Open Stack

Matt Riedemann wrote:
> I don't get the inward/outward thing. First two days of the old design
> summit (ops summit?) format was all cross-project stuff (docs, upgrades,
> testing, ops feedback, etc). That's the same as what happens at the PTG
> now too. The last three days of the old design summit (and now PTG) are
> vertical project discussion for the most part, but Thursday has also
> become a de-facto cross-project day for a lot of teams (nova/cinder,
> nova/neutron, nova/ironic all happened on Thursday). I'm not sure what
> is happening at the Forum events that is so wildly different, or more
> productive, than what we can do at the PTG - and arguably do it better
> at the PTG because of fewer distractions to be giving talks, talking to
> customers, and having time-boxed 40 minute slots.

The PTG has always been about taking the team discussions that happened
at the Ops Summit / Design Summit to have them in a more productive
environment.

Beyond the suboptimal productivity (due to too many distractions / other
commitments), the problem with the old Design Summit was that it
prevented team members from making the best use of the Summit event. You
would travel to a place where all our community gets together, only to
isolate yourself with your teammates trying to get stuff done. That was
silly. You should use the time there to engage *outside* of your team.
And by that I don't mean inter-team work, or participating to other
groups like SIGs or horizontal teams. I mean giving talks, presenting
the work you do (and how you do it) to newcomers, watching talks,
engaging with happy users, learning about the state of our ecosystem,
and discussing cross-community issues with a larger section of our
community (at the Forum).

The context switch between this inward work (work with your team, or
work within any transversal work group you're interested in), and this
outward work (engaging with other groups you're not a part of, listening
to newcomers) is expensive. It's hard to take the time to *listen* when
you try to get your work for the next 6 months organized and done.

Oh, and in the above paragraphs, I'm not distinguishing "devs" from
"ops". This applies to all teams, to any contributor engaged in making
OpenStack a reality. Having the Public Cloud WG team meet at the PTG was
great, and we should definitely have ANY OpenStack team wanting to meet
and get things done at future PTGs.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)