Open Stack

On Mon, 10 Apr 2017, Thierry Carrez wrote:

> So my question is the following: if elected, how much time do you think
> you'll be able to dedicate to Technical Committee affairs (reviewing
> proposed changes and pushing your own) ?

I've been regularly reviewing changes in the governance repo and
attending the weekly TC meeting for well over a year now. Increasing
that commitment to include shepherding new initiatives, either ones
I start myself or work on in concert with others, is why I'm running
for the TC and I wouldn't be doing so if I didn't think I had the
time and energy to support that.

Making a specific prediction on how much time that will take is
challenging; some weeks will take more time than others. I intend to
do what's needed to do the job well.

> If there was ONE thing, one
> initiative, one change you will actively push in the six months between
> this election round and the next, what would it be ?

Just ONE initiative is difficult because from my perspective what
matters is that whatever initiatives happen to be in progress, they
are transparent, inclusive and actually make some kind of
difference. But since ONE is the request:

My hallmark complaint with the TC since I was first aware of it has
been that, often, resolutions or plans can emerge from the TC so
late in their development that engaging them in a way that allows
consideration of completely different options is hard. Hard for a
variety of reasons; one is that it can feel a bit rude to criticize
a complete seeming idea that someone clearly put a lot of effort
into. This means discussion proceeds as an evaluation of the
proposal rather than as analysis of the root causes of the problems
to be solved or the full consequences of the goals being described.

This situation has improved over the years, I think there is at
least increased awareness, and some concrete efforts to allow people
to be involved, but we can do more to make it easier and lighter.

I would prefer that the TC's constituency was more actively made
aware of pending work and ongoing debates prior to the creation of
resolutions (even if WIP) in gerrit or having big sessions at the
Forum.  One way to do this would be to follow the growing trend of
weekly newsletters and updates and do one for the TC. I recall this
was tried (in the form of blog posts, and to some extent in response
to my prompting) a while back, but didn't really take off. I
wonder if that format was too heavyweight?

I'm proud of having played a part in the newsletter trend and I
think the results for the API-WG and the placement project have been
very positive. Doing something similar for the TC -- in a
lightweight, just-the-highlights kind of way -- is something I could
do (I hope with the occasional help of the rest of the TC) and is
something I think would be useful. With luck the newsletter would
operate as a catalyst around which casual discussion and idea
sharing would accrete.

What I hope would happen as a result is that people would feel more
aware of and able to participate in the discussion and processes
working to shape the future of OpenStack.

-- 
Chris Dent                 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯           https://anticdent.org/
freenode: cdent                                         tw: @anticdent