 Okay, well now the official start sorry, that's okay. We're gonna wind back the last few minutes never happened Welcome to making meet-up magic growing the open-stack community through meet-ups Welcome to Barcelona for those of you who have traveled far. I think as most of us have I'm gonna do a quick introduction and we're gonna just dive right in My name is Gary Kvorkian. I am the I run the open-stack LA meet-up group and You want to introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Tosula Cacouris from IBM and I run the Seattle meet-up I'm Lisa Marie Namphee and I run the San Francisco Bay Area user group meet-up user group meeting. We'll talk about that moment My name is Ken Hood. I work at Rackspace and I am the co-organizer for the New York and Philadelphia user groups and I'm also an open-stack ambassador for Foundation Very impressive HPE I didn't mention Cisco either. So yeah, so okay Before we actually get into the questions, I'm gonna be asking the panel how many of you go to open-stack meet-ups Very impressive, okay better than Austin Because you have to or because you want to because you run them like us Oh, that was gonna be my next well That was gonna be the next question. Are any of you actually meet-up organizers? Okay, great. All right. We're Location Minnesota, okay Denver, oh also Denver so as well as okay. Oh, but you're the Denver proper not the Denver by Fort Collins I know you have like separate that out. Okay Right, right. Yeah, we're big fans of David as well and and and you and and you now why? I can guess but tell everybody else Cologne nice So what we're just gonna dive right in unless you have anything else you had you seem like you had something on the tip of your tongue there No, I just wanted to know where where they were I wanted to know if anyone was from Europe particularly and I know Christian is but I didn't know if anyone's run So you're for it. You're based out here. And do you run a meet-up or which meet-up do you attend? My favorite city in the world, okay, cool anyone else from Europe I mean, I know you're from Europe Chris. You don't go to the meet-ups in France in Grenoble. Oh, okay Okay Okay, all right, cool. Thanks everyone. So we've done this presentation But two or three times now we've done it. We did it at the Austin Summit We just did it a couple of months ago at Open Stack East in New York And we keep seeming to fine-tune it and see keep seeming to get on this calendar for the conference truck So we must be getting good feedback. So but I'm just gonna go jump right into the questions here and the first one I'm gonna toss out to Ken and that is What how does your group become a recognized meet-up because there are certain benefits to that through the Open Stack Foundation? Yeah, so I know that Organizes did you know that there's such thing as they officially recognize Open Stack user group by that and about I don't mean necessarily that you're on meetup.com Okay, I think you're the only one of the three, right? And yeah Yeah, okay, so there is a there's a process in place So I reckon an officially recognized user group just means that the foundation Knows the work you're doing and that you meet some of the criteria that the foundation believes Should be part of what a user group means in this community. That's simply things are like You you know is your group Organized and run by a single company, or does it try to pull in other companies? Do you have some diversity in? In that in the community itself and in the people organizing Do you talk about technologies that are relevant to open stack or is it mainly fender pitches? So things like you know, are you willing to? Reach out to do social media to let people know about what you're doing So there is a if you go to the open sec org website under the community page. There is that or community tab. There's a User group web page and in there there's a link to something called the official user group process And there's basically six things Only five or five out of six things that are required definitely required if you can check off those things And let your your open stack ambassador know you can basically be a consider a recognized user group and That having that recognition means that among other things on the website It would be an open stack website shows that you are recognized user group and you also get a special logo That's created particularly for your user group So just as a way to kind of show off and to let people know that you officially recognize so And you don't know who your open stack ambassador is there should be at least Probably One in every country for every continent sorry one or two for every continent if you're in in the Americas Basically on North America basically Sean Roberts is the ambassador for all user groups West of the Mississippi and I'm the ambassador for all user groups east of the Mississippi But it doesn't extend all the way Europe somebody else has that me And this is also information for all of you how you find your official user group because if you go to meet up calm You might get some of the rogue meet-up groups that aren't the official open-stack Sometimes people fork a meet-up. You know we don't like it But but that's how you find your official meet-up group near you as well that same community tab The reason for that is what we found is Well meet up calm you're familiar with it is very popular in North America. It's not necessarily Popular or used by other countries And so in some we've in some places actually Facebook a Facebook page is that is the preferred way to advertise their user group So we're so to try to Kind of normalize that We've created a user portal for every use official user group On off the open stack our website and that's part of the criteria for becoming an official user group You need to go in there for awesome information about