Open Stack

On 03/09/2017 05:23 PM, Ben Swartzlander wrote:
> 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.

Mmmm, yes and no. I do feel that the PTG was a huge success for the Bare metal 
team. I also feel that this split, with all its problems, is still a step forward.

However, I also find some points you raise to be very valid.

>
> 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.

As it was already mentioned in this thread, mixing in-person and remove 
attendees is hardly a receipt for success, so yeah.

My initial understanding of the split was that we now send developers to the 
PTGs, and mostly PMs with one-two representatives (co-located with the event) to 
the forum. This seems to contradict the foundation vision, but I still expect it 
to happen according to how I see it :)

In addition to very valid budget concerns, there are also personal ones. 
Traveling 4 times a year is hard. Traveling overseas 4 times a year is even 
harder. Being away from your family a whole week 4 times a year (and then 
recover for few more days) may not be acceptable for some. Explaining US border 
control why you go to the same conference every 3 month may become challenging 
too :)

I don't see any easy solution, except for lowering the expectations about 
developers on the Forum.

>
> 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.

This is even a bigger issue. We needed to have numerous discussions between us 
in ironic and nova/neutron. The only options we had were:

1. To use Mon or Tue. Apparently, this is not what these days were meant for. 
Also many developers were still out these days, especially on Monday.

2. To sacrifice both teams time on Wed-Fri.

I'd like to suggest a less straightforward split, that will insert a 
cross-project day *between* the two team days. Roughly:

Mon - important general working groups (API WG, release management).
Tue - dedicated team day
Wed - cross-project discussions and more specific working groups.
Thu - dedicated team day
Fri - hackathon/unconference.

>
> 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.

Me too, with my personal preference towards the PTG and several virtual meetups.

Actually, I have only one strong feeling about the Forum. I don't want to go 
there, if it involves more than 3 hours of flight time.

>
> -Ben Swartzlander
> Manila PTL
>
>
<snip>
>>
>
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