Open Stack

On Fri, 2016-02-26 at 17:24 +0000, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 08:55:52AM -0800, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Fri, 2016-02-26 at 16:03 +0000, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> > > On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 10:39:08AM -0500, Rich Bowen wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 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.
> > > 
> > > I think what you describe is a prime reason for why separating
> > > the
> > > events would be *beneficial* for the community contributors. The
> > > conference has long ago become so corporate focused that its
> > > session
> > > offers little to no value to me as a project contributor. What
> > > you
> > > describe as a benefit of being able to put community people
> > > infront
> > > of business people is in fact a significant negative for the
> > > design
> > > summit productivity. It causes key community contributors to be 
> > > pulled out of important design sessions to go talk to business 
> > > people, making the design sessions significantly less productive.
> > 
> > It's Naïve to think that something is so sacrosanct that it will be
> > protected come what may.  Everything eventually has to justify 
> > itself to the funders.  Providing quid pro quo to sales and 
> > marketing helps enormously with that justification and it can be 
> > managed so it's not a huge drain on productive time.  OpenStack may 
> > be the new shiny now, but one day it won't be and then you'll need 
> > the support of the people you're currently disdaining.
> > 
> > I've said this before in the abstract, but let me try to make it
> > specific and personal: once the kernel was the new shiny and money 
> > was poured all over us; we were pure and banned management types 
> > from the kernel summit and other events, but that all changed when 
> > the dot com bust came.  You're from Red Hat, if you ask the old 
> > timers about the Ottawa Linux Symposium and allied Kernel Summit I 
> > believe they'll recall that in 2005(or 6) the Red Hat answer to a 
> > plea to fund travel was here's $25 a head, go and find a floor to 
> > crash on.  As the wrangler for the new Linux Plumbers Conference I 
> > had to come up with all sorts of convoluted schemes for getting Red 
> > Hat to fund developer travel most of which involved embarrassing 
> > Brian Stevens into approving it over the objections of his 
> > managers.  I don't want to go into detail about how Red Hat reached 
> > this situation; I just want to remind you that it happened before
> > and it could happen again.
> 
> The proposal to split the design summit off actually aims to reduce
> the travel cost burden. Currently we have a conference+design summit
> at the wrong time, which is fairly unproductive due to people being
> pulled out of the design summit for other tasks. So  we "fixed" that
> by introducing mid-cycles to get real design work done. IOW 
> contributors end up with 4 events to travel to each year. With the 
> proposed split of the conference from te design summit, we have a 
> chance of having a productive design summit that can ultimately 
> eliminate the need for the mid-cycles, so we have a good chance of 
> getting back to 2 events to travel to each year for the majority of 
> contributors, with the obviously reduction in costs.

Cost isn't the problem; justification of the need in the first place
is.  If you can't give a business need it doesn't matter how cheap
you've made the trip, it still gets vetoed.  You've reduced the cost by
not sending engineers to any of the events that sales and marketing go
to.  When cost reduction meetings roll around, they're going to demand
a halt to inessential travel, which means travel not supporting the
revenue producing business units (sales and marketing).  Essentially
your reduced cost becomes fully recoverable because you're not going to
any event they see as important.

James