---
# System prepended metadata

title: 'PlasmaPy community meeting agenda and minutes - Tuesday 2020 November 24 at 19:00 UT'
tags: [community, ' minutes']

---

---
tags: community, minutes
---

# PlasmaPy community meeting agenda and minutes - Tuesday 2020 November 24 at 19:00 UT

[![hackmd-github-sync-badge](https://hackmd.io/N2Vok0OhTDqhexMwyJxXCw/badge)](https://hackmd.io/N2Vok0OhTDqhexMwyJxXCw)

### Video Conference Information
* [Jitsi video conference link](https://meet.jit.si/plasmapy) with [call-in information](https://meet.jit.si/static/dialInInfo.html?room=plasmapy) 
* Instant messaging: [Matrix](https://riot.im/app/#/room/#plasmapy:openastronomy.org) and [Gitter](https://gitter.im/PlasmaPy/Lobby)
* [PlasmaPy google directory](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0ByPG8nie6fTPMEIxTlZLZjdjYms?usp=sharing) ([minutes/agendas](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0ByPG8nie6fTPV1FQUEkzMTgtRTg?usp=sharing), [documents](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0ByPG8nie6fTPYzk2TEhTa1N6R0U?usp=sharing))
* [PlasmaPy on GitHub](https://github.com/PlasmaPy/plasmapy) ([pull requests](https://github.com/PlasmaPy/plasmapy/pulls), [issues](https://github.com/PlasmaPy/plasmapy/issues))
* [PlasmaPy Enhancement Proposals on GitHub](https://github.com/PlasmaPy/PlasmaPy-PLEPs)  
* [PlasmaPy Google Calendar](https://calendar.google.com/calendar?cid=bzVsb3ZkcW0zaWxsam00ZTlrMDd2cmw5bWdAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ)

## Agenda (please feel free to edit or add items)

1. Introductions
2. Should we add "Attendees" & "Action Items" sections to the community meeting minutes? (*This is done in other meeting minutes.*)
3. Organizing action items from mini-conference & last week's discussions
    1. Plasma Hack Week planning (Nick: post in DPP forum and on Discourse)
    2. Starting a simulation working group
    3. Putting talks on YouTube and slides/posters on Zenodo
4. ...
5. [Dominik] 0.5.0 release, when? Soon!
7. ...
8. 10 mins for 2021 roadmap discussion
9. Patching functionality of `mass_density()`
10. ...
11. Issues
    1. ...
    2. ...
12. Pull requests in progress 
    1. [PR 952](https://github.com/PlasmaPy/PlasmaPy/pull/952): move towards GitHub actions
    1. [PR 932](https://github.com/PlasmaPy/PlasmaPy/pull/932): Dispersion
        * [Minutes dispersion meeting last week](https://github.com/PlasmaPy/plasmapy-meeting-notes/blob/master/dispersion_2020-present/2020-11-19.md)
    1. [PR 953](https://github.com/PlasmaPy/PlasmaPy/pull/953): ParticleTracker (adding `numba`)
    1. [PR 909](https://github.com/PlasmaPy/PlasmaPy/pull/909): Fields & Grids
6. [Dominik] Neoclassical transport! How best to do it?

## Attendees

* Erik
* Nick
* Dominik
* Oscar
* Ramiz

## Action Items

***Erik***
* updated meetings minute template with "Attendees" & "Action Items" sections
* start roadmap documentation/papers/pages/whatever works nicely
* create project levels & associated issue

***Nick***
* Post about Hack Week to try to get volunteers
* Reach out to Jimmy Juno and others about Simulation Working Group
* Contract Drew to make a plasma community channel

***David?***
* Reach out to Mike Brown about putting miniconf talks on YouTube
* Reach out to presenters about posting stuff

***Dominik***
* will release v0.5.0 by December 6th (& will record the process to post to YouTube)
* will dump his utterly massive stash of #plasmapy-todo's, ALL OF WHICH are absolutely GREAT IDEAS, from todoist into github issues for all to marvel at
* ponder #918 with a cup of tea

## Minutes

* [Dominik] will finally automate HackMD -> Google Docs
* Post-APS-DPP meeting summary
    * It appears videos can be downloaded from APS website
    * Check w/ Mike Brown to get APS approval for re-posting...also need speaker approval
    * make a community channel on element
* siding w/ avoiding subject specific element channels and having subject specific discussion on Discourse that are bot linked to the main element channel
* 0.5.0
    * Want to fix sign error in particle tracker (only if merged before end of next week)
* 2021 roadmap
    * Include ten minutes each meeting to talk about roadmap that this meeting and the CSSI meeting.  Here we'll focus on code, CSSI mtg will focus on educational and community stuff
    * Categorizing issues...maybe a four or five level scheme to outline projects.
    * Probably be easier to catch new contributors if we have well-defined projects for them.
    * Pinned issue at top that can discuss projects, that can have links to the issues
    * A worry...could that end up getting out-of-date pretty fast?  Will have to manually keep it up-to-date.
    * Have it to link tags.  As issues are closed, take them off of the list.  As moderators we have to be good about tagging new issues.  Have to get better at creating issues that outline projects.
    * Have been talking with Christoph about different ways to contribute, including now the Paschen curve.  As an example: could transition this to an issue, so that people have references and can pick it up. 
    * We can talk about this over next few weeks, and Erik will compile this into a document or issue.
    * Functionality: 
        * Paschen curve
        * rest of drifts (though the gradient drift needs a gradient - how best to pass that one in?)
        * Distribution function overhaul?
            * Cauchy/Lorentzian distributions
            * How will they fit in with `FitFunction`s? 
        * Reviewing of formulary so that all argument names are consistent and expected functionality or behavior is consistent.
            * Should get an external opinion on this, since we're overly familiar with this code and need a fresh perspective.
        * `particle_like` & update of `particle_input`
* `mass_density` doesn't properly incorporate `Particle` instances.  Can't be decorated right now because of units, so there was no built-in particle-checking from it.
    * Automatically includes electron mass density but that wasn't well documented
    * Alternative: `mass_density` (which is for one species) and `total_mass_density` which will include, e.g., the electrons
    * Should add note to docs about `particle_input`
* #952: stop using Travis CI since it's not going well for open source, stop using Azure pipelines for PRs, and use GitHub Actions instead because they are magical
    * Do we need artifacts?  We might only need artifacts for the website build.
    * Should add to developer docs...adding '[skip ci]', '[skip github]', etc. to a commit to skip the tests associated with that commit
    * add webhook to `master` test build to ping the element chat if tests start failing (not to PR tests)
    * Maybe move tests for `astropydev` and `numpydev` to cron jobs, rather than for each PR
    * currently python versions tests are bundled together (e.g. `py37` and `py37-astropydev` are in the same build)...maybe split them apart if one starts failing and we need to just rebuild that failed one