OpenStack Summit - It’s all about the Developers

Posted on 3 mins read

This one has been sitting in the drafts for a while.

What pushed me to publish and finish this post was an article posted by Brian Gracely,
Will Paris be the last OpenStack Summit?

The Openstack Summit is actually two separate tracks – one for users, and a second for developers. It is just by “chance” (not really) that they are held at the same location – at the same time – because they are catered for two very different audiences.

This is very apparent – even in the logo for the summits.

openstack-cloud-summit

It is even confusing sometimes in regards to what the name of the summit is? Will this be the Juno summit (if you ask an Operator/User – yes it will) or is it the Kilo summit (Developers with give you a thumbs up here).

How the event works?

5 days. the first 3 are the Main conference, and the last 4 is the Design Summit.

schedule

And of course from the mouth of babes..

The Design Summit sessions are collaborative working sessions where the community of OpenStack developers come together twice annually to discuss the requirements for the next software release and connect with other community members. It is not a classic track with speakers and presentations. (The Design Summit is not the right place to get started or learn the basics of OpenStack.)

Steve Ballmer – you remember him? He loved his developers…

Developers, Developers, Developers

The OpenStack Foundation treats the OpenStack Developers – differently. They are the people who create the product. Therefore they receive special treatment.

And by special treatment I mean:

  • The Design Summit is called a Summit, the rest of it is called the Main Conference
    (see above)

  • A completely different part of the conference only for developers – this includes:

    • Separate rooms
    • Separate schedule
    • Separate website for schedule
    • Separate submission process and voting for Design sessions

  • Constant refreshments and treats (M&M’s and Snicker bars galore, drinks, fruit)

  • Brainstorming area outside the discussion rooms

  • Multiple power outlets in every single room and everywhere

  • Every single ATC (Active Technical Contributor) receives a free pass to the summit.

    Individual Members who committed a change to a repository under any of the official OpenStack programs (as defined above) over the last two 6-month release cycles are automatically considered ATC.

Is this unfair – perhaps – but then again – these are the people who are creating the product – so it is in the Foundation’s best interest to keep them engaged, comfortable, happy and available to continue to contribute to the community and the products.

Back to Brian Gracely’s post. Because of the developers there will always be a OpenStack summit. Will it be the same as the past and upcoming summit – I do not know. But it is in the best interest of the Foundation to have the people developing the products, developing the projects to come together, talk, schmooze and also get the details hacked out of what will happen in the upcoming 6 months and the future directions of the product.

So in response to Brian – I still think that the Foundation will hold a summit – and it will always be its central event. The same way that all the major vendors have their own big Conference (Cisco Live, Redhat Summit, VMworld, etc.) every single year, but on the other hand they will make sure they have booths at all the other conferences as well (as a sponsor) it will be the same for OpenStack.

I think that the summit will continue to be here next year in 2015 and beyond.