your group so just because your information's and meet up calm or Facebook on Facebook doesn't necessarily mean that same information is on an open stack at all Yeah, and we'll get into some of the benefits that that provides a couple of questions down But while we're on the idea of meet-ups Lisa Can you explain quickly the differences between user groups and meet-ups? well, I Mean or the blending of exactly it can be the same thing. It is a nice habit I'm a strong believer that we're building communities and not every meet-up or not every user group is a community And so, you know, I will say that I lead the San Francisco Bay Area open-stock community Activities which is our user group, but it's you know, it's kind of two ways I mean, there's a lot of communities that exist on IRC meetup.com has actually very specific rules that you you have to meet in person You can advertise online meet-ups if you do too many of them, you'll get a note from them I've had this note before because I like to also offer content to the whole world And do online meet-ups and and you'll get a little note from the meetup.com people saying, you know our whole idea is for people to be meeting in person and But there's reasons for that because when you're building communicate communities You need people to participate in communities and it's a two-way street, you know You're not just taking you're also giving back And so I encourage people to make sure that their their user groups are also very active communities And D'Soula does a great job with this too She has a lot of social activities that are worked into to her meet-up even more so than me And and a lot of fun with it. And so it's it's a network of people that is actually a community Which actually segues really well into our next question, which I'm out of curiosity. How many of you work remotely? from an office you you Telecommute telecommute you don't go into an office Yeah, you don't go into an office because one of the things that we talk about a lot at our meet-ups is Sort of a remedy meet-ups can be a remedy for remote what we call remote worker syndrome And it's a chance to re-engage with people You know, I know that I work probably nine out and again in a given two weeks I'm probably nine to nine out of ten days at home and my most meaningful conversations tend to take place with my dogs and You know, you don't have that face-to-face contact. Yeah, but I'll let you you want to dive into that a little bit Yeah, so Seattle, that's a big thing over where we live especially the traffic is terrible in Seattle if anybody's been there or lived there and a lot of our employees and a Lot of the employees in the tech community at large do Not commute to work they they work at home or they work out of Starbucks or they work You know, wherever they can find a place to set up their laptop So I find when I first started hosting meet-ups I was new to the tech community and to the company which was formerly blue box before we were acquired by IBM and A lot of the people that would come to my meet-ups would say this is the first human contact Six months, you know, whatever and so I thought that was really strange at first But now I'm I'm very used to these folks coming that that really don't get out a whole lot on purpose And that's just their lifestyle But they love getting together with other members of their community because they talk to these people all the time or they talk to people, you know who are coding the same things and working on the same projects and and Working for toward common goals and they're out meeting people and learning about different companies because there's so many different companies Represented that come to our meet-ups That if they're looking to change jobs or if they're looking to advance in their own company They're they're meeting people that they may not have otherwise met so it's a very positive thing six months The weather must be really bad in Seattle worse than I thought Yeah, so another point of that some of the activities that we do with the meet-ups We change it up and not every meet-up is the same and sometimes, you know We're throwing open-stack a birthday party and sometimes we're diving really deep into into content And sometimes it's really technical and sometimes it's higher level open-stack 101 kind of things and sometimes we'll do Stefan created this upstream game made out of Legos And it was a game that that actually teaches you how to be a very good community member and participate in open-stack It was brilliant actually the way I won't explain to you so it take forever But but that was one of the things we did in terms of community building You know teaching people how to be really good community members specifically to open-stack because this was the open-stack meet-up So you can do things like that. Yeah so One of the things that's near and dear to my heart and we're gonna jump into One of the challenges that I think that every organizer runs into is how do you make these meet-ups happen from a financial standpoint? Yeah, I run open-stack LA. I Have never charged a member of penny to come to a meet-up. I think that's probably true across the board so how does it how do you do that how do you have food and drink and presenters and goodies and giveaways and Basically put on these free events for people now and I think each one of us probably works on a little bit of a different model So I'm gonna sort of go into what I do and I'm gonna let the rest of the panel sort of chime in on what they do I Don't like to use the term pay-to-play But that's sort of how I run my meet-ups as far as the sponsors coming in to give their content and give their Presentations and we're actually gonna touch on content and another piece but we've had some of the biggest companies in the open-stack community come to our group for present and The