GitLab Digital Experience, 26 Aug 2021

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From YouTube: Digital Experience Retro - Aug 26, 2021

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Digital Experience Handbook Page: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/inbound-marketing/digital-experience/
Digital Experience Retro Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kMNiUF2UDuSrMDuzLyRi8OEhVxry_MJoYi38RmmWafY/edit?usp=sharing

A

Hi everyone uh welcome to the digital experience team. uh This is our iteration retro, we'll talk about the things that what well things to improve on uh for the last iteration today is thursday august 26th, um and I think first up is uh things that went well. Tyler has the first one.

B

Yeah, I shouted out chad in our uh release, video but um chad, if you're watching our other folks, uh chad wooley uh really appreciate the collaboration. um This cycle, um we spent like an hour and a half synchronously, going through some gitlab ci stuff on the existing site and on the core marketing site um and then a bunch of other time, asynchronously talking things through and yeah, I'm just feeling like I. I have no concerns about the deployment story for the core marketing site. I have zero concerns.

B

We will be able to do exactly what we want to do and it will be like smooth and I'm just stoked on it. So I'm just like yeah things are really coming together. um You know there's plenty of other challenges but, like I'm stoked- and I think that one really well so um thanks again for the collaboration and also um yeah, which is excited.

C

I added a sub point, plus one um super exciting is next. I built my portfolio indexed on pto and it's really cool so excited to to bring some of that over here over to jess.

A

I just wanted to call out lauren. I have been doing these like stakeholder interviews and I feel like they're going well. um It's just been really nice to like cross collaborate with a bunch of different people across the org, um including across the world. We had an interview in australia in greece in brazil, like we're really getting the breath of the organ. Like you know, people have just different knowledge about different things. It's been really cool, hear it and then also like again kind of get them on board with our okr so like.

A

When we start working on stuff, we can kind of collaborate them continually and get their. You know, consult with them as needed. It's been fun.

A

uh Yeah, I think uh next up is things to improve on and tyler has the first one.

B

Yeah, just preemptively, um I'm remembering like it's feeling right now, like all the cool stuff is going on with the core marketing repository, feels a lot like the storybook repository for slippers, where it's like, I'm stoked on this, I'm like in the zone and like then weeks or months later, like there were a bunch of like gaps and like docs and questions and stuff.

B

So I want to put out an open invitation like I know when I'm feeling this way and I'm like super in the zone on stuff that, like it, means that I I might only be considering like things that are top of mind for me. So I just wanted to put out an invitation for I'm going on pto during next iteration, so I'm going to take like a light workload. But what I'd really like to do primarily is like keep time open for questions either async or synchronously.

B

So please like find time on my calendar or like open up issues in the repository or whatever. It is with questions um just because, like I want to like from the get you know, we're only we've only been working on it for like 10 days or mrs obviously said everything starts with an mr is true. um You know we're only like 10 days in so I want to catch this now to make sure that, like people don't feel out of sync on it when we start doing stuff there. So I see there's some comments underneath.

D

Yeah, just kind of echoing that and saying um even the smaller things like I've noticed as I started to build out that first page, it's like where am I gonna put the components where am I gonna put like the assets, so it seems trivial at first, but when it scales the size of about.getlab.com, like I don't think putting all the images in one folder is gonna, be the solution. So maybe eventually, just if people have suggestions or sitting down and ironing that stuff out.

C

I dropped a link to this um localization plug-in that I used and everything made sense was like. Oh that's why smart lean? That's how that's supposed to work! Oh now I get it so that'd be cool.

A

I think I'm up next um not really things to improve on, but just to comment that, like it's been a while, since we did a thing, I think brandon's going away would have been the last time we just kind of socially hung out um and we need to hear about where lauren has surfed lately and what vegetables tina's growing like there. There are things that we need to update um so yeah. I think we should do that if people are up for it.

C

Yeah, I put a note there, like is canada open yet because I want to go, but that's probably not appropriate to travel yet so um yeah, I don't know. Okay.

A

Yeah, I don't know what the study is in vancouver like. I saw some people talking about a vancouver meetup, but I don't know what it looks like there. I know that this morning in the marketing strategy tactics meeting um someone asked about work, travel like is that allowed yet and they were like. The policy still says: no we're planning on updating it soon, but it's probably like a hard. No, unless you have a specific business reason, um but I don't know if this counts as business travel and yeah. I don't know um yeah.

B

It's only going to get worse again, it's not getting better.

E

That's why I booked my flight because I'm afraid I won't get home for christmas again.

A

When are you going stephen.

E

The 9th of september.

E

Yeah soon yeah I fly from because I got my pr. I got my new pr card that came in the post. I was like well, that's grand, I can book it now so and it was only 800 for flights, so really not that bad.

