Open Stack

Jay Pipes wrote:
> 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 agree with most of the things that have been said so far. I think the 
upstream community can't really get its work done in the current 
setting, and that it's too costly for companies to send most of their 
developers to classy hotels in expensive cities. I therefore think it 
would be beneficial to separate the events.

I agree that a separated design summit should be in lower-cost venues 
and smaller cities. But I don't think that the "OpenStack contributor 
community" can or should directly organize them. I happen to have a foot 
on both sides, and I can tell you organizing those events is extremely 
time consuming. I know exactly who would end up with the burden of 
organizing those events in the end -- and those are the same overworked 
cross-project core of developers that fill all the gaps in OpenStack.

I don't want to risk even more burnout from that group by forcing them 
into the craziness of organizing such events every 6 months. I don't 
think the issue with the Design Summit is that the Foundation staff and 
FNTech organizes them. It's mostly my team working on it on the staff 
side -- and I think Mike Perez and myself qualify as "OpenStack 
contributor community". The issue is with the bundling of the two 
events, and that can be fixed while still letting a specialized event 
team do all the heavy lifting.

The timing of this thread is unfortunate, since after Tokyo I have 
actually been working on a solution for separation myself, and the 
Foundation is finalizing a strawman proposal that should soon be pushed 
for comments to the community. It involves changes to the main 
conference event as well.

So please stand by while we finalize that: I think you will like the end 
result.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)