interesting thing and I like to point this out to the organizers is these resources are available You just have to learn how to ask for them Companies like HP rack space Marantis I Had IBM I wanted to say blue box, but I have to I have to be official now They have community outreach people on their event teams that are solely responsible for facilitating things like meet-ups providing presenters providing the funding for Pizza and beer for 50 people in your organization or in your group to come and meet at your facility So you just have to start it and look when I took over the open-stack LA group I inherited a group from someone who had started it. I had no clue and I think probably the hardest thing for me was learning to ask the question You almost feel like you're asking for a handout, but they're they will fly people out to your facility to give the Presentation they will pay for the food and the beer. They will bring boxes full of chachis shirts giveaway stickers The last time HP was at our meet-up. They brought a laptop for a raffle price and You know the resources are there You just have to do a little digging within each of the companies to find it But you know my goal is to always provide the meet-ups that you know zero dollars to my members And I work almost identical model to Gary actually the only thing I don't usually have to do is go out and find people because they approach me I get I have a waiting list actually of people that want to host or co-sponsor the meet-ups And so we provide the beverages they provide the food and the speaker and I used to do it that way But it was always getting very expensive for us because I have no way of cross-tracking someone for alcohol Or for the facilities or security late night keeping lights all that stuff So I could take someone's credit card for the pizza, but that was about it So now in the last year so I did that for two years at HPE in Sunnyvale and now for the last year I've actually encouraged companies to I've moved it around but in the not pay-to-play model And in the interest of building communities I make sure that if you want to host a meet-up that you are all you are also sometimes hosting a meet-up that you are not Presenting that like don't you're not just hosting and presenting your stuff It's just too tempting to do a vendor pitch and bore everyone and we lose our community So, you know, I always ask are you willing to host meet-ups that other people speak at and because there's also a lot of you Know we have community people like a PTL of you know Magnum Adriano came and spoke at our at our meet-up or thingy You know my pres or Morgan or that people will fly in and Rob Hershield last week, right? So they they are not with the company. I mean it wasn't a rack space thing It was an open-stack Magnum thing So those are the meet-ups that I want to have almost at least once a month And then I'll do maybe a vendor-oriented meet-up the other the other week I we do our meet-ups twice a month So so that's what I want to know Are you also willing to host a meet-up that has nothing to do with your company or your technology in the interest of community building? And if they are then okay, you can be on my list of potential sites that will move this around to So living in New York price similar to everyone else don't really have a problem getting people to want to sponsor and speak I think the challenge is probably more if you're not living in a fight one of the hotbeds for technology or finance How do you get people? So I had that challenge with Philadelphia Where I mean Philadelphia is not a small town, but it's not it's it's not New York so One of the things I've done is taking what I call a center city approach, which is the idea that for and I think that translates to other countries too In most regions there is a place a city. That's kind of like this the bellwether city the center city for that region so typically what I'll do is If some if a vendor is wants to speak in New York, I tell them they also have to speak in Philadelphia and Or offer them the opportunity to speak in Philadelphia and what I find frequently And it works because Since Even to this day most of the folks companies that have open stacks with speakers are flying them into New York Often from West Coast It's actually in some ways more economical for them if they can hit several User groups in the same week where they just fly in and fly out the same night So what I typically do is arrange to have a meetup for New York on a Wednesday And then the Philadelphia one on Thursday And when we used to when I used to help organize the Connecticut group We also had we had the Connecticut group on Tuesday And so we basically just kind of run the and speakers to each of those user groups and give them a chance to Do the same talk if they want to And that gave them an opportunity again to kind of maximize The audience they have and also to be able to say yeah They've helped support multiple user groups in a given week. We did a swap like that once too in Portland in Seattle We called each other as organizers and said we just had a really great talk And he said well, I just had a really great talk to you on a trade And so the following month they the Portland speaker came to my meetup and then ours went down there So yeah, I should work out a Pacific Rim thing Actually, that's how we help kickstart the the northern Virginia group. They were They were trying to find speakers and basically I had asked them to contact the Washington DC group and They already had someone from Ranta scheduled to speak in Washington DC So they were they that speak same it was was happy to go to the northern Virginia group the next day to speak at their First meetup Move our meet-ups from San Jose to San Francisco, which with our traffic in the very is probably as far as Portland Yeah, we'll talk about LA