Board Meeting Minutes

Attendee's

• Dean Ellis - President
• Dominique Louis - Treasurer
• Simon Jackson - Corporate Secretary
• Tom Spilman - Banking Matters
• Marko Jeremic - Board Chairman
• Thomas Altenburger - Board Member

Agenda

• Review of socials, management and engagements.
• Quick discussion about the use of "Pings" or announcements on Discord.
• Review the current Bounty page and requirements.
• Discussions regarding engagements with Education facilities and Universities.
• Working towards greater transparency, especially with the roadmap and future bounties.
• Year in Review.

Outcomes

Catching up from skipping last month (I heard some avid watchers noticed) due to holidays and meetings getting in the way of our regular board meeting, the board met and had a much longer meeting to go over the hot topics of the day.

Social Engagement

Top of mind was the subject of social engagement as there has been a lot of heated debate on everything from MonoGames roadmap, what bounties are active or not and even a heated discussion around the use of "Everyone" pings, we listen to the community, we hear you and then try and find the best way forward.

In the future, the team will restrict the use of "Everyone" pings to the announcements channel and only for notices that require attention. There was a discussion about switching to an "opt-in" Announcement role, but the board feels it is better to keep the current "opt out" strategy so that important new is not missed by the community.

If you feel pings are intrusive and not something you want to hear, then feel free to "Mute" the Announcements channel and we will not bother you.

Bounty update

We opened and closed two new bounties related to the next generation of "Get Started" tutorials/projects, with the aim to revamp the education catalog for new starters, in the end there were quite a few applicants, especially after a "call to arms" on the subject and we finally went with two candidates who have excellent track records for delivering awesome content. These tutorials will live and be maintained by the MonoGame Foundation in our documentation site, so expect them soon'ish.

To those who applied, we thank you for your dedication and hope that you will again apply for the future bounties we intend to post in the near future. It was a struggle in the end to settle on the candidates for the bounties as there were so many awesome entries and I do hope those authors still go on to publish their works for the betterment of the community. (more on new bounties later).

On the subject of the bounty page

The board also recognized that the bounty page is already fast becoming out of date as we push on faster with trying to get the next release of MonoGame out, so a task has already begun to refresh it and also validate some of the requirements as some community members have reached out to question some of them. These questions need to go back to our legal advisors as the Foundation is a registered entity in the state of Texas and we have to comply with their legal requirements. So stay tuned for a new and improved bounty information page.

Education reach out

The foundation was approached by a University in the UK regarding some kind of engagement with their education program and students, which has long been a dream for MonoGame as a whole. For those that remember, at its peek XNA was starting to be brought in as a programming module in some university courses (right when MS canned it :S), so to hear that Education is willing to rach out was very thrilling.

If you know of any education establishments that would like to get involved with MonoGame, then we encourage you to reach out and contact us on the biz@monogame.net address, we would love to talk.

Conversations are in the initial phases, but we hope to announce more on this in the coming months.

Improving transparency

The community shouted and we listened.

While the Milestones page on GitHub is the primary resource for tracking the issues and PR's that are being worked on for any given release, we admit this is a poor substitute for an official roadmap, listing out those features we plan to develop and deliver on.

A new "RoadMap" page is now being developed that will live on the documentation site and give clearer meaning for "what is coming".

Additionally, the community has asked (strongly?) for a better indication for what bounties are incoming and what will be involved. While we cannot publish the "works in progress", we do intend to be more upfront about the kinds of requests that have been discussed or proposed.

On the new "RoadMap" page, there will be an active list for all incoming bounties, included what type of bounty (Tutorial, Sample, Feature, etc) it will be, along with the envisioned complexity of the bounty. Stay tuned as this is in active development at the moment.

Year in review (well just over 6 months)

Phew, is anyone getting tired reading this already, my fingers are burning.

September 29th 2023 seems so near and yet so far away since the incorporation of the MonoGame Foundation, and then in November things started to kick into action. Now that we are in the mid-point of 2024, we look back at what the Foundation has managed to achieve (and what we are yet to do).

Things have hotted up and really started moving since then:

• Major focus on finishing the next release (soon, I promise)
• Clean up of all outstanding PR's and getting the fantastic efforts of the community into the next release (down to 46 open now)
• Ongoing review of outstanding issues (this is a MAMMOTH task, so bear with us)
• The commission of a new website, look and feel. We aim to spotlight more community creations than ever before.
• The rebuilding of the documentation site and a laser focus on addressing the "official" documentation (and samples) moving forward. (another mammoth task that is ongoing)
• The commission of a team to tackle and update the API docs inside the MonoGame API (huge thanks to ArisTurtle for coordinating this and his crack team for taking this on)
• The commission of new (granted overdue) updating of the backend of MonoGame for .NET 8 and AoT strategies.

And so much more that goes on underneath the waves, like the swan on the river, calm and serene above, paddling like crazy underneath.

Bounty tracker

All bounties are still tracked primarily from the Bounties GitHub issue. Each bounty has its own issue to keep communication open (subject to NDA requirements).

Upcoming bounties will be posted to a new "RoadMap" page soon to be published on the documentation site, stay tuned to the "Announcements" channel on discord for the latest.

Onwards and Upwards MonoGame

The future is bright and getting brighter by the day. We would again like to thank our fantastic community for their continued support and ask you to get excited for the future. The time is now for MonoGame and things will only get faster once we are over this little hill (the size of K2), but we have laid the track on the other side of the mountain so it will be a quicker ride from here.

Support

• Financially - several tiers and options available for Github, PayPal and Patreon.
• The MonoGame Store - MonoGame branded gear and merchandise.

Get Involved

• Code, we accept Pull Requests.
• Help in the Community discord and beyond (we also love blog posts).
• Bounties, Fix bugs and add features faster as well as get paid for your work :)

Onwards and Upwards

The MonoGame Foundation team