AB Meeting/March 2014 Minutes
Attendees
- Sarah Conway (LinuxFoundation, non-voting)
- James Bulpin (Citrix)
- Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk (Oracle)
- Daniel Kiper (Oracle)
- Paul Voccio (Rackspace)
- Richard Phelan (ARM)
- Mike Dolan (Linux Foundation, non-voting)
Quorum was not meet. Two motions were put to be voted on electronically:
Note Lars: Apologies for the mix-up with Daylight savings. I made a note in my calendar to be extra careful with the March meeting in future
Agenda
Holiday cover for AB chairmanship
Lars will be on vacation from Feb 26 - March 18 and won't be able to attend and chair the next AB meeting.
Mark Hinkle volunteered to take this over, but had to take a flight during that time.
Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk proctored the call.
Port-mortem Xen Project 4.4 launch
- What went well?
The ARM features, coverage of Xen having a leading development position. There was a lot of interest and also a lot of questions. The common thread was ARM and why does Xen (primary used in servers) expand in the ARM environment.
One answer is that Xen's familiar tools and models make the transition easy to manage. It also an heterogeneous environment and combined with virtualization it means no scaling up of IT departments.
There is also an interest in the ARM micro-servers. Richard mentioned as companies license ARM, they can comment more on this.
- What could be improved?
The whole process could be improved. The approvals, compiling data, review from Xen AB and publicity lists (sometimes conflicting) and an unclear definite go/no-go from leadership (Lars was on vacation) made it hard.
Sarah suggested that we could have more folks earlier in the review and brainstorm it before dispatching it for the review of advisory and publicity mailing list. Also have a nominated person to make a final call.
Action Lars: How many folks are in the publicity vs advisory mailing list?
Action Sarah: Prior to doing release notes have a brainstorm session with few folks who are interested and highlight features that make the bigger splash and toss the ones that can be done in technical blogs.
Action Lars: Figure out the go/no-go person for review of release notes.
The media interview were also fast and furious. There were email and phones ones. Knowing who would be responsible and who can do emails or phones was beneficial. Having this at hand will make it easier to dispatch the reporters to the folks who can answer quickly.
Action Sarah: Create a form/punch list of what folks can do and if they need approval - how long it will take an answer.
Lars() ACTION: Find out the numbers i
- What did not work?
Legally we cannot use the word 'Xen' as that is trademarked by Citrix. Linux Foundation holds the 'Xen Project' trademark and that should be used. However, it being a trademark it cannot be used as a noun but as an adjective. As such a style guide which would define the proper way of using it and make it consistent should be adopted. Best practices and abbreviation or acronyms would help. It won't deter reporters from shortening it to "Xen" but that it is OK - we just need to be consistent so that the reporters know what we are talking about.
Action Sarah: Style-guide for "Xen Project" trademark.
Nomenclature
See above about Style-guide.
Xen Developer Summit
The Xen AB meeting is happening on Aug 20th. Doing it in Chicago during the Xen Developer Summit could be done.
Action : Please vote "yes","no", or abstain for this motion. As we did not have quorum during the call it will have to be done electronically.
Linux Collaboration Summit
There will be reporters there. There are four virtualization slots that will have Xen related presentations.
Richard (ARM) will be there and can answer reporters questions.
Issues Round table
Linux Q&A
Sarah needs help on Q&A. Richard volunteered and Sarah also has a backup of Russ if she needs it.
Extra funding for OPW intern
Outreach Program for Women (https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen) is an internship designed to bring more women in the technical sector.
We currently have one slot. There are three possible interns for the Mirage project, two for the Xen toolstack code, and three for the Linux Xen subsystem.
With this amount of interest, and enough capacity from the mentors having an extra OPW slot would be quite beneficial. We have set aside money for $40K while each intern is ~$6K.
Action : Please vote "yes", "no" or abstain for this motion.
Action Round-up (Lars after meeting)
Action Lars: How many folks are in the publicity vs advisory mailing list?
Lars' Answer:
- publicity = 42 subscribers - it is a mixture of developers, spokespeople, a small number of AB members and ecosystem members (GlobalLogic, Cloudius Systems, ...)
- the list tends to be used for review of blog , Linux.com articles and to coordinate press interviews.
- it is a public list with a publicly available archive : so it is not suitable for anything confidential
- advisory-board = 32 subscribers (primary and secondary AB reps and some Linux Foundation staff)
- from a press release perspective it is intended for final approvals and final comments
The way how we have handled this in the past
- We used the publicity list and a google doc to establish a first draft of the press release getting input from the developer community and release coordinator
- We used publicity to coordinate the final timing and time-line for a release
- We used advisory-board for review of a second draft, arranging AB member quotes and get the final approval for a press release
What went wrong?
- From what I have seen we were a little too late drafting the press release, which made the process tight
Action Sarah: Prior to doing release notes have a brainstorm session with few folks who are interested and highlight features that make the bigger splash and toss the ones that can be done in technical blogs.
Action Sarah: Style-guide for "Xen Project" trademark.
Lars: Very good points and ideas
Action Sarah: Create a form/punch list of what folks can do and if they need approval - how long it will take an answer.
Lars: I think it would help if Sarah had phone numbers and time zones of spokes people. This will help with turn-around.
Action : Please vote "yes","no", or abstain for this motion. As we did not have quorum during the call it will have to be done electronically.
Lars: I will send out a proper vote with time options for the 20th. I will need to check meeting room availability first.
