Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] Fixing the Kernel Janitors project

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 04:17:19PM +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> Having been stopped a couple of times last year when trying to bring
> some technical subjects for the reason that they were "off topic, KS is
> for process" I tend to agree :-)

We did have some technical topics last year.  So I don't think the KS
will ever be purely for process.

> There are some things that are hard to get through the list, or even
> IRC, such as wanting to reorganize some part of the core and wanting to
> get "live" input and discussion with most arch maintainers.
> 
> There are other areas like that which would benefit from that kind of
> hard core tech discussion face to face.

I agree that sometimes face-to-face discussions are crucial to
resolving technical issues.  The problem is that we try to nail down
the agenda a 3-4 weeks ahead of time, and realistically if a
particular topic requires certain stakeholders to be invited, we need
to decide that we're going to do that topic at least 8-9 weeks in
advance, maybe more, so those people can make travel plans and/or get
travel approvals.  And there is always the chance the topic will
resolve itself via e-mail.  So the trick is being able to identifying
the topics where a face-to-face discussion really will be useful.

> However, on the other hand, KS is only 2 days, which doesn't leave room
> for that much stuff. And I don't think splitting into sub-groups or
> mini-summits is necessarily the answers. There are some areas where it's
> useful to do the tech beatup -with- everybody in the room.

First of all, if there is interest in holding some topic-area specific
mini-summits on Sunday before the Kernel Summit, we may be able to
scare up some space.  So if there is interest, please let me know.

Secondly, one of the things which has been suggested in the past is
that we move the BOF's into an afternoon session slot, and maybe push
the last session to run until 7pm, perhaps.  That might make it easier
for people to attend BOF's on the spur of the moment --- which might
be useful in some cases where there is only 10 or so people you need
to hash our some issue.

And, of course, we try to schedule plenty of break time so that some
of these discussions can happy in the hallway.

Do any of these possibilities sound particularly attractive or likely
to address your concerns?  If so, which ones do you think we should
try this year, as an experiment?

						- Ted