[openstack-community] User Groups: Balancing new and experienced users
With the massive growth of OpenStack, so too have our user groups grown. Not just in number, or attendance, but also in their skill at delivering material at varying levels of complexity.
With this, I felt it was high time we started a discussion on how best to continue to support those attendees just beginning their OpenStack journey while satisfying the needs of the burgeoning number of more advanced users.
In talking with the user group leaders around the world, I've heard many different techniques. From running simultaneous parallel topic streams, alternative monthly sessions, or having a 'n00b' hour prior to the start of the main event.
I'm keen to hear your ideas. What do you do to manage the different levels of achievement of those in your community? Do you have content? What would you like to see?
Looking forward to your thoughts,
Tom
On 09/01/2013 08:01 PM, Tom Fifield wrote:
With the massive growth of OpenStack, so too have our user groups grown. Not just in number, or attendance, but also in their skill at delivering material at varying levels of complexity.
With this, I felt it was high time we started a discussion on how best to continue to support those attendees just beginning their OpenStack journey while satisfying the needs of the burgeoning number of more advanced users.
In talking with the user group leaders around the world, I've heard many different techniques. From running simultaneous parallel topic streams, alternative monthly sessions, or having a 'n00b' hour prior to the start of the main event.
One problem with splitting the streams is that the advanced folks forget what it's like to be a beginner, and the gap widens. But, of course, you also don't want to bore people with stuff they mastered ages ago. It's a problem with many user group communities.
Something I've found very effective in the past is hands on "help the newbie" sessions, where the advanced people are able to help beginners through common tasks. This has many benefits, including getting more people involved in the mentoring process. Of course, not everyone is going to be interested/willing to do that, but having a chance to show off your chops is motivation enough for a lot of people.
I'm keen to hear your ideas. What do you do to manage the different levels of achievement of those in your community? Do you have content? What would you like to see?
One thing that I think a lot of new users will find helpful is "short story" format tutorials and videos, covering one task such as adding a compute node, adding ssh keys, or whatever, which the more advanced users take for granted. There is, of course, a lot of such content scattered around, but having it consolidated and organized by topic, as well as in some kind of logical progression, would be very helpful to someone getting started who doesn't really know what they're looking for.
Having scripts (slide decks, notes, examples, etc) that someone can use to present to a beginning user group is also a great way to organize thoughts, while getting content out there that can help bootstrap new groups. Something like OpenStack Cookbook (ISBN:1849517320) may be a good place to start with ideas for that kind of content.
+1
On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Rich Bowen rbowen@redhat.com wrote:
On 09/01/2013 08:01 PM, Tom Fifield wrote:
With the massive growth of OpenStack, so too have our user groups grown. Not just in number, or attendance, but also in their skill at delivering material at varying levels of complexity.
With this, I felt it was high time we started a discussion on how best to continue to support those attendees just beginning their OpenStack journey while satisfying the needs of the burgeoning number of more advanced users.
In talking with the user group leaders around the world, I've heard many different techniques. From running simultaneous parallel topic streams, alternative monthly sessions, or having a 'n00b' hour prior to the start of the main event.
One problem with splitting the streams is that the advanced folks forget what it's like to be a beginner, and the gap widens. But, of course, you also don't want to bore people with stuff they mastered ages ago. It's a problem with many user group communities.
Something I've found very effective in the past is hands on "help the newbie" sessions, where the advanced people are able to help beginners through common tasks. This has many benefits, including getting more people involved in the mentoring process. Of course, not everyone is going to be interested/willing to do that, but having a chance to show off your chops is motivation enough for a lot of people.
I'm keen to hear your ideas. What do you do to manage the different levels of achievement of those in your community? Do you have content? What would you like to see?
One thing that I think a lot of new users will find helpful is "short story" format tutorials and videos, covering one task such as adding a compute node, adding ssh keys, or whatever, which the more advanced users take for granted. There is, of course, a lot of such content scattered around, but having it consolidated and organized by topic, as well as in some kind of logical progression, would be very helpful to someone getting started who doesn't really know what they're looking for.
Having scripts (slide decks, notes, examples, etc) that someone can use to present to a beginning user group is also a great way to organize thoughts, while getting content out there that can help bootstrap new groups. Something like OpenStack Cookbook (ISBN:1849517320) may be a good place to start with ideas for that kind of content.
-- Rich Bowen OpenStack Community Liaison http://openstack.redhat.com/
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On Sep 3, 2013, at 7:50 AM, Rich Bowen wrote:
On 09/01/2013 08:01 PM, Tom Fifield wrote: With the massive growth of OpenStack, so too have our user groups grown. Not just in number, or attendance, but also in their skill at delivering material at varying levels of complexity.
With this, I felt it was high time we started a discussion on how best to continue to support those attendees just beginning their OpenStack journey while satisfying the needs of the burgeoning number of more advanced users.
In talking with the user group leaders around the world, I've heard many different techniques. From running simultaneous parallel topic streams, alternative monthly sessions, or having a 'n00b' hour prior to the start of the main event.
