18 Jul 2025 - Distinguished Engineer Community SIG Meeting Minutes

[MarksandSparks1]

Date

20250718 - 09:00 BST

Meeting Details

• Registration link: https://zoom-lfx.platform.linuxfoundation.org/meeting/93463689687?password=1a81c066-32cc-46d1-882a-4fae37093896&invite=true
• Zoom link: https://zoom-lfx.platform.linuxfoundation.org/meeting/93463689687?password=1a81c066-32cc-46d1-882a-4fae37093896

Tracking attendance

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Untracked attendees

• Fullname, Affiliation, (optional) GitHub username

Meeting notices

• FINOS Project leads are responsible for observing the FINOS guidelines for running project meetings. Project maintainers can find additional resources in the FINOS Maintainers Cheatsheet.

• All participants in FINOS project meetings are subject to the LF Antitrust Policy, the FINOS Community Code of Conduct and all other FINOS policies.

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• FINOS project meetings may be recorded for use solely by the FINOS team for administration purposes. In very limited instances, and with explicit approval, recordings may be made more widely available.

Agenda

• Convene & roll call (5mins)
• Display FINOS Antitrust Policy summary slide
• Review Meeting Notices (see above)
• Update on DE accreditation work and agreement of next steps - (20 Mins)
• Review the new outcomes of the SIG and allocate sub group members to define problem statements - (20 Mins)
• Agree the date, time and cadence of these planning meetings - (10 Mins)
• AOB, Q&A & Adjourn (5mins)

Minutes

Update on DE accreditation work and agreement of next steps - Paul Butler

• DE standard has been drafted with Paul, Peter and Paul M contributing
• Toby is now part of the working group and will help
• Discussion held on whether to continue with this track and how it can be used to advance the SIG
• Agreement reached to continue and publish the standard for further discussion and agreement on accreditation stage
• Discussion was had on the goal of the SIG not being accreditation of DE's but being a trusted advisors to those organisations that do impact society for the better but may not have or be able to afford that technical knowledge. Review of the Mission statement to be conducted based upon this.
• Further discussion was had on who should be accredited and a first step was to review the definition of a DE's which are being used in our organisations e.g. Red hat, NatWest, BUPA, DB
• Its is possible for this to be accredited and become maintainers of the SIG

Review the new outcomes of the SIG and allocate sub group members to define problem statements - Mark Brotherwood

• Mark has drafted some outcome statements based upon the ideas generated at last community event
• The next steps are to refine these statements and build problem statements from each to validate and help prioritise.
• The completed problem statements will be reviewed at out next monthly call and decision will be made by this group on what outcomes we will work.
• Agreement was reached for member to contribute to the following -
  DE' sharing ideas and approaches across organisations and industry - Pete Suggitt and Toby plus Davies
  How we encourage DEI in the SIG - Anthony, Peter M plus Davies
  How can this community's members be sounding boards or new ideas? - Peter Suggitt plus Davies
  Place on hold final idea of contribute to other FINOS projects

Agree the date, time and cadence of these planning meetings - All

• Agreement reached to meet monthly (every 4 weeks) on a Friday

Decisions Made

• Continue work to define Distinguished Engineer Standard
• Review further outcomes of SIG at next Monthly meeting
• Owner/contributor - DE' sharing ideas and approaches across organisations and industry - Pete Suggitt and Toby plus Davies
• Owner/contributor - How we encourage DEI in the SIG - Anthony, Peter M plus Davies
• Owner/contributor - How can this community's members be sounding boards or new ideas? - Peter Suggitt plus Davies
• Place on hold final idea of contribute to other FINOS projects
• Continue to meet on a monthly basis (every 4 weeks) at 9am on a Friday

Action Items

• Follow up on DE accreditation with subgroup next Friday - Paul B
• Share DE standard ahead of next meeting to this group - Paul B
• All members to send Paul the definition of DE which they have in their organisations - All members
• Refinement of goal of the SIG based upon the problem we are trying to solve - Pete S to set up meeting with this group
• New outcome owners to review and build problem statements for play back at next monthly meeting - Davies and outcome owners

18th July community meeting slides.pptx

[mcleo-d]

James McLeod / NatWest

[tobyweston]

Toby Weston / Deutsche Bank

[kriswest]

Kris West / NatWest 🚀

[mcleo-d]

Kris West / NatWest 🚀

Imagine if your name was Nat. That would be awesome! 😆

[akesterton]

Anthony Kesterton / Red Hat

[psmulovics]

Continue to meet on a monthly basis (every 4 weeks) at 9am on a Friday

As asked earlier, any chance to move this to a more USA friendly timeslot? I tend to sleep at 4 am :D

[kriswest]

@psmulovics I did flag your comment at the meeting. The counter is that the current group attendance (this is an existing group that has moved into FINOS) is entirely from the UK and India, but then it'll stay that way if a compromise isn't found. Excluding India to include US participants wouldn't be a great solution.

The attendees (as senior tech leaders) tend to be time poor and the start and end of the day were mentioned as often easier to free up (which perhaps makes it harder still as the largest group attending is from the UK). Perhaps there's a need for some regional groupings and a quarterly sync? Just thinking out loud.

[psmulovics]

@kriswest , I am with you - so any chance you can do a West and East split and having two calls?