Community Forums

Starting in 2024, The Turing Way hosts public community forums that bring together different stakeholders, community members and leaders from across the project.

These calls serve as a platform for the community to come together, share accomplishments, and discuss governance-related matters.

Organisation and Format¶

Originally these Community Forums were organised directly by the Project Delivery Team. However, as the project has transitioned away from this structure in 2025, the responsibility for organising these events now sits with the Steering Committee, with support from the Community Management Working Group and wider community, as part of their commitment to stewarding the projects guiding principles of empowerment, inclusion, and transparency.

Organisation¶

Dates for the Community Forums are set at the beginning of the year and will typically include a call approximately every 3 months. These dates and times will be added to the Turing Way calendar, shared in Slack, in newsletters, and on the governance repository. Each Community Forum will have a chair from the community - community members who would like to chair a future forum should indicate their interest on the relevant GitHub post. Community Forum chairs solicit updates from the different Working Groups and Delivery Groups across the project, as well as working with the Steering Committee to develop the community discussion section. Slide decks can be built using the template in the Google drive Online meetings links and registration forms will typically be handled by a member of the Steering Committee or Community Management Working Group.

Template Community Forum Structure¶

The current format of the call is included below. It may change as the community’s needs evolve. All timings are approximate and depend on how long each section needs according to the chair of that particular Community Forum. We do, however, recommend leading with a community discussion activity, since this sets the tone for interaction, deliberation, and empowerment which are part of the Community Forum overarching goals.

Archived Notes and Resources¶

Collaborative notes, capturing feedback and highlights are archived on the governance GitHub repository. Slides are published on Zenodo and linked to the repository.

Motivation and History¶

From June 2022 to September 2023, the Project Delivery Team hosted a regular meeting for the members working at the Maintenance Level under the title “Core Community Meetings” with 30 people working across different Working Groups. These meetings, although not open to the broader community, discussed community-wide projects and reported updates broadly via our newsletters.

As the community has grown, decision-making processes and structures have also needed different levels of formalisation and transparency, which is why instead of closed meetings, we opted for regular community-wide Community Forums starting in 2024. Community Forums are our public-facing calls to share updates from across different levels of governance in The Turing Way. Modelled off a political town hall event, these online sessions are an opportunity to better understand activities across the project and how decisions are made. Our aim is to leverage the expertise across our community in reviewing our processes and recommend improvements. These calls are a mix of celebration, feedback, and opportunities to build connections with other organisations and initiatives around the world. Community Forums are also used for getting new or returning community members informed, and actively involve them in discussing governance processes within The Turing Way.