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On 02/22/2016 10:14 AM, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> TL;DR: Let's split the events, starting after Barcelona.
> 
> ....
> 
> Comments, thoughts ?

Thierry (and Jay, who wrote a similar note much earlier in February, and
Lauren, who added more clarity over on the marketing list, and the many,
many of you who have spoken up in this thread ...),

as a community guy, I have grave concerns about what the long-term
effect of this move would be. I agree with your reasons, and the
problems, but I worry that this is not the way to solve it.

Summit is one time when we have an opportunity to hold community up to
the folks that think only product - to show them how critical it is that
the people that are on this mailing list are doing the awesome things
that they're doing, in the upstream, in cooperation and collaboration
with their competitors.

I worry that splitting the two events would remove the community aspect
from the conference. The conference would become more corporate, more
product, and less project.

My initial response was "crap, now I have to go to four events instead
of two", but as I thought about it, it became clear that that wouldn't
happen. I, and everyone else, would end up picking one event or the
other, and the division between product and project would deepen.

Summit, for me specifically, has frequently been at least as much about
showing the community to the sales/marketing folks in my own company, as
showing our wares to the customer.

Now, I know you guys put on awesome events, and you have probably
thought about this already. The proposal to have the events be
back-to-back across a weekend may indeed address some of these concerns,
at the cost of the "less expensive city and venue" part of the proposal,
and at the cost of being away from my family over yet another weekend.

Thank you for the obvious attention and concern that you're giving to
this issue. I acknowledge the many growth pains that you're trying to
solve with this, and I'm sure that whichever way you go, it'll be awesome.

--Rich

-- 
Rich Bowen - rbowen at redhat.com
OpenStack Community Liaison
http://rdoproject.org/