Open Stack

Excerpts from Ben Swartzlander's message of 2017-03-09 11:23:31 -0500:
> I might be the only one who has negative feelings about the PTG/Forum 
> split, but I suspect the foundation is suppressing negative feedback 
> from myself and other developers so I'll express my feelings here. If 
> there's anyone else who feels like me please reply, otherwise I'll 
> assume I'm just an outlier.
> 
> The new structure is asking developers to travel 4 times a year 
> (minimum) and makes it impossible to participate in 2 or more vertical 
> projects.
> 
> I know that most of the people working on Manila have pretty limited 
> travel budgets, and meeting 4 times a year basically guarantees that a 
> good number of people will be remote at any given meeting. From my 
> perspective if I'm going to be meeting with people on the phone I'd 
> rather be on the phone myself and have everyone on equal footing.
> 
> I also normally try to participate in Cinder as well as Manila and the 
> new PTG structures makes that impossible. I decided to try to be 
> positive and to wait until after the PTG to make up my mind but having 
> attended in Atlanta it was exactly as bad as I expected in terms of my 
> ability to participate in Cinder.
> 
> I will be in Boston to try to develop a firsthand opinion of the new 
> Forum format but as of now I'm pretty unhappy with the proposal. For 
> Manila I'm proposing that the community either meets at PTG and skips 
> conferences or meetings at conferences and skips PTGs going forward. I'm 
> not going to ask everyone to travel 4 times a year.
> 

If we reframe this as "how can I get the most out of this new situation"
instead of "why I don't like it" then I think you might find things to
like, and you might even find that despite the problems, it has a net
positive effect.

For instance, you are upset that you have to travel 4 times a year. But do
you need _every_ developer at the Forum to hear from operators and users?

Wouldn't you rather relieve those developers of that burden? A few of
you will have to go to the Forum, but in so doing, you should be able
to focus on the important aspect of it: USERS. If two Manila devs go to
the Forum, you can literally ignore each other the entire time and get
a massive amount of value. There's no more pressure pulling you apart in
10 directions like there was at the Design Summit.

Combine that with the lower cost and subsidized travel support program
for the PTG, and you should end up with a more complete gathering of
developers at PTG, and a better interface with users and operators. That
is the theory, and I think it's worth trying to fit one's approach into
that, rather than try to keep doing things the old way and expecting
this new system to work.