Open Stack

Hi Mark.

I think this would be fantastic, particularly if it was done as a
plenary-style session, where there wasn't much conflicting with it
schedule wise, at least on a project by project basis.

This might even be a good opportunity to start soliciting reference
architectures for deployments of various types. These might make for
interesting sessions and might help to incubate the community around
system design discussions.
 -nld

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Mark Collier <mark at openstack.org> wrote:
> One idea I discussed with Thierry was to kick off each "topic" within the Design Summit every day with a roundtable to share user pain points or other areas that users might see as priorities going forward.
>
> IMHO this would be a positive step, and is something we could implement in April.
>
>
>
> On Friday, December 28, 2012 11:11am, "Narayan Desai" <narayan.desai at gmail.com> said:
>
>> I originally sent this mail to Tim Bell, on the subject of a document
>> that he (and the other members of the user committee) are preparing.
>>
>> Tim suggested widening the discussion to this mailing list, so I've
>> forwarded the message here. I'm particularly interested in others'
>> opinions about the mission of the user committee, and aspects of the
>> openstack community culture that this mission reflects.
>>  -nld
>>
>> =====================
>>
>> Hi Tim.
>>
>> Thanks for the update on the user committee.
>>
>> When Lauren (Sell) originally mentioned the user committee to me, I
>> was most excited about the addition of user advocacy into the
>> openstack community. From early on in the project (at least back to
>> Bexar when I started paying attention), openstack has primarily been a
>> developer-focused community. While this culture has been excellent for
>> encouraging contribution of code,  I think that this is a tendency
>> that needs to be moderated in order for openstack to grow to its full
>> potential.
>>
>> I have a few comments; these aren't so much comments about the
>> document that you're circulating; rather, they speak specifically to
>> the mission of the user committee, which is only discussed briefly at
>> the end.
>>
>> This mission of the user committee should (IMO) flow from a few basic questions:
>>  - How do users engage in the community?
>>  - How do we incentivize these participants to help fill the current
>> gaps that exist in the community?
>>  - How do we best integrate the perspectives of users into the design
>> process of openstack code?
>>  - How can the user committee facilitate a more productive engagement
>> between these two parts of the openstack community?
>>
>> To the first point, there is often a tone of "patches welcome" in the
>> community, that is somewhat unwelcoming to users that can't or won't
>> develop code. This suggests that engagement solely on the development
>> terms is probably not a sustainable solution for the heterogenous
>> community that is developing around openstack. I think that it is
>> important to give these folks (ones that build systems, not so much
>> software) a role that they can identify with as a contributor to the
>> project.
>>
>> I think that there are a large range of gaps between the coding and
>> deployments today. Openstack supports a wide enough range of functions
>> (and IMO it is necessary, not incidental complexity) that it is
>> difficult to boil down to simple configurations. I think this poses a
>> serious difficulty for both documentation and testing. These issues
>> have been discussed at length, but make me wonder if a different
>> structure would address these gaps as well as the social split as
>> well.
>>
>> As I've written this, I'm realizing that the one thing that doesn't
>> sit well with me about the current structure you're proposing for the
>> user committee seems to institutionalize the current split between
>> developers and users, where I think that the committee should be
>> trying to figure out ways to blur the divisions between the groups.
>>
>> I'd suggest adding in an explicit mission for the group at the top of
>> the document, in addition to the mandate. I think that might set the
>> tone for the rest of the document in a productive way. Considering my
>> lack of standing on the committee, I think that it might be
>> presumptive for me to suggest its mission, but I think that the four
>> questions above capture many of the things that I think are important.
>>
>> I'm happy to help in any way you'd like. let me know if you'd like
>> additional comments, or participation in the documents in some
>> fashion.
>>
>> Happy holidays.
>>  -nld
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Foundation mailing list
>> Foundation at lists.openstack.org
>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
>>
>
>