[openstack-dev] [all][tc] Proposal: Separate design summits from OpenStack conferences

Jay Pipes jaypipes at gmail.com
Mon Feb 8 14:43:54 UTC 2016


On 02/08/2016 09:03 AM, Fausto Marzi wrote:
> The OpenStack Summit is a great thing as it is now. It creates big
> momentum, it's a strong motivator for the engineers (as enjoy our time
> there)

I disagree with you on this. The design summits are intended to be 
working events, not conference parties.

 > and the Companies are happy too with the business related side. I
> see it also as the most successful Team building activity, Community and
> Company wide.

This isn't the intent of design summits. It's not intended to be a 
company team building event.

 > For Companies, the costs to send engineers to the Summit
> or to a dedicated Design event are exactly the same.

This is absolutely not the case. Sending engineers to expensive 
conference hotels for a full week or more is more expensive than sending 
engineers to small hotels in smaller cities for shorter amounts of 
focused time.

 > Besides, many
> Companies send US based employees only to the US Summit, and EU based
> only to the other side. The OpenStack Summit is probably the most
> advanced and successful OpenSource event, if you take out of it the
> engineering side, it won't be the same.

I don't see the OpenStack Summit as being an advanced event. It has 
become a vendor-driven suit-fest, IMHO.

> I think, the issue here is that we need to have a better and more
> productive way to work together. Probably the motivation behind a
> separate design summit and also this discussion is focused to improve
> that, as we see that face to face is effective. Maybe this is the
> limitation we need to resolve, rather than changing an amazing event.

All I want is to be more productive. In my estimation, the Summits have 
become vastly less productive than they used to be. Mid-cycles are 
generally much more productive and much more cost-effective because they 
don't have the distraction of the Summit party atmosphere.

As someone who is responsible for recommending which Mirantis engineers 
go to which events, I strongly favor sending more engineers to more 
focused events at the expense of sending fewer engineers to the 
expensive and unfocused OpenStack Summits.

-jay



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