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Excerpts from Fox, Kevin M's message of 2017-01-13 19:44:23 +0000:
> Don't want to hijack the thread too much but... when the PTG was being sold, it was a way to get the various developers in to one place and make it cheaper to go to for devs. Now it seems to be being made into a place where each of the silo's can co'exist but not talk, and then the summit is still required to get cross project work done, so it only increases the devs cost by requiring attendance at both. This is very troubling. :/ Whats the main benefit of the PTG then?
> 

I've come to the conclusion that this will still have a net positive
effect for communication.

The reason? Leaders. Not just PTL's, but all of those who are serving as
leaders, whether formal or not.

With the old system, the leaders of each project would be tasked
with attending all of the summit sessions relevant to their project,
whether cross-project, ops-centric, or project-centric. This was a
full-time job for the entirety of the summit for many. As a result,
leaders were unable to attend the conference portion of the event,
which meant no socialization of what is actually happening with their
work to the community.

Basically the leadership was there to plan, facilitate, and listen,
but not to present. They'd also be expected at the mid-cycle to help
keep up on what's really coming down the pipe for the release vs. what
was planned (and to help work on their own efforts for those with time
left to do actual development).

With the new system, the leadership will be at the PTG, and have dev-centric
conversations related to planning all week, and probably be just as busy
as they were at the summit and mid-cycle.

But with that work done at the PTG, a project leader can attend the Forum
and conference and actually participate fully in both. They can talk about
the work the team is doing, they can showcase their company's offerings
(let's keep the lights on please!) and they can spend time in the Forum
on the things that they're needed for there (which should be a fraction
of what they did at the dev summit).

For operators, unless you're sponsoring work, you can ignore the PTG just
like you ignored the mid-cycle. You can come to the forum and expect
to see the most influential developers there, just like you would have
seen them at the summit. But they will have a lot less to do that isn't
listening to you or telling you what's happening in their projects. I've
specifically heard the tales of developers, cornered in summit sessions,
being clear that they simply don't have time to listen to the operators'
needs. We can hope that this new scheme works against that feeling.

So yeah, it's new and scary. But I got over my fear of the change, and
I think you should too. Let's see how it goes, and reserve our final
judgement until after the Forum.