Open Stack

Limiting submissions by company would be next to impossible to enforce. I say that as someone who has been responsible for collecting submissions from companies ranging in size from 40 people to over 70,000 so that we could post them to a blog. And job transitions would create a mess for the foundation to deal with.

As in all things, we’re never going to make everyone happy. I think the spaghetti-against-the-wall thing happens for a good reason: people want to attend the summits, and it’s far easier to have travel and expenses approved when you’re on the schedule as a speaker. So while limiting speaking submissions seems to be an agreeable alternative, we’re treating a symptom, not the cause.

Not sure we’ve done this in the past, but I’ve seen conferences that provide Business/Attendance Justification Toolkits.

Another thought might be to allow for optional “Donate to the Travel Scholarship Fund!” checkboxes to allow ticket purchasers to add an extra amount (say $25, $50, or $100) to their purchase…. Similar to what your neighborhood drugstore does to raise money for health charities. By making it optional, I don’t find it to be obtrusive in any way. At the very least, it could be a cool experiment and if it funds one person, it’s worth it to me!

Niki Acosta
Cloud Evangelist
Cisco Intercloud Services
(e) nikacost at cisco.com
(c) (+1) 512-912-6716
(t) @nikiacosta


From: Rossella Sblendido <rossble at gmail.com<mailto:rossble at gmail.com>>
Date: Thursday, December 10, 2015 at 6:33 AM
Cc: "openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org>" <openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org>>
Subject: Re: [Openstack-track-chairs] Call for Speakers Feedback, Next Steps

Hi all,

+1 to limiting the number of submissions per person
+1 to Stefano's proposal to have a feature in the track chair tool to get all the submission by the same speaker
+1 to have a random subset of presentations to vote on in the public voting

I like the idea of adding a field where the submitter can explain why his/her talk should be selected. I'd like to see facts listed in this field. This should be the place where the submitter can add info to prove that she/he has first hand knowledge regarding the topic. As Salvatore was already suggesting, I'd encourage people to share code repositories, papers and anything that can be useful to show their contribution.

I am OK with asking if the submitter has already presented somewhere else before. It can be anywhere else, university, local meetups... this shouldn't discourage new voices.
For frequent speakers we can use the data collected in Tokyo. Are they online somewhere?

cheers,

Rossella


On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 10:08 AM, Henry Nash <henry.nash at uk.ibm.com<mailto:henry.nash at uk.ibm.com>> wrote:
So a couple 0.01 old English pennies:

+1 for limiting submissions to 3
+1 for limiting number of speakers to 3, except for panels (which I agree are good...although I'd love to encourage more question from the audience...rather than just moderator questions passed around)
-1 for limiting submissions by company (let's judge submissions on merit, not on source)
-1 for asking for video of previous talks (I absolutely get the goal of trying to get good speakers....I'm just concerned we raise the barrier too high for submission)
+1 for trying to get a better idea of the content from the submission (Maybe don't ask for a longer abstract, but have a section that asks for a simple bullet point list of the key topics covered?)

Henry



From:        "Clark, Robert Graham" <robert.clark at hpe.com<mailto:robert.clark at hpe.com>>
To:        John Dickinson <me at not.mn<mailto:me at not.mn>>, "openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org>" <openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org>>
Date:        10/12/2015 01:08
Subject:        Re: [Openstack-track-chairs] Call for Speakers Feedback, Next Steps
________________________________



I agree with Duncan's proposed questions and the idea of capping the number of submissions somewhere from 3-5 per person (per company doesn't work imho).

The biggest problem I've found as a track chair is not really knowing what a talk will focus on (or even what the content will be) from the abstract that's presented to me - this problem is significantly compounded when the talk gets many votes.

We certainly have to improve the quality of abstracts and we need a way to reduce the noise level that the voters are faced with. I'm a track chair and I could barely stand leafing through the many submissions on my chosen area of specialization (security) I can't imagine being your average attendee and really spending multiple hours voting on talks - that's just not realistic.

