Open Stack

On Mon, Sep 5, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Blair Bethwaite
<blair.bethwaite at monash.edu> wrote:
> 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).

I'm a huge fan of the way we use IRC in the OpenStack community, but
have also recognized getting up and running with a persistent IRC
connection can pose a significant barrier to many very smart and
technically sharp humans.  To that end I wrote a spec to provide a
hosted, persistent IRC web-client [1].  Lately however the effort has
been stalled due to my lack of experience with JS; if we can find
someone who can plumb in the auth piece, we could be up and running
with this fairly quickly.

I think getting that right will be worth the effort, and could get a
whole lot more people engaged across all our various domains.

[1] https://review.openstack.org/319506

-Christopher

>
> 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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