later I'm actually gonna jump because you guys are bringing up a topic that is a little farther down in our Our Question list but it kind of segues nicely because we're talking about getting speakers in the door What are some of the things? I mean, I know we're I think all four of us are relatively fortunate now that we have Highly recognizable groups and we have people essentially like you said to waiting to knock on our door to you know Try to get him present to the group when the group was young and you didn't have that sort of cache What did what were some of the things and I think applying to a new group? What do you do to find presenters? What what are some of the resources that you use to find presenters? How do you entice them to come to the come and present at your meetup? Just ask I mean they'll seriously Open the stackers will fly all over. I'm coming after you next you're coming to the thing I literally make a phone call and I'm like will you cut like Adrian lives by you? But I'm like come talk at our meetup project mountain hottest project open sec And I asked some of our engineers internally at my company because that's all I knew when I first started obviously Who they wanted to hear speak from other companies or from other places and they gave me some good ideas the other resource that I again point out to new groups or smaller groups that don't have that sort of Waiting list of presenters is the open stack foundation is just but then what about the last year created the speakers Bureau So there's actually a database of people who are willing to speak at groups It'll tell you whether or not they're willing to travel the things that they cover. So, you know, it's that's part of the open stack org I think it's actually in the community section or is it in the community user group section check out the speaker Bureau and You know, maybe start with people that are local to your group and you know, try to minimize trap You know travel for them, but that resource is available. So it's a great way to sort of find it And if you know there's a conference coming through your town grab those speakers at you know, during that week and Schedule your meet-up right around that conference. That's we did that last month with open stack Seattle Yeah, I am for my group but working with the guys that used to be met a cloud that are now Cisco We use like the meet-ups that happened right before the summits For people who've had their talks accepted to do dry runs And it's a great way for them to like rehearse their presentation and get feedback from the crowd and what might make it better when they finally get to the summit Speaking of meet-ups, that's why we're here What are some of your best meet-ups what what made some of your meet-ups stand out the one we did last Wednesday was like Rob Hirschfield came in from Austin and talked about Containers in open stack, which is an unbelievably hot topic and we've done like five of our last six meet-ups on containers in open stack But it usually was containers on the stack and he talked about Kubernetes as the underlay and it was Hacked I mean standing room only it was we had over 150 people there and And I've never had so many people come up to me before during after you know kind of just like wow This was an amazing meet-up and so I thought about that. I'm like what made it so amazing And and we had more than one speaker. I spoke and Rob spoke and John Starmer spoke So we had kind of a variety of different levels of of topic too because Rob was way in the weeds But I think the content I mean I'm a big big big on content and so If you have really good content, it's gonna make a really good meet-up and everybody loves a party of course But I think we're talking about the actual meet-ups so To just keep that content really really good and keep those speakers really good If you don't know anything about the speaker try to find them on YouTube and figure out is this person a good presenter You know and and variety is always nice too and flying someone in from Austin talk about a topic You haven't talked to it before but that it just happens to be the hottest conversation this summer makes for a really good meet-up So playing devil's advocate our party our fifth birthday party was the best meet-up I've ever had it does count because we did have a speaker and he did kind of a funny little take on you Know what's open stack gonna look like in the future and he played like with a back to the future theme And I gave away little duck brown Figurines under people's chairs and stuff I mean it was kind of silly but the great thing about that party besides the taco bar Which was a big hit was the fact that when Jesse was done with his talk People did kind of form into small little community groups Which is the point and they talked about what they're going through and what projects they were working on and what they Were having trouble with and what they needed help with so it actually ended up being one of the most Like one of the most I would say Beneficial working sessions that we've ever had as long as I've been the organizer so sounds borderline therapeutic It was really a great day So it's actually this several ways to define. What's the best? So if you want the most attendance just put containers That's true. Say say Docker versus Kubernetes versus mesos They'll probably get a lot of attendance In terms of most engaging it's probably any meetup we have with Where an end user presents? An end user's done that open stack deployment. I know those can be difficult, but our last meetup We had someone who used to work at TD Bank Talking depth talk about how they deploy how they deploy open stack and he was planning to give a 10-minute Presentation and up being a 10-minute presentation followed by a 30-minute Q&A Because users people want to know how things are done in the real