Cheers
-Rob

(Also +1 to an etherpad)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Dickinson [mailto:me at not.mn]
> Sent: 09 December 2015 22:34
> To: openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org>
> Subject: Re: [Openstack-track-chairs] Call for Speakers Feedback, Next Steps
>
> Is there a difference between "submitter" and "presenter"? eg in the past one person may submit a lot of talks, all with different presenters
> on them.
>
> I like changing the incentivization away from the spaghetti approach (throw a bunch on the wall and see what sticks). Limiting submissions
> per person (and one person not being in more than a certain number of talks) is a good start.
>
>
> Another idea (one I'm much less sure of) is having track chairs or someone giving guidance for submissions. eg "In the storage track, we'd
> like to hear talks that (1) technically explain parts of the code or (2) describe a production deployment and how that contributed back
> upstream". I'm not entirely sure how that would end up resulting in a different final talk selection, but I'd hope it might raise the quality of
> submissions.
>
> --John
>
>
>
> On 9 Dec 2015, at 14:09, Kenneth Hui wrote:
>
> > I would second the limit on number of submissions per person.
> >
> > Also, we may want to consider having a submitter upload or link to a video
> > of him or her presenting; this would help in assessing someone's ability to
> > present to an audience.
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Kenneth Hui <ken at platform9.com<mailto:ken at platform9.com>> | Director of Technical Marketing and
> > Partner Alliances
> > Platform9 <http://platform9.com/> - *"Private Clouds Made Easy"*
> > (c) 347.997.0935<tel:347.997.0935>  / (t) @hui_kenneth <https://twitter.com/hui_kenneth>
> >
> > Blogs:
> >
> > *http://blog.platform9.com/
> > <http://blog.platform9.com/>**http://cloudarchitectmusings.com/
> > <http://cloudarchitectmusings.com/>*
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 3:44 PM, Lauren Sell <lauren at openstack.org<mailto:lauren at openstack.org>> wrote:
> >
> >> Hello Tokyo Summit track chairs,
> >>
> >> We’re moving quickly to open the call for speakers for the Austin
> >> Summit next week and want to make sure we incorporate feedback from prior
> >> discussions on this list. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much turnout in
> >> Tokyo for the Summit tools & processes session, where we were hoping to
> >> facilitate more discussion. We only had two people show up (outside of
> >> Foundation staff), so we primarily discussed the mobile app and reviewed
> >> the prototype.
> >>
> >> Based on earlier feedback in this thread, there is a desire to manage the
> >> growing number of submissions while increasing the quality. We have two
> >> levers we could pull for the submission process, but need to make decisions
> >> by the end of this week:
> >> 1. Do we want to cap the number of sessions that each person can submit at
> >> 5?
> >> 2. Do we want to add any questions or requirements to the submission form?
> >> See suggestions below.
> >>
> >> For #2, we are already making a few minor changes this round to improve
> >> session tagging and ask speakers for “links to past presentations” and
> >> “areas of expertise.” For the session submission, we currently ask:
> >>
> >> - Session Title
> >> - Session level (beginner, intermediate, advanced)
> >> - Abstract
> >> - Short Description (450 characters max for YouTube and mobile app)
> >> - Select track from dropdown
> >> - Tags
> >>
> >> I would suggest consolidating the abstract and short description to be one
> >> question (because submitters often copy/paste it anyway), and then ask a
> >> few additional questions:
> >>
> >> - Who is the intended audience for your session? Please be specific.
> >> - What is the problem or use case you’re addressing in this session?
> >> - What should attendees expect to learn?
> >>
> >> We are also making a few changes to the tracks, primarily grouping them
> >> into content categories to better promote and layout the content across the
> >> week.
> >>
> >> Finally, we will very soon need to select the next round of track chairs.
> >> The Foundation has typically accepted nominations from the community and
> >> appointed track chairs based on subject matter expertise, contributions,
> >> working group involvement, etc. To help bring in new perspectives, one
> >> proposal was to ask track chairs to decide two people from their team who
> >> would continue for the next cycle and nominate two new people from the
> >> community to keep things fresh. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback that another
> >> community vote for track chairs is not desirable, but we could more broadly
> >> communicate the window for nominations. We’re accepting nominations now
> >> (email summit at openstack.org<mailto:summit at openstack.org>) and hope to have track chairs decided by
> >> mid-January. Any thoughts on the process?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Lauren
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Openstack-track-chairs mailing list
> >> Openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org<mailto:Openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org>
> >> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-track-chairs
> >>
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Openstack-track-chairs mailing list
> > Openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org<mailto:Openstack-track-chairs at lists.openstack.org>
> > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-track-chairs
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