Open Stack

Hi Flanders,

Great discussion. Prompted me to go remind myself of the role and/or
definition of an OS UC Working Group... I didn't find anything "formal",
but w.o.o/UserCommittee says:
=====
The user committee's role is to represent the needs of the diverse range of
OpenStack users. The user committee is advised by Working Groups, each of
whom represents different user audiences and interests.

The user committee mission is to:

Consolidate user requirements and present these to the management board and
technical committee[1].
Provide guidance for the development teams where user feedback is requested
Track OpenStack deployments and usage, helping to share user stories and
experiences
Work with the user groups worldwide to keep the OpenStack community vibrant
and informed
=====

>From the WG activity perspective I would highlight it is very
useful/important to have some direction (as well as support) coming from
the UC - I think our experience with the scientific-wg is roughly that we
have a large interest base and plenty of people who find good value in
talking to and sharing with their peers, but it is quite hard to turn that
into concrete forward momentum or to even mint well articulated goals from
within the group.

On engagement, IRC is useful for reasons already mentioned in this thread
(and we've been fortunate to have some valuable interactions thanks some
core devs having keyword watches setup on OpenStack channels), but I think
we alienate and/or make things too hard for some potential contributors.
And I don't think it makes a great watercooler discussion tool (e.g. no
offline history etc without setting up a bouncer - and that is fairly
opaque even for a CS major).

Having (myself) done a fairly woeful job of keeping pace with the dev side
of OS progression this cycle I'm also interested in exploring ways of
highlighting activities/work that may be of interest to any particular WG.
The first thing that springs to mind is tagging of blueprints and reviews,
e.g., where a dev or other community member is looking for
input/support/resolution from a specific target user group. This could be a
mechanism we as chairs utilise to surface agenda items, solicit input and
then respond on behalf of the group.

Cheers,
Blair

On 30 August 2016 at 10:36, David F Flanders <flanders at openstack.org> wrote:
> Dear Working Group Co-Chairs and User Committee Chairs,
>
> The logistical tasks of running a WG meeting is by no means trivial,
> here a quick list of things which a co-chairs of a WG do on a weekly
> basis to run a global meeting:
>
> a.) mint calendar invitation to all members (subscribe/unsubscribe
members)
> b.) call for agenda items via etherpad
> c.) update wiki with upcoming meeting and link to etherpad agenda
> d.) email user-committee mailing list on when next meeting is
> occurring along with agenda links
> e.) assure meeting channel is confirmed (irc/phone/etc)
> f.) run meeting according to good practices (irc etiquette or well
> taken notes if via voice)
> g.) post meeting follow up: circulating actions, posting meeting
> notes, taking any outstanding queries to the mailing list for
> consideration, etc.
> h.) follow up actions.
> i.) recruit new members
> j.) plan for summit meetings
> k.) etc etc.
>
> All of the above are sometimes done twice-over at different times to
> help maintain the conversation in different timezones.
>
> In addition, the groups are still not well attended by as diverse an
> audience as OpenStack represents. AsiaPac, Latin America, India and
> other massive OpenStack user groups have not yet engaged despite some
> of their massive communities.
>
> One of the recent suggestions has been to converge some of the WGs to
> help ease the burden of these logistical tasks.
>
> Other options include:
>
> * having a more systematic approach to when WG occur, i.e. agreeing
> a set pattern such s a day per fortnight which each WG happens (one
> after another).
>
> * having a shared IRC channel for all WG activity to help create
> more water-cooler conversation between chairs?
>
> * sharing of logistical duties between WG chairs, etc
>
> Options abound, though discussion much needed!
>
> Q: Is there any good practice we can draw from? I've been digging
> around my old W3C and IETF notes to see what good practice there may
> be?
>
> Discussion/replies greatly appreciated to see if there is any consensus?
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Flanders

-- 
Blair Bethwaite
Senior HPC Consultant

Monash eResearch Centre
Monash University
Room G26, 15 Innovation Walk, Clayton Campus
Clayton VIC 3800
Australia
Mobile: 0439-545-002
Office: +61 3-9903-2800
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