world So my suggestion is and it's sometimes it can be hard to get users to speak So the rules I kind of give them is you don't have to ever mention your company's name Or even what industry you are although that's helpful. The other thing is I always offer to help them with their presentation if they've not a Seasoned speaker and the third thing I tell them is Keep it short as long as you're willing to take questions because that that kind of presentation kind of Almost makes itself just because of their experience that people want to hear about I know I find that Given the opportunity the Q&A sessions will generally sometimes last Much longer than the presentations themselves I periodically have to go through and just you sweep people out the building at the end of the evening It's like you don't have to go home But you can't stay here kind of a thing the alarm's gonna go off Which is true well these and remember these meet-ups that we're organizing that you guys are organizing are like mini seminars I mean when Rob flew in it was it was like a little open-stack days, right? Sonyville and people flew in for it as well when they saw the content But we asked the question, you know, how many people are going to the summit because we don't usually do a Meetup week before the summit because we're all going crazy with super busy But usually over the years, you know, there's been a fair amount of the room that is also going to the summit particularly from the From the Bay Area where I live and this time no one raised their hands There was 150 people in the room not one person raised their hand except for Rob Herschel and me and we couldn't believe it Like wow, but this is why we bring the meet-ups to you and people are really valuing these meet-ups as a free None of us charge except for sometimes in New York New Yorkers But this is a way to bring this amazing content to people who are getting their travels cut and who don't have the resources to travel As far and they really really appreciate it, especially when you have great speakers But again, it just brings the focus back to content and how important that is to the to the meet-ups Which means I'm putting you on the spot now. Yep Content kind of my thing. She's our content queen So I some of the advice that you give to presenters on Tailoring their content for the meet-ups. So the first few that I did Early in my career at Blue Box the the content was a little clunky the presentation wasn't a bad Presentation in any way shape or form But it wasn't organized for the type of audience that we have Some of the slides weren't done some of one person didn't know how to get their slides on the computer So now I just made it easier on myself, you know A couple months in said I'm gonna make a cheat sheet for every speaker that we accept and they have to Send me their abstracts of what they're going to talk about before I even announce it on the meet-up site Just be to make sure it's not a vendor pitch because we have had that happen And you get really awful feedback and then your attendance drops the following month And that's not a good thing for anyone So I make sure that I look at their abstract beforehand And then I also actually require them to send me their slides before they come to Seattle Just a to make sure they're prepared B to make sure what I just said They're not going to just talk about their company and talk about whatever product They're selling and then see to make sure that there's like a coherent Way that they're going to be presenting this and it's not either too short or too long because we've had both again Both problems in the past where somebody will prepare for something for 10 minutes And then there's two questions and we're just sitting there looking at each other with pizza and beer And then on the other hand there's there's a presentation My longest one went an hour and 20 minutes and I was just sweating at the door like we are never gonna get these The building in time I'm gonna get in big trouble and yeah anyway And then those types of presentations people have 50 questions afterwards and you never want to cut people off because when they're engaged That's the point right so I may be a little more pedantic than my colleagues up here about getting the content and Organizing the content, but it's worked in my favor ever since so I highly recommend Some sort of cheat sheet or bullet pointed list to give out if you're an organizer because it helps them to I Mean it can be as simple as finding out what kind of laptop they're bringing and how is it gonna connect to your AV system? We have our own laptop that we loaded on before they even get there That's the way I saw that problem we work on max in Seattle, which a lot of people don't so we have to make sure that that's taking care Before they get there Yeah, I'll say that from a advertised Advertising standpoint at the title and the abstract is the most important thing yeah, yeah, and It's I'm still surprised at how little thought to be honest sometimes some companies would it will put Into doing that they'll just know those will send something that says almost Nothing about what they're actually gonna talk about and then We don't modify they they wonder why sometimes send it back and say can you try it again? I'm glad I'm not the only one that sends some started on that people's bios will be three times longer than their actual abstract A lot Again, but I think that I think we've all experienced it at least once and you'll sort of learn your lesson of I'm gonna come and talk about x and by the time they get there. They're talking about why and it's That's one of the things that we sort of try to deal with as far as content is concerned is that we want to make sure that we keep the content relevant and One of the things we don't want our presentations to turn into is a marketing brochure