[openstack-dev] [all] Dublin PTG format

Flavio Percoco flavio at redhat.com
Tue Nov 28 09:03:25 UTC 2017


On 27/11/17 11:58 +0100, Thierry Carrez wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>
>We are in the final step in the process of signing the contract with the
>PTG venue. We should be able to announce the location this week !
>
>So it's time to start preparing. We'll have 5 days, like in Denver. One
>thing we'd like to change for this round is to give a bit more
>flexibility in the topics being discussed, especially in the first two days.
>
>In Denver, we selected a number of general "themes" and gave them all a
>room for 2 days on Monday-Tuesday. Then all the "teams" that wanted a
>project team meeting could get a room for 2 or 3 days on
>Wednesday-Friday. That resulted in a bit of flux during the first two
>days, with a lot of empty rooms as most of the themes did not really
>need 2 days, and a lot of conflicts were present.
>
>For Dublin, the idea would be to still predetermine topics (themes and
>teams) and assign them rooms in advance. But we would be able to assign
>smaller amounts of time (per half-day) based on the expressed needs.
>Beyond those pre-assigned themes/teams we'd add flexibility for other
>groups to book the remaining available rooms in 90-min slots on-demand.
>A bit like how we did reservable rooms in the past, but more integrated
>with the rest of the event. It would all be driven by the PTGbot, which
>would show which topic is being discussed in which room, in addition to
>the current discussion subject within each topic.
>
>We have two options in how we do the split for predetermined topics. We
>used to split the week between Mon-Tue (themes) and Wed-Fri (teams). The
>general idea there was to allow some people only interested in a team
>meeting to only attend the second part of the week. However most people
>attend all 5 days, and during event feedback some people suggested that
>"themes" should be in the mornings and "teams" in the afternoons (and
>all Friday).

If most of the people attend the full week, then I would argue that the format
we used in Denver is the one that will bring more people together, People
interested in attending the full PTG and those interested only in team
discussions will participate.

If we change the format, there's a risk that we'll exclude folks only interested
in team specific rooms as it'll likely increase their travel expense and travel
time.

If we were to adopt this new format, we could work on making sure that team
discussions happen in consecutive days to avoid teams like Sahara to have
sessions on Monday afternoon and then Thursday afternoon. However, I doubt this
will work well for everyone interested only in team discussions.

>What would be your preference ? The Mon-Tue/Wed-Fri split means less
>room changes, which make it easier on the events team. So all else being
>equal we'd rather keep it the way it is, but I'm open to changing it if
>attendees think it's a good idea.

Others have raised concerns about being able to properly keep the momentum of
the day going if we adopt the new format. I have to admit that I'm also
concerned about this. Switching context every half day may not be ideal.

>If you have any other suggestion (that we could implement in the 3
>months we have between now and the event) please let me know :)

My suggestion is to keep it as-is. This is our 3rd PTG and the first one outside
the U.S. I would prefer us to gather some extra data and feedback before we do
any drastic change to the format of the event.

Flavio

--
@flaper87
Flavio Percoco
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