Open Stack

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On 30/05/15 03:48, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
> Hello folks,
> 
> first of all thank you to all instructors and volunteer staff and
> mentors that helped in Vancouver: this program would not be possible
> without the kind donations of your time and effort.
> 
> I'd like to collect notes and comments on what went well and what should
> be changed for the next events. I'll start (quite long):
> 
> Slides & content
> ================
> 
> - I think the rst format and common repository worked well. We miss one
> (set of) slides to illustrate the whole 2 days program. Maybe copying
> the content over from the wiki Info page[1] to the index.rst page would
> be a good thing.
> 
> - the index.rst is not formatted properly. Christian Berendt is working
> on this and may need a help from sphinx/hieroglyph gurus
> https://review.openstack.org/#/c/185946/
> 
> - the draft site[2] is great. I think that keeping the slides in /draft/
> is good enough since the status of those slides may not be always up to
> date with the authoritative source of information like governance.o.o or
> infra/manual
> 
> - with the slides in .rst format and in a git repo, I think they could
> be hooked to a translation system. I'd consider hooking up and translate
> the material in other languages. Japanese would be the most likely
> candidate, and people from China have expressed also interest.
> 
> - suggestions and commentts from the participants:
> 
>    + Maybe work through some more demos - ie, run through committing a
> change to sandbox doing it "live" from the presenter desk
>    + Point out the differences between docs and code reviews -
> environment prerequisites

I think perhaps a few more "do it [x] way in dev, for docs do [y]" would
be useful.

>    + Talk about gating checks - ie, what the automated checks are
> actually checking for.
>    + It might be worth considering recording it and making it like a
> Coursera course or a Kahn Academy course.
>    + The slideshow can improved. It should contain more graphics (ex:
> apc/atc relation), clickable links (ex: stackforge).
>    + It would be great to collect a list of bugs which are really "low
> hanging" fruits, so that they can be solved during the two days.
>    + Teach about the source code. How it's organized? Why is it so?
> After rpm/deb packaging, where do files go on the root filesystem? How
> do I run tests? How do I write my own tests? What if I need to introduce
> a new file? How are the python packages arranged? How do subprograms
> communicate to each other?

+1

>    + consider separating software developers and technical writers

I'm strongly against this. We need to keep reminding people that docs
work in the same was as dev projects, with a few quite minor differences.

> 
> One more comment led me to believe that we have not done a good job at
> communicating that the training is 2 days live + mentoring sessions
> afterwards. See below for ideas on how to fix this.
> 
> Administrative process
> ======================
> 
> - Planning attendance is hard. Of the 85+ people who originally signed
> up, about 45 showed up. I noticed that about 10 people removed
> themselves when we started sending notifications in preparation to the
> live session. I think that the barrier to sign up is too low and we can
> raise it so that only highly motivated people sign up to attend. The low
> barrier also makes it hard for people to read and understand that the
> training is 2 days live + online mentoring afterwards.
> 
>   + To set the bar higher, I think we need to find a way to scale the
> method used by Loic. He engages with every applicant immediately, as
> they sign up, and if they don't respond to his solicitations he removes
> them from the list. That's very intense and time consuming but ends up
> getting more motivated people. I think this can be scaled by having a
> larger pool of mentors that gets to solicit applicants. A form of light
> automation using Google Forms and Trello (with glue provided by
> zapier.com) may be enough? Needs experimenting.
> 
>   + To make it clear that the training is 2 days + live sessions I think
> we should have people engage with mentors and set dates for meetings
> *before* the training starts.

+1

> 
> - I think the Trello board is a good step forward: it allows staff and
> management to follow progress of each student.
> 
> 
> Format
> ======
> 
> - I'm starting to think that to days is probably too much for some
> people. The comments I have received from the survey are all extremely
> positive but a couple of written comments make me believe that trying to
> shorten the class to 1 day and 1 extra day for custom deep dives would
> probably give more value. This deserves a thread on its own.

It's a lot of content, is it too much to expect people to absorb all
that in half the time? From what I saw of questions on the second
afternoon, they need that thinking time to sort out the brain dump of
info they had on day 1. I saw a lot of 'lightbulb' moments on Sunday
that I worry wouldn't happen if it was a one day course.

> 
> 
> Venue & logistics
> =================
> 
> - Participants and staff should have their names printed to facilitate
> social interactions
> - Renting the Legos was the best idea ever. Definitely worth considering
> for the future.
> 
> Thanks again,
> stef

Stef, just wanted to add that as my first time at this training I had a
great experience. It was truly satisfying to see people go from zero to
ATC, and I certainly picked up a few newbies who then made it to my
sessions during the Summit, and hit ATC a few days later as well. Very
well organised and run :)

Lana

- -- 
Lana Brindley
Technical Writer
Rackspace Cloud Builders Australia
http://lanabrindley.com
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