For the companies that are coming. I have no issues and I know Lisa you and I've talked about this too about How much are you do you let them actually talk about the company? They're working for? And that kind of a thing but we really want the content to be relevant and we want it to be You know like you say lessons learned or whatever the hot topic is under the hood kind of deep dives, so Yeah, you do have the freedom to edit like Ken was saying you have to make it You know an abstract that people are going to want to come to see so therefore you have that editorial power to make Grammatically fix everything and make it a good advertisement. Yeah in general my role is If you come you need to talk about a technology in a vendor neutral way But you're welcome to Illustrate it either by presentation or by demo using your company's technology or which sometimes they honestly can't avoid Right, so a good example is when John came to speak in the East Coast He talked about cinder with open stack And then but then he used solid by as ill as example of how to use cinder and I bet they brought socks We always have great socks from solid fire pre-socks Yeah, I for me I don't have it as a measure problem I try to get more proactive rather than reactive like I call people and pick who I want to say I said will you come and speak at our meet-up? I do get vendors asking or people asking well PTL's never beg to speak my view I'm usually begging them but But the vendors will but for the most part, you know, you have control over what gets presented It's your user group that you're that you're architecting and so you want to make sure that you're giving them the best content So reach out and you decide and if you know The only reason I've had five of the last six conversations about containers this summer is because that's what everyone wants to talk about Last summer it was networking eight meet-ups in a row pretty much about networking and that was what was filling the room So, you know, you gauge your audience and your user community and then you throw in the Vendors here and there if they really are truly doing something that would be useful for the community to learn about Knowing that we're running short on time. I want to bring a point back to Lisa and this is something that is huge for open stack and that's diversity and What do you do to encourage diversity in the group? How do you foster it? How do you shepherd diversity within your group? What are some of the things you've learned? This is obviously a whole session and there About just that here and I think I just did a video blog about it from the Seattle user group Seattle days, so that's all out there on the Twitter sphere if you want to find it but But in general you I mean, it's it's great that Tassule and I are running are running the West Coast So that you have women We forget about LA whenever possible but you know having women organizing and speaking at these User groups is huge for having women wanting to attend these user groups and and participate And you know you want to make sure that your your presenters and the content that they're presenting reflects your community That you're trying to build and grow so I don't tend to see people's slides ahead of time like Tassule But I do encourage people to have slides that you know have references that that are going to be relevant to the people in the audience and you know not just all Stale mail and pale I've seen way too much of that from you know our company guilty as well So make sure that you know if you're giving references or examples You know if you have a younger audience learn something about what they're into like gaming or I know something cool I'd have to research that because I'm not cool But you know whatever the whatever the young kids are into or you know cultural references obviously if you're presenting in another Country figure out what is cool in that country? Little details that maybe only you and I think about like the food the food's a big one Seattle You don't have gluten-free and veggie food you're in trouble Yeah, I have veggie all the time the temperature of the room. It's always freezing this whole conference is freezing I'm just like clearly some man's at the thermostat because you see all the women running around like with five layers on right So we're always freezing like we just turn the temperature up a little you know things like that Just think about things that maybe don't only include one group. Have you seen the Trend change but like if you've looked at your group Absolutely I've only had two female speakers in my entire reign there and it's the same woman that's come twice Me and go are you gonna be there tonight because if you're gonna be there I'll go Yeah, and then when you see them there meet them introduce them to other people in the community do a little kind of mini mentoring Figure out what open-stack project they're into maybe introduce them to the PTL or other members of that project get them involved Make that connection because if you make that connection, they will continue to come and contribute and stay you want them to stay That's the big thing. So we're sort of in between party planner and Got a little tinder thing People with the right people not this is not swipe This is what happens in LA There is no tinder in Seattle like No, but I mean in far as like you said connecting people with the right people in the group getting them getting them hooked up with the Right people as far as being a mentor and things like that. Do you even have tinder in Europe? It's like Well, we've only got a couple of minutes left So I think maybe you open up a little Q&A Question we were supposed to make sure we save time. Oh, there was one. You know what there is one I want to do and this sort of goes back to content and You know right now. I think everybody knows