Open Stack

Doug Hellmann wrote:
> Excerpts from Tim Bell's message of 2018-03-20 19:48:31 +0000:
>>
>> Would we still need the same style of summit forum if we have the
>> OpenStack Community Working Gathering? One thing I have found with
>> the forum running all week throughout the summit is that it tends
>> to draw audience away from other talks so maybe we could reduce the
>> forum to only a subset of the summit time?
> 
> I support the idea of having all contributors attend the contributor
> event (and rebranding it to reflect that change in emphasis), but
> it's not quite clear how the result would be different from the
> Forum. Is it just the scheduling? (Having input earlier in the cycle
> would be convenient, for sure.)
> 
> Thierry's comment about "work sessions" earlier in the thread seems
> key.

Right, I think the key difference between the PTG and Forum is that one
is a work event for engaged contributors that are part of a group
spending time on making OpenStack better, while the other is a venue for
engaging with everyone in our community.

The PTG format is really organized around work groups (whatever their
focus is), enabling them to set their short-term goals, assign work
items and bootstrap the work. The fact that all those work groups are
co-located make it easy to participate in multiple groups, or invite
other people to join the discussion where it touches their area of
expertise, but it's still mostly a venue for our
geographically-distributed workgroups to get together in person and get
work done. That's why the agenda is so flexible at the PTG, to maximize
the productivity of attendees, even if that can confuse people who can't
relate to any specific work group.

The Forum format, on the other hand, is organized around specific
discussion topics where you want to maximize feedback and input. Forum
sessions are not attached to a specific workgroup or team, they are
defined by their topic. They are well-advertised on the event schedule,
and happen at a precise time. It takes advantage of the thousands of
attendees being present to get the most relevant feedback possible. It
allows to engage beyond the work groups, to people who can't spend much
time getting more engaged and contribute back.

The Ops meetup under its current format is mostly work sessions, and
those would fit pretty well in the PTG event format. Ideally I would
limit the feedback-gathering sessions there and use the Forum (and
regional events like OpenStack days) to collect it. That sounds like a
better way to reach out to "all users" and take into account their
feedback and needs...

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)