Open Stack

Hi Tom,

I think this is a great problem to have. Difficult to solve, but it shows
how popular / important these meetups are.

I'm definitely in favor of a "no booths" type meetup. I feel if a company
wants to sponsor, they're doing it out of good will and any recognition
would come from that.

I'd love to keep the meetups as inclusive as possible. I found the
Philadelphia meetup to be extremely valuable networking-wise (as well as
extremely valuable in general). A lot of people I talked to may not have
attended if there was some kind of bar placed on entry.

I think the current schedule format is still working: open discussions
bring in a lot of feedback and tips, working groups continue to shape and
produce actions. Open discussions may become unwieldy as attendance grows,
but maybe having two tracks would solve that.

Do you have a good indication that the number of attendees will continue to
grow? Maybe it has hit (or will soon hit) a steady level?

I wouldn't be opposed to having a paid registration for the meetup. Could
the amount be polled if paid registration is considered?

Thanks, Tom. I don't envy your position, but I do very much appreciate the
work that goes into planning this. :)

Joe

On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 10:33 PM, Tom Fifield <tom at openstack.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Right now, behind-the-scenes, we're working on getting a venue for next
> ops mid-cycle. It's taking a little longer than normal, but rest assured
> it is happening.
>
> Why is it so difficult? As you may have noticed, we're reaching the size
> of event where both physically and financially, only the largest
> organisations can host us.
>
> We thought we might get away with organising this one old-school with a
> single host and sponsor. Then, for the next, start a brainstorming
> discussion with you about how we scale these events into the future -
> since once we get up and beyond a few hundred people, we're looking at
> having to hire a venue as well as make some changes to the format of the
> event.
>
> However, it seems that even this might be too late. We already had a
> company that proposed to host the meetup at a west coast US hotel
> instead of their place, and wanted to scope out other companies to
> sponsor food.
>
> This would be a change in the model, so let's commence the discussion of
> how we want to scale this event :)
>
> So far I've heard things like:
> * "my $CORPORATE_BENEFACTOR would be fine to share sponsorship with others"
> * "I really don't want to get to the point where we want booths at the
> ops meetup"
>
> Which are promising! It seems like we have a shared understanding of
> what to take this forward with.
>
> So, as the ops meetup grows - what would it look like for you?
>
> How do you think we can manage the venue selection and financial side of
> things? What about the session layout and the scheduling with the
> growing numbers of attendees?
>
> Current data can be found at
> https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Operations/Meetups#Venue_Selection .
>
> I would also be interested in your thoughts about how these events have
> only been in a limited geographical area so far, and how we can address
> that issue.
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Tom
>
>
>
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