2025-01-14 Blender Admins Meeting

Meetings
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Attendees:

  • Bastien Montagne
  • Campbell Barton
  • Dalai Felinto
  • Philipp Oeser
  • Sergey Sharybin
  • Thomas Dinges

The meeting had no specific agenda topic. It ended being a meeting fully dedicated to discuss the roles of the admins given the updated leadership roles at Blender.

Role of bf-admins

  • Historically is a group of people that are involved for years and know things from in and out.
  • Mostly hands-on people.
  • It was used rarely as a dispute committee, which was the intended goal.
  • It ended up being used mostly for styling guidelines, HR at some point (advice on new hires), eventually overseeing projects.

Now that the roles within the Blender team are getting updated, there is less (no?) need for admins to step in to help overseeing the projects, and is a time for re-purpusing of the group activities and responsibilities.

Proposal:

  • Could the admins work as a technical committee?
    • Tech stack decisions.
    • Libraries.
    • Process/guidelines.
  • Hire advice
    • Keep an eye on talent.
    • Go-to person for anyone who wants to suggest someone for a development grant.
  • Module structure/ownership
    • Admins as an advisory role.
  • Moderation/interpersonal disputes
    • Culture torch-holders.

Governance

Implement a rotating seat system, to give new developers a chance to join the group.

  • Rotate one seat once a year in January.
  • Former-admins can rotate back.
  • Admins appoint who leaves and who gets in, final decision is approved (or vetoed) by the leadership team.
  • If no one feel likes taking a leave, we rotate out the admin who:
    • … is continuously on the role for longer.
    • … is in the role for longer across tenures.
    • … has the longest “commit access”.

Members Change

  • Dalai Felinto and Sergey Sharybin will step aside as bf-admins, in favour of their updated role as Head of Product and Head of Development respectively.
  • Thomas Dinges, who was already following the meetings, will step in as admin.
  • Jacques Lucke will be the other new admin member.

The members for the year of 2025 then are:

  • Bastien Montage
  • Campbell Barton
  • Jacques Lucke
  • Philipp Oeser
  • Thomas Dinges

Follow Up:

  • Update “wiki” page with the admin role description [Dalai + Sergey].
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