hello all,
We had a great session for the API working group in Austin, and I wanted
to give a brief recap and extend a thank you to all who attended.
There were about 20-30 people in attendance for the double session
fishbowl that took place on monday. This turnout was one of the larger
we have had for the past few summits and it was exciting to see this
level of engagement from the community. again, thank you =)
Full notes from the session can be found on the etherpad from summit[1].
The session began with a recap of the group's activities for the Mitaka
cycle. We discussed the guidelines that have been added, as well as our
success stories with regards to projects that have sought advice from
the group.
With the old business out of the way, we moved on to discuss topics that
are of importance to the group moving forward.
Promoting the guidelines
========================
The heart of the API-WG has always been the guidelines that are
produced, we had a nice discussion about how we can increase the
awareness and usage of the guidelines.
One big request that came out of this discussion is the need to cleanup
the group's guideline page to make it clearer which pages are just place
holders and which contain guidelines.
The group talked about if, and how, we can better integrate with other
working groups to help create a broader network for the guidelines and
better APIs in general. The two main groups that were identified as
possible partners are the Application Ecosystem WG and the SDK WG.
Although these groups have different focuses than just APIs, there is
certainly some room for collaboration and consensus among all the groups.
There was also a strong discussion about how the group could advocate
for more projects to use the guidelines. The main result of this talk
was the idea of an API-WG related governance tag. Having this tag would
make a nice signal to end-users about the maturity and development
status of a project's APIs. Although the details are still in flux, the
main criteria of a tag were related to projects self-electing into the
tag, and then creating a series of tests that would prove how their APIs
follow the guidelines, as well as providing proper API documentation.
This is still very much a work in progress.
Reviewing the guideline process
===============================
If the guidelines are the heart of the WG, then our review process is
the pacemaker ;)
Within the group, a discussion had started before summit about the level
of email we produce and if it is sufficient. When brought to the table
at summit, this conversation continued and was well received by the
audience.
There were several good suggestions about how we can more easily
communicate what is happening within the group, the state of guidelines
and reviews that need attention from the group.
the ultimate result of this discussion is that the API-WG will work over
the Newton cycle to create a weekly email similar to the "What's Up Doc"
emails from the doc team. These emails will include a summary of
guidelines that are in freeze, those that have been recently merged, and
a list of reviews with APIImpact as well as any other business the WG
might have.
Improving WG participation
==========================
A constant note from many groups within the OpenStack community is
participation. The API-WG is no stranger to this topic as we have
continually searched for methods of improving participation from
interested parties.
Although there were no clear solutions on this topic, there was wide
agreement that relying on the CPLs for better engagement with the WG is
a strong way forward. To this end, the WG will work to make it easier
for CPLs to bring their APIImpact reviews, and their special interest
topics, to the group. The methods for doing this will mainly center
around being more focused in our mailings, and improving our
communication with respect to guideline reviews.
Dropping the 0000UTC meeting
============================
Somewhere around the Kilo cycle, the API-WG added a second meeting time
to help our friends in the Asian and Pacific regions join the
discussion. Unfortunately, after a few cycles of this meeting, its
attendance is nearly always zero. After some discussion during the
summit, we have agreed to remove this meeting and return to a single
weekly meeting at 1600UTC on Thursdays. If the need arises in the
future, the API-WG will be more than happy to reinstate this meeting.
That about wraps up the review from our summit session, hopefully I
haven't left out too many details ;)
Thanks again to everyone who attended the session, and thanks to the
OpenStack community for another excellent summit.
regards,
mike
[1]: https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/austin-api-wg-session-plans
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