Open Stack

Hi all,

Right now, behind-the-scenes, we're working on getting a venue for next
ops mid-cycle. It's taking a little longer than normal, but rest assured
it is happening.

Why is it so difficult? As you may have noticed, we're reaching the size
of event where both physically and financially, only the largest
organisations can host us.

We thought we might get away with organising this one old-school with a
single host and sponsor. Then, for the next, start a brainstorming
discussion with you about how we scale these events into the future -
since once we get up and beyond a few hundred people, we're looking at
having to hire a venue as well as make some changes to the format of the
event.

However, it seems that even this might be too late. We already had a
company that proposed to host the meetup at a west coast US hotel
instead of their place, and wanted to scope out other companies to
sponsor food.

This would be a change in the model, so let's commence the discussion of
how we want to scale this event :)

So far I've heard things like:
* "my $CORPORATE_BENEFACTOR would be fine to share sponsorship with others"
* "I really don't want to get to the point where we want booths at the
ops meetup"

Which are promising! It seems like we have a shared understanding of
what to take this forward with.

So, as the ops meetup grows - what would it look like for you?

How do you think we can manage the venue selection and financial side of
things? What about the session layout and the scheduling with the
growing numbers of attendees?

Current data can be found at
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Operations/Meetups#Venue_Selection .

I would also be interested in your thoughts about how these events have
only been in a limited geographical area so far, and how we can address
that issue.


Regards,


Tom