Link

Voting member attendance

Other Attendees

David Morin, ASWF
John Mertic, LF
Bill Ballew, DreamWorks Animation
JT Nelson, Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group
Karen Ruggles, DeSales
Alok Hota, Intel
Sean Wallitsch, AWS
Doug Walker, OCIO / Autodesk
Rachel Rose, ILM / D&I WG
Allen Rose, Madison Square Garden
Scott Wilson, Rust WG
Shannon Deoul, RazPR for ASWF
Andrew Grimberg, LF Release Engineering
Deke Kincaid, Digital Domain
Nick Porcino, Pixar Animation Studios
Michael Carroll, Intel, RayTracing Software Technical Enabling

Apologies

Agenda

Carol: Keep an eye on emails for information about new program that we are talking with, connected by OTIO group. Out of Cal State Monterey, the Computing Talent Initiative, https://computingtalentinitative.org/ we may want to partner with them instead of GSoC, could be good for this year. Discussing with them, please look at the email and see how it could work with your project. It’s a bit different with GSoC, but could be good for website, documentation updates. Somewhere between GSoC and Summer Learning Program.
John: we have some tech writer resources interested in working with ASWF projects, can make the intros to see what could work and come back with a proposal.
John: project proposal for OpenAssetIO, not going to discuss it today, but read up on it, and will be discussed on June 1st meeting.
Deep Dive Strategy Discussion with David Morin
- A version of what the Board does
- We did a poll at last meeting to come up with topic, going to select top 2
- Soft Intro:
  - Siggraph
    - Poll:Do you plan to attend Open Source Days / Siggraph in person?
      - Yes: 65%
      - Maybe: 10%
      - No: 25%
  - Achievements, challenges, opportunities
    - Poll: TAC best achievements so far:
      - Building community
      - Onboarding a sizable portion of the most critical projects in our ecosystem
      - Elevating the importance of collaboration
      - Facilitating the ongoing health of our projects
      - Working groups on many topics of common concern to all studios
      - Making new releases of software “normal”
      - Strong contributions to projects
      - Collaboration between projects
      - Making ASWF the “place to be”
      - Structuring our future
    - Poll: What is the TAC’s biggest challenge
      - Project participation from people OTHER than the most senior people who do everything
      - Improving the “bus factor” of projects
      - Contributor growth
      - Scaling / returning value for paid membership
      - Helping contributors be successful
      - Path to long-term project health
      - Innovation in a changing media & entertainment landscape
      - Standards
    - Poll: What do you think is the TAC biggest opportunity?
      - Expansion of engineer participation in open source as expected part of their daily work
      - Diversity initiative leading to new contributors
      - Increased involvement from software vendors
      - Becoming the first framework considered when starting open source development projects for productions
      - Focus on common problems, together
      - … to provide more first party stewardship over OpenSource projects to improve success and execution: helping organizations through the process of open sourcing its technologies, maybe prof services from LF, mentorship
      - Help increase awareness of the reality of dependence on OSS and “normalize” structured company contribution
    - We may want to do a session about the concept of the Open Source Program Office
- TAC Continuity Discussion
  - ASWF TAC Poll Results - May 2022
  - Presented the Board Success Plan last meeting
    - Term Limits may not apply to the TAC
    - But idea of Alternates may apply
  - Poll: Continuity Planning: suggest actions to insure continuity in projects and working groups
    - More co-chairs
    - More extensive “onboarding” and overall ASWF process documentation at all levels - new TAC, new board, new contributor, new TSC members
      - David: Board has created an onboarding document for new Board members, what their “profile” should be, tasks expected of them.
      - Carol: would be helpful for someone to become an alternate, but also people interested in how the organization functions, and might ask their company to be a part of it. Sometimes you get implicit bias, by making information in written / video form, there may be more people who realize they are a good candidate and can self nominate, helping to increase diversity.
      - David: when board identified issues based on input from D&I group, they created a temporary committee to meet outside the regular meetings and develop a proposal to implement these actions. If the TAC thinks that suggestions on this list are worth pursuing, it has to be an action of the TAC. Maybe follow the example of the board, create a specific committee on continuity planning, and develop the documentation to introduce to potential new chairs / co-chairs.
      - Larry: some of the TSCs have a role of “chief architect”, one thing that allows is rotation of the chair without discontinuity in the technical lead of the project. You want someone who sticks with the project for a long time as the technical visionary, but still allow others to have a hand in leading the project. OCIO was the first group to do that.
