Open Stack

On 02/22/2016 04:49 PM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 04:14:06PM +0100, Thierry Carrez wrote:
>> The idea would be to split the events. The first event would be for upstream
>> technical contributors to OpenStack. It would be held in a simpler,
>> scaled-back setting that would let all OpenStack project teams meet in
>> separate rooms, but in a co-located event that would make it easy to have
>> ad-hoc cross-project discussions. It would happen closer to the centers of
>> mass of contributors, in less-expensive locations.
> The idea that we can choose less expensive locations is great, but I'm a
> little wary of focusing too much on "centers of mass of contributors", as
> it can easily become an excuse to have it in roughly the same places each
> time. As a non-USA based contributor, I really value the fact the the
> summits rotate around different regions instead of spending all the time
> in the USA as was the case earlier in openstcck days. Minimizing travel
> costs is no doubt a welcome aim for companies' budgets, but it should not
> be allowed to dominate to such a large extent that we miss representation
> of different regions. ie if we never went back to Asia because the it is
> cheaper for the /current/ majority of contributors to go to the US, we'll
> make it harder to attract new contributors from those regions we avoid on
> cost ground. The "center of mass of contributors" could become a self-
> fullfilling prophecy.
>
> IOW, I'm onboard with choosing less expensive locations, but would like
> to see us still make the effort to reach out across different regions
> for the events, and not become too US focused once again.

As an EU-based contributor I have similar concerns. First OpenStack
Summit I was able to attend was in Paris and the fact that it was close
let us send almost entire team of contributors. That fact helped us in
future funding negotiations and we were able to maintain constant number
of contributors sent also to Summits far more expensive for us. I don't
believe that would be ever possible if all the conferences were
organized in the US.