E

So whenever business travel is opened up, we cannot fly to ireland.

E

Go to the pope.

A

Yeah, I see a video chatter there about um maybe doing another informal hangout or more power points but yeah. Let's, let's put something on my calendar if everyone's up for it cool.

E

Yeah, we haven't done that in a long time. I do miss that.

D

All right is it me: are we done with that?

D

One um yeah, so I just noticed when I was supporting the page over for marketing site that we had a lot of styles that were in a base file in the other repository in the about gitlab.com, and so when I started doing like, I don't know, header tags or everything, there's no styling, so the header tags are super small and it made me realize we need like a solid base file that sets like the fonts and the sizes and that kind of stuff which I think we already kind of have one and it pulls in from tailwind.

D

So just maybe figuring that out- uh and I spoke with michael earlier in the week about potentially pushing out the icon work, because I don't think it's as high as a priority as as this yeah, so that's kind of where I'm stuck at right now, so the enterprise page is kind of done. It's just not styled.

B

We that's intentional with tailwind and slippers, though, like tailwind strips out every like everything is opt-in right, so it like everything is unstyled, and then you opt in with tailwind, and the challenge here is that, like old pages uh from before slippers weren't built that way, so you do need the base styles. But I would just like just to call out that if we, if we don't go with tailwind, then it sounds like maybe we are moving away from tailwind slippers entirely. So if that's the case then like then I think you're right.

B

But if we stay with tailwind, I would caution against a base style sheet, because that's like the opposite of how talon wants to work and like you may want to do like a base style sheet for these legacy pages in the migration phase right. You might want to call in- and you can do this at nux, even with a a scope style tag in a layout file. So you can do like a a layout file.

B

That's like legacy middle, to call like legacy dash, middleman or legacy dash layout or something and then do a scope style block that only applies to pages with that layout file that pulls in a base style sheet. That brings you closer to the middleman styles. So just just food for thought that, like I do, I don't know if you know again, if we're moving away from tailwind entirely, then you know based on whatever that architecture looks like like go for it.

B

But if we stick with tailwind, I would recommend not doing base styles using tailwind as intended with pre-flight, which strips everything out and where needed. You know, treat the exceptional case. The legacy stuff as an exceptional case and like have an escape hatch for that specifically.

D

Yeah yeah sounds good, I think in either direction. We go. I'm nervous that it's going to affect styling on the old site, because I believe styles are being imported into both right.

B

Well, the um it it the answer is, it depends, um but if you're only talking about stuff in the core marketing site that won't impact, anything like core marketing site will be pretty well isolated from middleman. um They have entirely independent, build processes um and they even will be able to like lock in at different slippers versions so like.

B

If slippers moves further than middleman wants to be at, we can keep middlemen locked into an earlier version of slippers, and we can move nux along to newer versions of slippers as it's ready um and we can even go diver go down divergent branches here too, if we need to have like a slippers ui like legacy mode right versus like the slippers ui that is in active development is- and it's pulled into next, um but I think you can keep it isolated depending on exactly how you implement the changes there.

D

That fork actually might be nice because I'm thinking now, for example, let's say we got in into that not base, but whether it's through tailwind or whatever, like a heading style, that's going to now mess up the old repository because it's getting imported over there and there you have like two conflicting header styles, but in the new one you only have one. So maybe that is the place to go legacy and new.

B

You could, even without you, don't even need to fork it, we could version lock it down. To um I mean we could do. We could call a major version right, like a little like, would be a little bit outside a semantic release, but it's we are maybe probably at the point where it's breaking and we could do like slippers. Zero is what middleman knows about and then slippers one and then we bump up to major version, one that goes into the next repository and then they're totally isolated from one another.

B

You know even on the version side of things, we'd have to um figure out our repository branches and and come up with this and just make sure that we're branching off of like appropriate things in the repo, but no reason we can. You know plenty of projects do that. You know maintain separate like entirely separate branch structures for your major versions.

B

D

All right, I think, we'll end it. There we've been going back and forth for a while, but yeah that sounds good awesome.

F

Oh sorry, no go ahead. I was just gonna say like I. I have a note to. I just wanted, like a mental reminder to add, like like the post css like web pack, stuff to the slippers or the slippers iteration epic, so because that will help with like some of the things that you all are talking about now,.

A

Do you want to verbalize the action item or.

B

Yeah, just I I wanted to put this there to remind myself um for planning, meeting and barker, and I've already chatted about this. A little bit like we got pulled into there's some.

B

uh We might be moving the sites behind cloudflare or something and there's there's just things to be ready for for next iteration, so um nothing specific on it just wanted to put it on the agenda.

A

I think that wraps everything up I have a bag to buy. So uh thank you. Everyone and we'll see you next time.