I'll likely end up answering stuff a few times, but that's OK.
Part of this is that I had two ideas at the same time - one to do an
open source conference, the other to call it CUDCon. Clearly it's an
evolving beast. Onward with replies ...
On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 01:46:51PM -0700, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
So my gut feelings on this:
* Having this at the *same time* as FUDCon would be less than optimal,
as we've seen in the past with having FUDCon co-lo'd with JUDCon or
Summit, or even FUDCon at the same time as other events (fosdem, etc.).
People have to choose from one or the other, and can't make the most of
their time at either event. Even FADs run on the same days as
$variousconferences wind up having people come in and out and not be
able to get anything done.
* Having it before/after puts a lot of folks in the position of having
to take off a full week from work, or else having to choose one or the
other.
So perhaps my thinking on this is a few years out of date, considering
the alignment of thinking that says, "No, duh!"
The thinking is, bring in a *new* set of people who wouldn't be at
FUDCon.
I understand that. My thinking is, that those people won't want to
come to a place where they're feeling like they're going to have
Fedora constantly being "advertised."
Don't put up a competing track, merge. All the Fedora-focused cloud
talks end up being done "within" CUDCon. Think of it, if you will, as
a tag saying, "This talk is interesting to Fedora & cloud," i.e., more
than one audience.
Yes, but all of the non-Fedora cloud stuff winds up being in that
track as well, and it becomes something that a bunch of us have to
choose from. And it's the folks who have been busting ass to make
Cloud actually successful in Fedora - we're the ones who wind up
getting the most screwed. Because we care about Fedora, and we care
about Cloud. It's one thing to have a day-long track - it's entirely
something different to expand it to something large where we're
obligated to essentially be at one event or another.
* I fear that despite having it under "different branding" - even having
it at the same time as a Red Hat-sponsored "event" will give it the
illusion that it's going to be very Red Hat-focused - possibly
disenfranchising other folks from coming.
I'll be honest, I think (as with the original FUDCon), the CUDCon as a
brand is good enough it is worth doing battle with the "Yet another
*UDCon from Red Hat."
But as I said at the start, and is clear in the response, there are 3
points here.
1. Is it useful to have an open source cloud conference?
Yes.
I really like the idea of having a Cloud Developer/End user-focused
event, giving devs the opportunity to work amongst each other and find
common ground, ways to work together, and getting to hear about the gaps
that end-users are experiencing -- but I feel like having it be more
independent, and getting some key folks in from other communities to
help drive it and put it together, would make it much more
unbiased-appearing.
OK, let's keep that as a very serious option, that I just take this to
a stand-alone, new plan and discussion, then start pulling people in
from various related communities.
We did have what was more or less a "full track," so to speak, of
cloud-stuff at FUDCon this year, and that worked very well, even though
it was somewhat Fedora-focused.
My other major concern is "what happens if it's super successful" (oh
noes!) - how do we manage that with the limited Fedora budget that we
have, or where are we getting money to sponsor what could potentially be
another 100 folks showing up - as far as a "fudpub option", having
enough rooms at a hotel at a point when FUDCon itself has blocked off
only enough rooms for a Fedora audience, etc.
I'm using this open thinking process to bake a plan I'll be presenting
to platform and cloud product and marketing folks at Red Hat for
funding -- regardless of FUDCon connection. Do I think the FUDCon
connection makes it an easier or harder sell for those folks? Not sure
yet ...
So my go-plan for Milan is to scrape by with what I can find for
funding (very little) but prove the model, and use that to justify
actual budget for Blacksburg from $sponsors. Naturally, I'd start
looking for sponsorship first at home ...
Generally, I think it would be far better off as an independent event,
particularly if we want it to be an Independent Event - we can't say
that we want it to be for everyone and that it's not Fedora-focused, but
still want to leverage the fact that Fedora is onsite. I really feel
like it's one or the other, but doing both I think causes a big
distraction for FUDCon itself, and ties itself in a way to Red Hat
branding that really makes it not independent, no matter how much we say
otherwise. Even calling itself an *UDCon is essentially reusing names
that are given to other Red Hat conferences, which I suspect probably
would just give people the impression that it's going to be very RHT
focused.
Sorry to be all Negative-Nancy. Like I said, I like the idea - but I
don't want the idea, or FUDCon, to suffer - I think it could be very
successful as something that is more independent, both in terms of
attendees and output done.
You'll note in the proposal that one of the values of connecting with
a FUDCon is the chance to interrelate with the very developers who
work on both important upstreams and important integration points
(Fedora and RHEL/EPEL.) That's a value and focus to start.
I'm feeling like that is something I *can* deliver on by pairing with
FUDCon.
I can't deliver that equivalent value without pairing an open source
cloud conference with another conference.
Do we really need that value? Is the value of having 10+ Big Name
open source cloud projects not enough?
I see there is enough there-there to bring together some of the open
source cloud efforts to a conference, but what brings out the kernel
and packaging and release engineering folks from the various Linux
distros?
If we can get a conference that *starts* alongside FUDCon, there is no
reason it can't run alongside other distro-specific conferences.
And that brings us back around to the saw's edge that I think FUDCon
is at. It doesn't have to grow in size, but if it is going to, one way
is to figure out how to embrace the shared communities of interest.
Anyway, I'm not stuck on any idea other than the same one we all agree
needs doing, 'neutral-ground open source cloud conference'. Well, I'm
a bit stuck in not taking ourselves too seriously, which is why I want
to be all clever with the CUDonyms.
- Karsten
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