Overview

Maintainers Summits are being designed to replace the current Hackfest concept. Instead of being open to the public, Maintainers Summits are invitation only events that are designed for existing project maintainers, TSC members, and working group chairs; however, may be open to other contributors based on a nomination process. Maintainers Summits will be limited to no more than 50 people to ensure that progress can be made on shared Hyperledger technical goals. If you are looking for events that are open to the public, please check out the Bootcamps section of the Wiki.

Goal

The goal for a maintainers summit is to encourage cross collaboration amongst the different projects that are part of Hyperledger. This cross collaboration can come in the form of education about each of the projects, specific work surrounding an architectural component of the frameworks (e.g., common consensus mechanisms), contribution or review of cross-project whitepapers developed by the different working groups, or other items that the maintainers feel is important to ensuring that we are one community.

Timing

To include information regarding how long the summit will last and how often will it occur.

Determining Who is Invited

To include information on determining who will receive an invite. With the Linux Kernel Summits, a short list of names is determined using a script (get more information) and a program committee uses that list to determine who should receive an invite. In addition, anyone that suggests a topic is added to the short list of names.

Program Creation

To include information about how the program will be created. With the Linux Kernel Summits, they are designed to be a forum to discuss specific technical issues that would be easier to resolve in person than over email, as well, as "information sharing" topics if they are clearly of interest to the wider development community (i.e., advanced training in topics that would be useful to kernel developers). Topics are suggested by the technical community. Linux Kernel Summits also reserve space for an unconference style agenda to handle topics that come up during the actual summit.

Open Questions

• Bootcamps work for entry point into the community. Maintainers Summits are for core developers to work on shared technical goals. Do we need another type of event for those in the middle? 
• How do we break up the 50 people between the different projects, TSC members, and working group chairs? Today we have 11 TSC members, 12 projects, and 5 WGs. Assuming no overlap and one person per project and WG, that is already 28 people.
• Should we have a program committee for deciding both who should get an invite, as well as, what topics will be on the agenda?
• How will a short list of names be determined for consideration of receiving an invite?
• How much time should be set aside for a Maintainers Summit?
• How often will Maintainers Summits occur?