Open Stack

Hi everyone,

Sorry, I was out of the office the end of last week, and am catching up on this thread today. I’ll jump in with a few comments and updates from a Summit organizer perspective.

From my perspective, the opportunity to vote on Summit sessions provides a strong community feedback mechanism so it’s not just a small group of people making decisions. It also provides a level of transparency because all submitted sessions are published and available to review, analyze, etc. (such as the keyword analysis several community members perform each Summit, or how other community organizers mine the information to recruit speakers for their own regional events). The results give track chairs a starting point (or sometimes a tie breaker when needed) and it helps them rule out sessions that have been consistently poorly reviewed.

Second, to the initial question from Richard Raseley that started the thread, we have not historically published voting results by session, but are looking into generating a report (probably a quick and dirty CSV) with the session title, track, vote average & number of votes cast to share with the community for analysis, as well as the aggregate number of votes cast of course. This is the information that has been available to track chairs in their selection tool, and I think it makes sense to publish it more broadly, especially for speakers who might be interested in feedback on their session. In the future, I would love to be able to support some kind of comment feature with the voting tool, because I think that feedback could be valuable to the track chairs and speakers.

Finally, you can read more about the track chair and voting process at this link: https://www.openstack.org/summit/tokyo-2015/selection-process/ <https://www.openstack.org/summit/tokyo-2015/selection-process/> (that’s the unique URL, but it was also published on the Summit speaking submission page and the Summit FAQ). To Steve’s point, it sounds like we need to do a better job making that information more visible. To start, we are planning to link to it from the schedule page as “How were these sessions selected?”

The Summit team is always open to feedback and iterating the processes each cycle as the community continues to grow and change. Thanks for all the comments and input!

Thanks,
Lauren


> On Aug 31, 2015, at 12:20 PM, Steve Gordon <sgordon at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jeremy Stanley" <fungi at yuggoth.org>
>> To: community at lists.openstack.org
>> 
>> On 2015-08-30 18:52:22 -0400 (-0400), Steve Gordon wrote:
>>> The assertion that "your vote doesn't count" came from emails from
>>> not one but two former track chairs in this thread, so it's
>>> certainly the case for at least some tracks.
>> 
>> If you're referring to my E-mail[1] (wherein I referred to the
>> community votes being "purely advisory") as indicating that they do
>> not count at all, then either you're mischaracterizing what I said
>> or I did a poor job of saying it. I certainly took votes on
>> abstracts under advisement, but also considered the fact that
>> they're easy to game and popularity contests are not the best way to
>> curate talks for a conference track.
> 
> I'm not mischaracterizing anyone, as Dave pointed out two separate respondents in this thread explicitly noted both that they were track chairs and that they completely ignored the public vote. I'm also not even saying that's wrong in and of itself, because I happen to also believe that a popularity contest is a terrible way to curate talks for a conference track. 
> 
>>> I myself am not actually questioning the process as it exists
>>> today, putting those comments aside at least, but rather whether
>>> the process is documented.
>> [...]
>> 
>> The process is basically:
>> 
>> 1. Use your best judgement.
>> 
>> 2. When in doubt, refer to #1.
>> 
>> We have track chairs for a reason. It's their responsibility to
>> decide what talks will end up in their tracks. Heaping rules and
>> process on them is only likely to hamper their efforts to make the
>> conference the best it can be. If you're dissatisfied with the
>> outcome, then volunteer to be a track chair next time.
> 
> I'm not even talking about documenting the process at that level of detail (though I don't think some of the tribal knowledge on this topic as common guidelines for new track chairs would hurt anyone), I'm talking about making it clear to both people submitting talks and those voting on them that:
> 
> a) Track chairs exist at all.
> 
> b) Popularity in the vote does not in and of itself ensure success.
> 
> More transparency on these two items would I believe clear up quite a bit of confusion but since you brought up volunteering perhaps we could even document who determines the track chairs... ;). Nobody seems to have issues clarifying these facts via semi-regular email threads like this one, so I'm not sure why setting these expectations up front (on the submission/voting websites and in the submission acknowledgement email) would be an issue?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Steve
> 
>> [1] http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/community/2015-August/001263.html
>> --
>> Jeremy Stanley
> 
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