that you know when when we first started taking over meetups I know mine was about two and a half years ago I forget how long each one of you been doing this You know the goal for open stack was to have the technology You know grow grow the community grow open stack Now it's turned into and I don't mean this in a negative way but it's be it's a business people are trying to derive revenue from open open stack and It's not so much about the technology anymore, but it's I think it's more about open stack as a product So how do meetups fit into that? Do we stay as we talked a couple days ago sort of true to our roots as far as the content of the meetups being? Very technical like I was saying earlier deep dives under the hood kind of talks hackathons Almost or do we start you know? Do they evolve as open stack has and do we start now? Sort of allowing that sort of vendor pitch to come into the presentations to come into the content Because ultimately the you know, I think for all of us the end game is to be able to turn this into a sustainable business and What is what role the meetups play in that? So how much time that is a really good question and I'd actually Love to know as the people that attend meetups You know what you guys think if you start going and seeing the vendors doing that because yeah If no one sells open stack then open stack is probably not going to survive So we do have a responsibility all of us in this room to help help open stack survive And so you know is the meetup the forum for that or is the meetup the forum where we're you know Still educating people about open stack bringing that open stack content. I guess my answer is it's it's probably a balance I think it's a little bit somewhere in between. I think if you don't I think if you just did vendor pitches all the time I don't I think you would lose your audience What I would say though is if you're going to do a vendor pitch or if you got just be super honest about it in your Abstract make sure that it's really clear that people know what they're gonna come and see because if people come And then all of a sudden they get blindsided or surprised by that. I think you're gonna lose your group. I Agree I Don't have anything to add Because we have more vendors than than others presenting as it is and we're doing fine So so like I said, like I try to tell them try to keep the technology But you can use your solution as a way to demonstrate now that now sure can be practically use kind of aside one of the things I've tried doing is In the East Coast Startups don't get as much love as they do on the Bay Area So one of the things I like to do is try to help Startups get some voice in New York and usually in New York unless is a unless is a well-known company like an HP IBM or Red Hat People don't turn out because they don't know who a plum grid is or Mid a core so one of the things I've tried doing fairly successfully is I try to pair up a Established vendor with a new vendor in the same meetup So to eat into a little bit of the time they have but it kind of gives an opportunity for For the new vendor to get you get an audience And to be able to get a hearing that they otherwise wouldn't so that's a way to me That's a way of trying to grow the the opens that I think I think it's interesting that you say that Because I think some of the best turnouts that I've had for my groups have been when Mitakura or Networks comes in and there's a presentation Because you because the audience becomes a little hungry for knowledge for what they've got Absolutely, the one thing I will say about protecting your your user community from from the vendor spam is Because we have almost 6,000 members in the SF Bay Area opens that community and not all of them are in the Bay Area so are Because we do a lot of the online we do hangouts We record every single meetup the content is up there And we also try to live-stream it if we can so that people from all over the world connect And if we don't do that, I'm getting panged. I think where's the feed? Where's the live stream? So because of that 6,000 user group number Vendors just go crazy and want me to email Things out to the 6,000 people and I get a lot of requests. Oh, will you send this out? We send this out I am extremely picky about what I send out to those 6,000 members. I Promise I will never spam anyone. I will only send it out if I really think it's relevant and will be useful to To the community so watch those as your communities grow and as the number grows because there's companies that just scan through Meetup and they just look at the size of meetups And then they just you know and they try to push things out themselves So make sure you have all those locks on your meetup comm page that you own That don't let people just spam your group. Yeah, because that's what I hear about I don't hear about it as much if we had the off off, you know vendor pitch live a couple of people We'll maybe say something but I hear about it if the email goes out like that Okay. Well, I now I know we're over time, but I will say I will ask if there are any questions Well, we're happy to address those There we go. Do you need him to do this on a microphone? Are you recording? I'll do this we can we can repeat his question to that would be easy So biggest challenge we have in Denver is we have a three co-leaders all of whom have heavy travel schedules and so the organizational aspect of that actually becomes a huge challenge and then getting someone all three of us are from different vendors but Getting somebody who is more on the user operator side to be willing to step up as an organizer is actually really really challenging And so it's extraordinarily difficult for us because we'll be like hey Shannon, you're gonna be in town No, hey, Pete. Are you gonna be around? No, I'm gonna be gone too. So what do we do? We can