On 02/12/2016 06:17 AM, Eoghan Glynn wrote:
Hello all,
tl;dr
=====
I have long thought that the OpenStack Summits have become too
commercial and provide little value to the software engineers
contributing to OpenStack.
I propose the following:
1) Separate the design summits from the conferences
2) Hold only a single OpenStack conference per year
3) Return the design summit to being a low-key, low-cost working event
I think you would hurt developer attendance. I think the unified design
summit sneaks under the radar of many companies that will send people to
the conference but might not send them to a design-only summit.
I know a lot of people at smaller companies especially have to do double
duty. I'm at a larger company and I have to do double duty, booth and
design. Sometimes my talks get accepted, too.
I think the combined summit works. I would not want to have to travel
any more than I do now.
I think the idea of more developer-specific socializing would be great.
Downtime is also a good thing, and having the socializing in venues that
don;t involve shouting and going hoarse would be a plus in my book.
TBH, after a day of summit, I am often ready to just disappear for a
while, or go out with a small group of friends. I tend to avoid the
large parties.
That said, the Saxophone is coming to Austin, and I plan on trying to
get an informal jam session together with anyone that has an
instrument...and we'll see if we can find a piano.
details
=======
The design summits originally started out as working events. Developers
got together in smallish rooms, arranged chairs in a fishbowl, and got
to work planning and designing.
With the OpenStack Summit growing more and more marketing- and
sales-focused, the contributors attending the design summit are often
unfocused. The precious little time that developers have to actually
work on the next release planning is often interrupted or cut short by
the large numbers of "suits" and salespeople at the conference event,
many of which are peddling a product or pushing a corporate agenda.
Many contributors submit talks to speak at the conference part of an
OpenStack Summit because their company says it's the only way they will
pay for them to attend the design summit. This is, IMHO, a terrible
thing. The design summit is a *working* event. Companies that contribute
to OpenStack projects should send their engineers to working events
because that is where work is done, not so that their engineer can go
give a talk about some vendor's agenda-item or newfangled product.
Part of the reason that companies only send engineers who are giving a
talk at the conference side is that the cost of attending the OpenStack
Summit has become ludicrously expensive. Why have the events become so
expensive? I can think of a few reasons:
a) They are held every six months. I know of no other community or open
source project that holds *conference-type* events every six months.
b) They are held in extremely expensive hotels and conference centers
because the number of attendees is so big.
c) Because the conferences have become sales and marketing-focused
events, companies shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for schwag,
for rented event people, for food and beverage sponsorships, for keynote
slots, for lavish and often ridiculous parties, and more. This cost
means less money to send engineers to the design summit to do actual work.
I would love to see the OpenStack contributor community take back the
design summit to its original format and purpose and decouple it from
the OpenStack Summit's conference portion.
I believe the design summits should be organized by the OpenStack
contributor community, not the OpenStack Foundation and its marketing
and event planning staff. This will allow lower-cost venues to be chosen
that meet the needs only of the small group of active contributors, not
of huge masses of conference attendees. This will allow contributor
companies to send *more* engineers to *more* design summits, which is
something that really needs to happen if we are to grow our active
contributor pool.
Once this decoupling occurs, I think that the OpenStack Summit should be
renamed to the OpenStack Conference and Expo to better fit its purpose
and focus. This Conference and Expo event really should be held once a
year, in my opinion, and continue to be run by the OpenStack Foundation.
I, for one, would welcome events that have no conference check-in area,
no evening parties with 2000 people, no keynote and
powerpoint-as-a-service sessions, and no getting pulled into sales meetings.
OK, there, I said it.
Thoughts? Criticism? Support? Suggestions welcome.
Largely agree with the need to re-imagine summit, and perhaps cleaving
off the design summit is the best way forward on that.
But in any case, just a few counter-points to consider:
* nostalgia for the days of yore will only get us so far, as *some* of
the friction in the current design summit is due to its scale (read:
success/popularity) as opposed to a wandering band of suits ruining
everything. A decoupled design summit will still be a large event
and will never recreate the intimate atmosphere of say the Bexar
summit.
* much of the problem with the lavish parties is IMO related to the
*exclusivity* of certain shindigs, as opposed to devs socializing at
summit being inappropriate per se. In that vein, I think the cores
party sends the wrong message and has run its course, while the TC
dinner ... well, maybe Austin is the time to show some leadership
on that? ;)
* cost-wise we need to be careful also about quantifying the real cost
deltas between a typical midcycle location (often hard to get to,
with a limited choice of hotels) and a major city with direct routes
and competition between airlines keeping airfares under control.
Agreed let's scale down the glitz, but let's keep the accessibility
where possible. Aim for Prague or Portland, as opposed to Bristol or
Rochester.
* timing-wise the summit can't be all things to all men^H^H^Hpeople,
all some projects aim for early and fixed deadlines in the cycle
(specs & non-prio feature freeze etc.) whereas others are more fluid.
Also some contributors in the community have a post-release-tag
productization crunch to contend with. So while earlier is good,
maybe not the week after the release tag?
* finally, let's be careful also about projecting the travel budget
policies (read: perverse incentives) of individual companies onto
the entire community ... some companies incentivize conference talks,
others try to optimize for working session involvement, some aim for
a balance etc.
Cheers,
Eoghan
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