Dear Pierre and Ops Community,

My name is Edgar Magana and I am of the three members of the User Committee (UC) [1]. One of the goals that we have in mind is to formalize the role and recognition of operators within the OpenStack community, as Lauren has briefly mentioned in her email. We have an initial draft of the formal proposal that we are going to make it available to everybody no later that in a couple of days from today. I wanted to make sure that you and the ops community are aware of User Committee and the work that we are doing. Please, consider to attend our IRC meetings [2].

The User Committee references:
https://www.openstack.org/foundation/user-committee/
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/UserCommittee

We are taking into account your feedback and please provide your input as soon as we distribute the recognition proposal via the mailing lists.

Thank you so much,

Edgar Magana,
Cloud Operations Architect
Workday, Inc.





On 3/1/16, 12:36 PM, "Lauren Sell" <lauren@openstack.org> wrote:

>Hi Pierre,
>
>We’ve been talking about a way to recognize operators at the Summit and in the community for quite a while. It is of course more difficult to define the criteria for a contributing operator than someone who contributes code or documentation, but it’s certainly worth figuring out, even if we don’t land on the exact right formula the first time. And it’s not too late for qualifying operators to get some kind of signifier on their badges for the Austin Summit.
>
>Just as the Technical Committee decides the criteria and maintains the list of ATCs, it would be most appropriate for the User Committee to define the criteria and administer the program for active operators and contributors under their working group structure. Tom has been working with the User Committee to start defining that criteria, and I believe there were some discussions about it at the Ops Mid-Cycle a few weeks ago. A representative from the User Committee should be circulating an email with next steps on the operator’s mailing list any day now. We have not done a great job communicating that process or our intentions to date, and I take responsibility for that.
>
>The idea is to define the criteria and make the badge signifier happen in Austin, and then determine if/how we can offer discounted registration for qualifying operators in Barcelona. That decision will be based on the number of operators that meet that criteria and whether we can absorb those costs, as well as the discussions happening in parallel about evolving the design summit (which may impact free ATC registration at the main event). In the meantime, we continue to offer users who attend the Ops Mid-Cycles free codes to attend the next Summit. Were you able to make the first European Ops Mid-Cycle event in Manchester a few weeks ago? We also regularly extend passes to user group leaders and ambassadors. And of course speakers also receive a free code, and user stories and experiences have a better chance of being accepted there.
>
>Overall, we’ve worked hard to keep the OpenStack Summit ticket prices affordable and competitive by subsidizing our cost per attendee with sponsorships and running the Summits without a profit. The conference portion is four days including training and workshops starting at $600 USD (+discounts for students / government). That is on the low end of pricing compared to other industry and open source community events, for example OSCON badges range from $1,395 to $3,495 and LinuxCon is $800 for early tickets. We pack a lot into one week, including meals and workshops (and even more hands-on training coming in Austin) but have subsidized the costs to make it as accessible as possible and help grow the community.
>
>I’m a bit concerned with your perception that applying for travel support has a negative connotation or feels like begging. The program was designed to sponsor and recognize contributors of all kinds in the community, and we’ve doubled our investment in 2016. Even if we cannot cover full travel costs for everyone who applies, we have been able to offer free registration for most qualifying applicants.
>
>Do you think the plan for ops recognition to be administered by the User Committee would be a positive step?
>
>Best,
>Lauren
>
>
>> On Feb 29, 2016, at 11:57 AM, Marton Kiss <marton.kiss@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Pierre,
>>
>> I can agree with you that ops people would receive a similar recognition to ATC. I think the proper forum is the operators community, they need to lobby as a group at the Foundation, or propose a program to make it happen. We love OpenStack too, but if you're doing it for a while, you know that it have all the processes and politics inside to move forward different important cases, and you can believe me everyone is really committed here.
>>
>> I'm not sure this can happen for Austin due to short timeframe, but if you help to reach out the key influencers in the operators community, and support them writing the program, this can be a reality for Barcelona Summit.
>>
>> Brgds,
>>   Marton Kiss
>>   OpenStack Ambassador
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 11:03 AM Christian Berendt <christian@berendt.io> wrote:
>> Hello Pierre.
>>
>> On 02/18/2016 06:32 PM, Pierre Freund wrote:
>> > "We are OpenStack", but you know what, I don't really feel to be part of
>> > this "We". And I think I'm not the only ops folks feeling this.
>>
>> I think a lot of people feel like you.
>>
>> > At the last summit, I went to the ambassador's session to speak about
>> > this. My point was that people spending time for the community should
>> > have an easier access to the summit by giving them "Active Community
>> > Contributors" Pass. The only answer I had was "If you can't afford the
>> > ticket, use the travel program".
>>
>> The Osops project should make it easier for ops to receive a summit ticket.
>>
>> https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Osops
>>
>> > Then, I went to the "feedback session" of the summit, and said that I
>> > was really involved in OpenStack, and I deserved an "Active Ops
>> > Contributor" badge. Everybody agreed. The ATC program is B.R.O.K.E.N.
>>
>> Confirmed.
>>
>> > My only solution? Make a bullshit commit, correct something in the docs,
>> > correct a typo in a comment… not very interesting. Here is one of my
>> > $1200 single character commit: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/20076/ .
>> > And this makes me an "Active Contributor" for two summits??
>>
>> Every commit is important, documentation commits are important. A commit
>> has not to be interessting. Please do not grade down simple commits.
>> Every single commit improves the overall quality of OpenStack.
>>
>> > And what about people helping local user groups?
>>
>> They should be honrored and supported. It is a shame that the foundation
>> has more than 20 million US Dollars for 2016 and a single user group
>> (independent of there size) only receives 500 US Dollars / year to
>> support celebration activities. Ambassadors spend a lot of time, they
>> have to travel, the receive nothing. Ambassadors are not hired by the
>> foundation, we are even not allowed to use official @openstack.org mail
>> addresses. User group organizers are not supported, ...
>>
>> Christian.
>>
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