      - David: would this apply to all projects based on that experience? Larry: not sure, maybe not every project even knew about this. Carol: process documentation based on the needs of the process, so that projects start on a baseline. Jonathan: MaterialX just wrote its own governance document, diversity of approaches between ASWF projects gave examples of approaches to take, were able to borrow from OCIO, OSL… So diversity of approaches across projects is helpful in this case.
      - David: diversity of ways to proceed is indeed beneficial. When it comes to continuity planning for the TAC, it won’t come from the outside, it’s for the TAC to decide that it wants to do it, give time and focus to the issue with a subset of the TAC for instance.
      - Rachel: having contributed to that Board subgroup, found it very useful to meet in a sub meeting to discuss continuity plan and come up with final proposal. Documenting the way different projects are providing continuity and sharing leadership may be a good way to welcome new projets, they have examples and guidance that having more than one person is a good thing.
      - David: asking Kimball to continue this discussion within the TAC.
    - Have all projects / WGs assign secondaries (maybe prefer someone already outside of the projects / WGs)
    - TAC chair should have term limits
      - Kimball: could benefit since different people have different ideas of how to run meetings, what’s on the schedule…
    - TAC Chair should have term limits
    - Recommended reporting milestones (quarterly, whatever) to help project teams run to a clear delivery goal for execution or reporting on progress
    - Identify overlaps between TAC and Board identity (some were serving both)
- Increasing Long Term Contributor Base
  - Poll:
    - Incentivize contribution in some way (community approach ala Epic Fellowship)
    - Path to Academy membership for long term contributors
    - Poll “how much red tape at your company for somebody to contribute” and work with member companies on best practices to streamline
    - Support from member companies to help train/mentor junior engineers on relevant projects instead of only relatively senior ones
    - OSPO at each member company to be part of the discussion (like the legal team)
    - Some kind of yearly “awards”, maybe part of the pipeline award effort
      - Wave: if it was less about one person who did something, instead a group, like a dinner for a group at SIGGRAPH, a speaker. Trying to think of something inclusive, rather than an individual contribution.
      - Kimball: GitHub will 3D print your contribution graph as an award and mail it to you. Not sure what it’s based on.
      - Wave: could imagine different companies being able to sponsor a dinner, a tour. Something where it appeals to people to be part of that experience.
    - Publish list of open problems for each project
    - Require member companies to commit at least 2 FTEs
    - Call to action via campaign (Marcoms initiative)
  - John: is the use of a “claim” / “badge” popular in this industry? Are people familiar with this? https://info.credly.com/ is a way to issue digital badges, can be used to recognize certain levels of training courses. Have issued committer badges, can put on your social media profile. A nice way to offer a recognition to achieve a status in the community, would have to take the time to define the categories.
  - John: some communities set up an Ambassador program to help recognize people who have an influence in a community, recognize them to do talks, blogging… People get elected to Ambassador based on their contributions. Some projects also do annual community awards, could be overseen by the TAC.
  - Kimball: could have ribbons to add to the SIGGRAPH badge.
  - Christina: when people contribute to an Unreal release, they get a credit. John: yes, that’s a good practice and encourages contribution.
  - Carol: a yearly award doesn’t have to be fancy, we could run that ourselves, maybe in context of Open Source Days.
  - Poll: Expanding our base: in which technology category could we expand?
    - Virtual Production
    - Themed Entertainment Technology (projection mapping, non planar displays, media servers / playback, control systems… etc)
    - Game Engines / Real Time Rendering Engines
    - Cloud Technology
    - Education / Higher Ed
    - Scientific Viz
    - Broadcast
    - Stagecraft (Virtual Production more holistically)
    - Marketing
    - Metaverse
  - There was a meeting at NAB to discuss the creation of an open standard for Motion Capture, including SMPTE. There are such projects looking for a home.
- Topics for a future strategy meeting:
  - VFX Reference Platform
    - What are the boundaries between original mission of VFX Platform, and what could be expanded now that ASWF exists
    - Interaction between ASWF projects and VFX Platform, do they align?
  - Reference Linux Distribution
    - 2023 VFX Platform has large implications on Python distribution
  - Beyond Python
  - Open Source Opportunities in virtual production
  - Combo Board/TAC strategy to align and learn
  - Dynamic Loading, threat or menace
  - Security
  - NFT (JK, heavily downvoted!)