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TAC Chair Notes

To begin with, please familiarize yourself with the responsibilities for all TAC members. In addition to the tasks listed in this document, I attempt to provide some specific pointers to help guide the new TAC chair in this document.

Running TAC Meetings

One of the main responsibilities for the TAC chair is running meetings. If you are not available for a given meeting (e.g., vacation), check to see if the TAC vice-chair can run the meeting. If not, you will need to cancel.

Agenda Creation and Distribution

Each week on Monday or Tuesday, the agenda needs to be created and distributed.

Creation

To create the TAC agenda, there are two places that are always used.

  1. Governance Repo - in this repo, the pull requests will be used for both determining which project updates are ready for review and need to be included in either the Project Updates section of the agenda (for quarterly reports) or the Discussion section of the agenda (for annual reports). In addition, there may be other governance pull requests that should be included in the discussion portion of the agenda. The issues can be used for determining if there are topics that should be discussed and included in the Discussion section of the agenda that may not yet have a pull request available.
  2. Project Proposals - in this repo, the pull requests will be used to determine if there are any new project proposals that need to be discussed and included in the Discussion section of the agenda.

Meeting agendas will be added to the mkdocs.yml file under Meetings section in the appropriate year in reverse chronological order. A new file named YYYY-MM-DD.md will be placed under tac/meeting-minutes/yyyy folder.

Distribution

After creating the TAC agenda, a pull request will be created against the Governance Repo. An example of such a pull request can be seen at: https://github.com/LF-Decentralized-Trust/governance/pull/248.

In addition, a new thread should be created in the #tac channel in Discord named Month dd, YYYY Meeting. The @TAC Members group should be included, as well as, a link to the agenda in the thread. An example of such a thread can be seen at: https://discord.com/channels/905194001349627914/941384040316018790/1435665707718279271.

Lastly, an email should be sent to the tac@lists.lfdecentralizedtrust.org. An example of such an email can be seen at: https://lists.lfdecentralizedtrust.org/g/tac/message/4165.

General Flow for Meetings

The following is the general flow for all TAC meetings that has been followed for years:

  1. Welcome everyone to the meeting
  2. Cover the Antitrust Policy
  3. Cover the Code of Conduct (usually just pointing out that everyone is welcome and should respect each other and letting people know that the full text of the code of conduct is available in the agenda)
  4. Announcements
    1. Official announcements always include a call for contributions to the /dev/weekly developer newsletter and any other announcements that may be relevant, such as upcoming webinars, reminders, and timelines for elections
    2. Ask if there are any other announcements that anyone would like to make
  5. Project Updates
    1. Remind people of submitted reports and discuss any open questions on those reports
    2. Remind people of upcoming due reports
    3. Remind people of any overdue reports (note it is the TAC vice-chairs responsibility to follow up on these so may be worth asking if they have any updates)
  6. Discussion Items
    1. Governance Updates
    2. Annual Review Discussions
    3. New Project Proposals
    4. Task Force Updates
  7. Closing Meeting
    1. Ask if there is anything else that needs to be covered before ending the meeting
    2. Remind attendees of what might be on the agenda for next week (also a good way to ensure that there will be an agenda)

Initial Meeting

During the first meeting of the TAC term, I have been using that as an opportunity for everyone to introduce themselves to one another and to capture a list of goals that the TAC would like to accomplish during the year. The list of goals is used in the retrospective meeting.

First Quarter Meetings

For the past few years, these meetings have been dedicated to reviewing the annual reviews for each of the projects. This consisted of a readout from the primary and secondary TAC reviewers; however, it has been suggested that in addition to these readouts, the project maintainers or TSC representatives should first present the annual review before the readout. NOTE: It will be important to limit the time (possibly 10 minutes) for the presentation to ensure that there is enough time for the readout.

NOTE: The TAC primary and secondary reviewers needs to be assigned by the TAC chair. I have typically done this by asking the TAC members to note their conflict of interests for projects and then assigning to ensure that members with conflicts are not assigned to those projects.

An example of this can be found in Annual Reports 2025.

Remainder of Year Meetings

The other meetings during the year are driven by the goals that the TAC has set out for the year and any other items that require attention. These meetings generally focus on

  1. Governance Updates
  2. Annual Review Discussions
  3. New Project Proposals
  4. Task Force Updates

An important item is creating task forces to help accomplish the goals set out during the beginning of the year. You are not responsible for leading the task forces. Instead, it is your responsibility to request leaders from the TAC members and sometimes volunteer them to be leaders. Sometimes this can be done by remembering who had an interest in accomplishing the specific task during the initial goal setting meeting.

Retrospective Meeting

For the past couple of years, one of the final meeting of the year is reserved for a retrospective reviewing the accomplishments for the year and finding out from the TAC members: shoutouts, what went well, what could we do better or differently, and recommendations for next year's TAC:

Providing TAC and Project Updates to the Governing Board

Each month, you are responsbible for representing the TAC and the projects to the Governing Board. The LFDT project manager (currently Min Yu) will reach out to you a week prior to the due date to let you know that the update is due. During this update, I have typically provided an update on what the TAC is up to (e.g., decisions made, discussions had) and then provide a short update on the annual reviews or quarterly updates provided by the projects. You can see previous updates since November, 2021 under Governing Board Updates.

Conference and Webinar Updates

In the past, the TAC chair has been requested to provide an update during Member Summit, Global Forum, and anniversary webinars. Here are a few examples of updates provided previously:

Yearly Questions Blog

For the past few years, one of the first tasks for the TAC chair is answering some questions on the upcoming TAC term. LFDT PR provides a set of questions that you can choose to answer and/or add your own questions that may be of interest.