One problem with splitting the streams is that the advanced folks forget what it's like to be a beginner, and the gap widens. But, of course, you also don't want to bore people with stuff they mastered ages ago. It's a problem with many user group communities.
Something I've found very effective in the past is hands on "help the newbie" sessions, where the advanced people are able to help beginners through common tasks. This has many benefits, including getting more people involved in the mentoring process. Of course, not everyone is going to be interested/willing to do that, but having a chance to show off your chops is motivation enough for a lot of people.
This is one of the thorniest problems when driving new technology adoption. The benefit of having new users work with the experts/mentors is two-fold.
1. Naturally the new users get the benefit of learning from someone more experienced in OpenStack.
2. The experts get the benefit of seeing OpenStack through the eyes of a new user. One of the most crucial aspects of this is that the expert feeds that experience of seeing OpenStack for this first time back into the community.
For example, instead of the expert giving the new user a link to some document, have them initially search for what it is they want to do with OpenStack. If they can't find the appropriate material in a minute or two then something isn't optimal with respect to how the information is organized. Feed this back to the community.
Another example, once the appropriate document is found, gently guide the new user through it (in a hands-off way) and note where they get tripped up. Report such places to https://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack-manuals
Regards, Everett
On Sep 1, 2013, at 7:01 PM, Tom Fifield wrote:
With the massive growth of OpenStack, so too have our user groups grown. Not just in number, or attendance, but also in their skill at delivering material at varying levels of complexity.
With this, I felt it was high time we started a discussion on how best to continue to support those attendees just beginning their OpenStack journey while satisfying the needs of the burgeoning number of more advanced users.
In talking with the user group leaders around the world, I've heard many different techniques. From running simultaneous parallel topic streams, alternative monthly sessions, or having a 'n00b' hour prior to the start of the main event.
I'm keen to hear your ideas. What do you do to manage the different levels of achievement of those in your community? Do you have content? What would you like to see?
One strategy I've used for dealing with this is a whiteboard placed at the entrance to the meetup. Somewhere that can't be missed.
The whiteboard is titled "Your Level of OpenStack Expertise" there are 3 columns: "Beginner", "Intermediate", "Expert". Everyone adds a mark to a column when they enter.
Acting on that information is a bit more difficult but it does let the speakers know how to target their presentation. If you see you have a lot of n00bs coming in meetup after meetup then maybe it's time for a alternate monthly sessions or n00b hour or whatever.
Of course you can change the whiteboard to whatever suits your meetup. Less columns, different title, ask one question (take a poll), etc. You get the idea.
Regards, Everett
Hi guys
I suggest to launch a Startup resource website with more interesting graphical and simpler contents, may be in Comic style / flash games, which introduce what the OpenStack is and provide startups a standard & easy-understood steps to build a simple OpenStack private cloud. This resource page should also provide in different languages, community leader or coming ambassadors should able to coordinate the languages translation.
Secondly, we should focus more examples of running applications on OpenStack Private/Public Cloud, covering more business industries, eg: digital entertainment, sales, education, e-marketing, social media, Apps games, and so on. It is because most of them are carved know to how OpenStack private cloud can be used/applied in their businesses/industries, or improve their running applications or services.
I have been questioning by some IT guys from different industries, which they have same questions about how OpenStack private cloud can improve their existing server infrastructure and running applications. Even they have a lot of servers,
* They do not know how to get start,
* contents is not centralized and not user-friendly enough to learn or take reference,
* There is no official-like support in their region
I have a closed client whom their business is SME, doing digital entertainment and 3D educational games for environment protection. I took almost 2 years to persuade them to change their existing server infrastructure into OpenStack private cloud because they do not how to begin their OpenStack journey. Obviously OpenStack is very useful and cost-effective for SMEs. However, there is lack of local support.
Finally we should an internal training material and resources for community leaders of user groups to conduct standard introduction, familiarization session or training workshops to their region.
Regards,
Bruce Lok
Coordinator of HKOSUG
-----Original Message----- From: Tom Fifield [mailto:tom@openstack.org] Sent: Monday, 02 September, 2013 08:01 To: community@lists.openstack.org Subject: [openstack-community] User Groups: Balancing new and experienced users
With the massive growth of OpenStack, so too have our user groups grown.
Not just in number, or attendance, but also in their skill at delivering material at varying levels of complexity.
With this, I felt it was high time we started a discussion on how best to continue to support those attendees just beginning their OpenStack journey while satisfying the needs of the burgeoning number of more advanced users.
In talking with the user group leaders around the world, I've heard many different techniques. From running simultaneous parallel topic streams, alternative monthly sessions, or having a 'n00b' hour prior to the start of the main event.
I'm keen to hear your ideas. What do you do to manage the different levels of achievement of those in your community? Do you have content?
What would you like to see?
Looking forward to your thoughts,
Tom
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participants (5)
-
Bruce Lok
-
Everett Toews
-
Rich Bowen
-
Surit Aryal
-
Tom Fifield