Open Stack

Excerpts from Thierry Carrez's message of 2014-08-27 05:51:55 -0700:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I've been thinking about what changes we can bring to the Design Summit
> format to make it more productive. I've heard the feedback from the
> mid-cycle meetups and would like to apply some of those ideas for Paris,
> within the constraints we have (already booked space and time). Here is
> something we could do:
> 
> Day 1. Cross-project sessions / incubated projects / other projects
> 
> I think that worked well last time. 3 parallel rooms where we can
> address top cross-project questions, discuss the results of the various
> experiments we conducted during juno. Don't hesitate to schedule 2 slots
> for discussions, so that we have time to come to the bottom of those
> issues. Incubated projects (and maybe "other" projects, if space allows)
> occupy the remaining space on day 1, and could occupy "pods" on the
> other days.
> 

I like it. The only thing I would add is that it would be quite useful if
the use of pods were at least partially enhanced by an unconference style
interest list.  What I mean is, on day 1 have people suggest topics and
vote on suggested topics to discuss at the pods, and from then on the pods
can host these topics. This is for the "other" things that aren't well
defined until the summit and don't have their own rooms for days 2 and 3.

This is driven by the fact that the pods in Atlanta were almost always
busy doing something other than whatever the track that owned them
wanted. A few projects pods grew to 30-40 people a few times, eating up
all the chairs for the surrounding pods. TripleO often sat at the Heat
pod because of this for instance.

I don't think they should be fully scheduled. They're also just great
places to gather and have a good discussion, but it would be useful to
plan for topic flexibility and help coalesce interested parties, rather
than have them be silos that get taken over randomly. Especially since
there is a temptation to push the "other" topics to them already.

> Day 2 and Day 3. Scheduled sessions for various programs
> 
> That's our traditional scheduled space. We'll have a 33% less slots
> available. So, rather than trying to cover all the scope, the idea would
> be to focus those sessions on specific issues which really require
> face-to-face discussion (which can't be solved on the ML or using spec
> discussion) *or* require a lot of user feedback. That way, appearing in
> the general schedule is very helpful. This will require us to be a lot
> stricter on what we accept there and what we don't -- we won't have
> space for courtesy sessions anymore, and traditional/unnecessary
> sessions (like my traditional "release schedule" one) should just move
> to the mailing-list.
> 
> Day 4. Contributors meetups
> 
> On the last day, we could try to split the space so that we can conduct
> parallel midcycle-meetup-like contributors gatherings, with no time
> boundaries and an open agenda. Large projects could get a full day,
> smaller projects would get half a day (but could continue the discussion
> in a local bar). Ideally that meetup would end with some alignment on
> release goals, but the idea is to make the best of that time together to
> solve the issues you have. Friday would finish with the design summit
> feedback session, for those who are still around.
> 

Love this. Please if we can also fully enclose these meetups and the
session rooms in dry erase boards that would be ideal.