On 3/7/2018 6:12 AM, Chris Dent wrote:
# Talking about the PTG at the PTG
At the [board
meeting](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/foundation/2018-March/002570.html),
the future of the PTG was a big topic. As currently constituted it
presents some challenges:
* It is difficult for some people to attend because of visa and other
travel related issues.
* It is expensive to run and not everyone is convinced of the return
on investment.
* Some people don't like it (they either miss the old way of doing the
design summit, or midcycles, or $OTHER).
* Plenty of other reasons that I'm probably not aware of.
All of this is true of the summit too isn't it?
When talking about the PTG, I always hear someone say essentially
something like, "you know, things would be better if we did <now
describe exactly what the old design summit format was>". It's funny how
we seem to only remember the last 6 months of anything.
This same topic was reviewed at [yesterday's office
hours](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-03-06.log.html#t2018-03-06T09:19:32).
For now, the next 2018 PTG is going to happen (destination unknown) but
plans for 2019 are still being discussed.
If you have opinions about the PTG, there will be an opportunity to
express them in a forthcoming survey. Beyond that, however, it is
important [that management at contributing
companies](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-03-06.log.html#t2018-03-06T22:29:24)
hear from more people (notably their employees) than the foundation
about the value of the PTG.
My own position is that of the three different styles of in-person
events for technical contributors to OpenStack that I've experienced
(design summit, mid-cycles, PTG), the PTG is the best yet. It minimizes
distractions from other obligations (customer meetings, presentations,
marketing requirements) while maximizing cross-project interaction.
Agree.
One idea, discussed
[yesterday](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-03-06.log.html#t2018-03-06T22:02:24)
and [earlier
today](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-03-07.log.html#t2018-03-07T05:07:20)
was to have the PTG be open to technical participants of any sort, not
just so-called "OpenStack developers". Make it more of a place for
people who hack on and with OpenStack to hack and talk. Leave the
summit (without a forum) for presentations, marketing, pre-sales, etc.
I don't understand why some people/organizations/groups think that they
shouldn't attend the PTG - maybe it's something in the 'who should
attend' docs on the website? But I hear time and again that operators
think they shouldn't attend the PTG, but we know a few do and they are
extremely valuable in the developer discussions for their perspective on
how they, and other operators, run their clouds and what they want/need
to see happen on the dev side. The silo effect between dev and ops
communities is very weird and counter-productive IMO. And the Forum
doesn't solve that problem really because not everyone can get funding
to travel to the summit (Sydney, hello).
Case in point: the public cloud WG session held at the PTG on Monday
morning where we went through the spreadsheet of missing features; I
think I was the only full time core project developer in the room which
was otherwise operators (CERN, OVH, City Network and Vexxhost were
there) and it was much more productive actually having us sitting
together going through the list and checking things off which had either
been completed already, or were bugs instead of features, or that I
could just say, "this depends on that and Jane Doe is working on it, so
follow up with her" or "this is a known thing, it's been discussed, but
it needs a driver (project manager) - so that's your next step". That
wouldn't have been possible if the public cloud WG operators weren't
attending the PTG.
An issue raised with conflating the PTG and the Forum is that it would
remove the
[inward/outward
focus](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-03-07.log.html#t2018-03-07T08:20:17)
concept that is supposed to distinguish the two events.
I guess it depends on how we define "we" but I've always assumed that
both events were for outward focus and that for any inward focussing
effort we ought to be able use asynchronous tools more.
I don't get the inward/outward thing. First two days of the old design
summit (ops summit?) format was all cross-project stuff (docs, upgrades,
testing, ops feedback, etc). That's the same as what happens at the PTG
now too. The last three days of the old design summit (and now PTG) are
vertical project discussion for the most part, but Thursday has also
become a de-facto cross-project day for a lot of teams (nova/cinder,
nova/neutron, nova/ironic all happened on Thursday). I'm not sure what
is happening at the Forum events that is so wildly different, or more
productive, than what we can do at the PTG - and arguably do it better
at the PTG because of fewer distractions to be giving talks, talking to
customers, and having time-boxed 40 minute slots.
* Rather than having Long Term Support, which implies too much, a
better thing to do is enable [extended
maintenance](https://review.openstack.org/#/c/548916/) for those
parties who want to do it.
Good lord I'm already regretting even thinking it would be a good idea
(or fun) to just throw something up as a resolution based on previous
discussions about all of this. Tony, save me.
--
Thanks,
Matt
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