Excerpts from Sean McGinnis's message of 2016-02-22 11:48:50 -0800: > On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 05:20:21PM +0000, Amrith Kumar wrote: > > Thierry and all of those who contributed to putting together this write-up, > > thank you very much. > > > > TL;DR: +0 > > > > Longer version: > > > > While I definitely believe that the new proposed timing for "OpenStack > > Summit" which is some months after the release, is a huge improvement, I am > > not completely enamored of this proposal. Here is why. > > > > As a result of this proposal, there will still be four events each year, > > two "OpenStack Summit" events and two "MidCycle" events. The material > > change is that the "MidCycle" event that is currently project specific will > > become a single event inclusive of all projects, not unlike our current > > "Design Summit". > > > > I contrast this proposal with a mid-cycle two weeks ago for the Trove > > project. Thanks to the folks at Red Hat who hosted us in Raleigh, we had a > > dedicated room, with high bandwidth internet and the ability to have people > > join us remotely via audio and video (which we used mostly for screen > > sharing). The previous mid-cycle similarly had excellent facilities > > provided us by HP (in California), Rackspace (in Austin) and at MIT in > > Cambridge when we (Tesora) hosted the event. > > > > At these "simpler, scaled-back settings", would we be able to provide the > > same kind of infrastructure for each project? > > > > Given the number of projects, and leaving aside high bandwidth internet and > > remote participation, providing dedicated meeting room for the duration of > > the MidCycle event for each project is a considerable undertaking. I > > believe therefore that the consequence is that the MidCycle event will end > > up being of comparable scale to the current Design Summit or larger, and > > will likely need a similar venue. > > > > I also believe that it is important that OpenStack continue to grow not > > only a global customer base but also a global contributor base. As others > > have already commented, this proposal risks the "design summit" become US > > based, maybe Europe once in a long while. But I find it much harder to > > believe that these design summits would be truly global. And this I think > > would be an unwelcome consequence. > > > > At the current OpenStack Summit, there is an opportunity for contributors, > > customers and operators to interact, not just in technical meetings, but > > also in a social setting. I think this is valuable, even though there seems > > to be a number of people who believe that this is not necessarily the case. > > > > Those are the three concerns I have with the proposal. > > > > Thanks again to Thierry and all who contributed to putting this proposal > > together. > > > > -amrith > > I agree with a lot of the concerns raised here. I wonder if we're not > just shifting some of the problems and causing others. > > While the timing of things isn't ideal right now, I'm also afraid the > timing of these changes would also interupt our development flow and > cause distractions when we need folks focused on getting things done. > > I'm also very concerned about losing our midcycles. At least for Cinder, > the midcycle events have been hugely successful and well worth the time > and travel expense, IMO. To me, the design summit event is good for > cross-project communication and getting more operator input. But the > midcycles have been where we've really been able to focus and figure out > issues. >
I do understand this concern, but the difference is in the way a development-summit-only event is attended versus a conference+summit. When you don't have keynotes every morning expending peoples' time, and you don't have people running out of discussions to give their talks, this immediately adds a calm focus to the discussions that feels a lot more like a mid-cycle. When there's no booth for your company to ask you to come by and man for a while to meet customers and partners, suddenly every developer can spend the whole of the event talking to other developers and operators who have come to participate directly. I did not attend the first few summits, my first one being the Boston event, but I did attend quite a few Ubuntu Developer Summits, which were much more about development discussions, and almost completely devoid of conference semantics. It always felt like a series of productive meetings, and not like a series of rushed, agitated, nervous brain dumps, which frankly is what a lot of Tokyo felt like. > Even if we still have a colocated "midcycle" now, I would be afraid that > there would be too many distractions from everything else going on for > us to be able to really tackle some of the things we've been able to in > our past midcycles. > I _DO_ share your concern here. The mid-cycles are productive because they're focused. Putting one at the conference will just make it less focused than a mid-cycle, and less effective at general communication than the dev summit because contributor attendance will be limited. So, for me, I like the plan, but I would say that we should call the new version of the mid-cycle a "sprint", and keep them small and separate unless it just can't be managed. I know that for a small percentage of contributors this would mean going to potentially _6_ events in a year. However, I think that is a corner case, and the general case is well served by having all 3 options each cycle. __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
