Open Stack

Excerpts from Jaesuk Ahn's message of 2016-10-12 15:08:24 +0000:
> It can be cheap if you are in the US. However, for Asia folks, it is not
> that cheap considering it is all overseas travel. In addition, all-in-one
> event like the current summit makes us much easier to get the travel fund
> from the company, since the company only need to send everyone (tech, ops,
> business, strategy) to one event. Even as an ops or developers, doing
> presentation or a meeting with one or two important company can be very
> good excuse to get the travel money.
> 

This is definitely on the list of concerns I heard while the split was
being discussed.

I think the concern is valid, and we'll have to see how it affects
attendance at PTG's and summits.

However, I am not so sure the overseas cost is being accurately
characterized. Of course, the complications are higher with immigration
details, but ultimately hotels around international hub airports are
extremely cheap, and flights tend to be quite a bit less expensive and
more numerous to these locations. You'll find flights from Narita to
LAX for < $500 where as you'd be hard pressed to find Narita to Boston
for under $600, and they'll be less convenient, possibly requiring more
hotel days.

Also worth considering is how cheap the space is for the PTG
vs. Summit. Without need for large expo halls, keynote speakers,
catered lunch and cocktail hours, we can rent a smaller, less impressive
space. That should mean either a cheaper ticket price (if there is one
at all) or more sponsored travel to the PTG. Either one of those should
help alleviate the concerns about travel budget.

> I understand the needs of separate event to make developers stay focused. I
> am just sharing my experience here how difficult for us to get fund for
> overseas event more than once per year. For my case as ops (previously) and
> product manager (now), even though I don't code actively, attending design
> summit (and interacting with developers) has been very helpful to
> understand what is really going to in openstack so that I can make right
> decision.
> 

Many devs will still come to the summit. The same ones who have been
coming and running lots of fishbowls, will be there, running presumably
smaller fishbowls that are _more_ ops focused, more user focused,
and more design focused, because the contributors won't be feeling a
need to be there to get the implementation planned out at that moment,
because they know there's a place for doing that.