[Xen-devel] Moving Forward on XenSummit

[Xen-devel] Moving Forward on XenSummit

[George Dunlap]

I wanted to let everyone know that the XenProject is moving forward with plans to hold XenSummit this year, one way or another.

There are two basic approaches the Advisory Board has been considering:  Postponing the even until later in the year, or holding a virtual event during the same timeframe.  Additionally, if we hold a virtual event during the same timeframe, the Board wants to keep the option open of having a smaller, in-person event later in the year, if circumstances permit.

Because the University of Bucharest has been very flexible, there is no rush to make a decision.  As a result, the Advisory Board has recommended that we spend time looking into the options in detail, and make a final decision around mid-April, 6 weeks before the originally scheduled event.

(As a side effect, the event webpage will have dates and places for the schedule as though we were still holding the event in Bucharest.  These will be updated when we know what we’re planning to do instead.)

# Physical and Virtual

The XenSummit is an important event for our community.  Some visible things that happen include:

* To allow members of the community to communicate to everyone else what they've been working on in the previous year, and what they plan to work on in the future

* To allow people to hash out technical issues in design sessions

Just as critical, the XenSummit allows an innumerable number of small "hallway-track" conversations, as well as plain social interaction -- filling out email addresses with faces and personalities, allowing the community to run much more smoothly during the rest of the year.

It is very clear that holding a virtual event will not be nearly as effective at those things as an in-person event.  However, given the current uncertainty, it's not clear that the world will be ready for travel later in the Fall either.  And if it were, there's a risk that many such postponed event will collide with other postponed events, reducing attendance.  Additionally, we would need to either coordinate with the University term time, or find another venue, which could be much more expensive.

Having a virtual Summit is much better than having no XenSummit at all.  So the decision to be made will be to weigh the lower effectiveness of having a virtual Summit against the risk that a postponed event will turn out not to be possible.

In the mean time, we are brainstorming ways to try to get as much of the benefits of an in-person summit as possible.  If you have any thoughts or concrete suggestions along these lines -- in particular, things that have been tried and worked well or poorly in other virtual events that you've participated in -- then please let us know.

To be clear, there is no thought of continuing to hold virtual events after the current pandemic has passed.  We fully expect to have an in-person event in 2021.

As always, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to share them with me.

Stay safe everyone, and look forward to seeing you all in person when things have returned to normal.

 -George Dunlap

Re: [Xen-devel] Moving Forward on XenSummit

[Rich Persaud]

On Mar 24, 2020, at 14:03, George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com> wrote:
> 
> I wanted to let everyone know that the XenProject is moving forward with plans to hold XenSummit this year, one way or another.
> 
> There are two basic approaches the Advisory Board has been considering:  Postponing the even until later in the year, or holding a virtual event during the same timeframe.  Additionally, if we hold a virtual event during the same timeframe, the Board wants to keep the option open of having a smaller, in-person event later in the year, if circumstances permit.

Due to variation in scope/timing of geo and company restrictions on travel, could some speakers present remotely for the in-person event?  

Could the Xen Summit CFP be re-opened for those who can present virtually, who may not have submitted due to travel restrictions?

Rich

Re: [Xen-devel] Moving Forward on XenSummit

[George Dunlap]

> On Mar 24, 2020, at 8:07 PM, Rich Persaud <persaur@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Mar 24, 2020, at 14:03, George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I wanted to let everyone know that the XenProject is moving forward with plans to hold XenSummit this year, one way or another.
>> 
>> There are two basic approaches the Advisory Board has been considering:  Postponing the even until later in the year, or holding a virtual event during the same timeframe.  Additionally, if we hold a virtual event during the same timeframe, the Board wants to keep the option open of having a smaller, in-person event later in the year, if circumstances permit.
> 
> Due to variation in scope/timing of geo and company restrictions on travel, could some speakers present remotely for the in-person event?  
> 
> Could the Xen Summit CFP be re-opened for those who can present virtually, who may not have submitted due to travel restrictions?

Hey Rich,

Thanks for the suggestion.  Opening up the CFP, redoing the schedule, and so on is a reasonable amount of extra work for the LF people to do (it’s quite a bit of machinery); and it wouldn’t really make sense to open up the actual CFP until we know that it’s going to actually be a virtual event rather than a physical one. 

I think a better option would be to tell people to submit talks as design sessions, once the design session website is up, perhaps marked with [TALK] in the title or something.  Then a week beforehand we can consider whether it’s worth moving some of the [TALK] slots to a “plenary-session” specific time, or just leaving them to be scheduled with the rest of the design sessions.

Does that sound reasonable?

 -George