feel you. Hey, I just had this I just had this happen last month, but Gary take it and then I Well, I'll tell you right now I am and this is something that I'm addressing as we speak bringing on a co-organizer for me because I am a solo Organizer for open stack LA and it is a burden. I mean not in a terrible way But right now it's the fourth Thursday of the month. My group should be meeting tonight But I'm here talking about the importance of meet-up So there's a there's a certain irony in that and that actually happened. That's actually happened a couple of times But yeah, so my you know, so I feel your pain I'm you know Actually, I think one of the criteria for becoming an actual recognized meet-up group is you can't be a solo organizer and Is that still the case? Yeah. Okay, so so feel free to jump in on I have co-organizers in theory in name and one of them does do the Seattle open stack day Which is separate completely from my meet-ups, but he would he also travels He probably travels more than I do and so this happened to me last month I had to go to Texas to do something for work and I was already I already had scheduled the meet-up The vendor was coming they had already bought their plane tickets It's not going to go away and my marketing folks that usually helped me that perfectly know how to run it We're either with me on my trip or elsewhere on a trip So I panicked and freaked out and you know called in as many favors I could call in I ended up getting one of our open stack engineers to actually host it bribing with Target gift cards and Promises of beer forever and all that good stuff But he was lovely about it and and he obviously knows the community better than I do in many ways and was able to handle it But that said he didn't know the logistical side of it Even though he's been to probably five or six of my meet-ups He had no idea that I had to unlock the elevators and call for the food and you know all these things that have to happen with The speaker there's a lot of moving parts that people don't realize go into meet-ups There's 15 or 16 steps to every meet-up that I take so I wrote everything out for him It was actually a good exercise for me if that ever happens again because now I have this cheat sheet that I can just hand to someone and Make it happen. So it went off without a hitch. Thank God, but I worried all night. I didn't sleep I don't think he slept because I kept stressing him out. So yeah No, it's okay. So I mentioned I'm a co-organizer of a couple of groups So that's actually flowed out that center city model Getting speakers what I did was I basically made a deal with a couple of people so each of the cities Where I'm a co-organizer there is a on-site Like a person who lives in that area who doesn't travel all the time who and basically the way we divided was Those people that person or those people are responsible for on-site logistics making sure food and drinks so they interface with the vendor who's sponsoring to get credit cards because they know where to go and My responsibility mainly focused on advertising and getting the speakers So in that way Not only do I get someone involved with who's there locally and knows the area and can be there But often a lot especially if you're trying to get an end user to be a co-organizer They don't know who to go to to get speakers So I believe that some of that responsibility so they can just focus on making sure the The actual meetup happens and my challenge with the co-organizer had he been in town I still couldn't have passed it completely to him because for our company We have to have somebody from our company in the building for insurance reasons So even though he would have been probably happy to host he couldn't have locked the elevators I think and it's specifically the specific question you ask because you're saying you're having trouble getting someone to So I've been running the meetup for three years. I used to have two co-organizers They for the better part of the last three years They have been absolutely absent and I've done it pretty much by myself and it's it is so much work This is probably the time we can start talking about burnout, right? Yeah, that's our next session on burnout in Boston. We come to our burnout talk amount of work And it's it's a thankless job. No one really understands how much work it is or thanks You would all have day jobs which also bleed into the night, right? So then this is another job and so what I did in the last Couple of particularly the last year is I started moving the meetup around because when we do two a month So it's just an unbelievable amount of time. It's it don't feel like you have to do too much There's so much content to get out there and so many people want to speak and so many people that I want them to speak And so, you know, I want to do that's one of the reasons it's such a thriving community But if I know I'm gonna be out of town, especially I make sure that you know, that might be when I let a vendor Speak and present on their things if they will host it at their site and manage everything and do all the logistics And because I'll tell them I'm not even gonna show up. Why you're not gonna be there Yeah, you basically are so for the meetups that you have no one just Give them to someone else have you know have CA hosted or one of the big companies into HP One of the companies in Denver and they'll they love doing that They really love doing that because it's your community. You're bringing to them and people like road trips Do you host it at the same place every single time? We do too because it helps Well, that's what I was about to say I think that cadence is very important And I and I feel your pain because I've actually had Far fewer meetups this year than I had hoped to have simply because again as a solo organizer and struggling to find a partner You do sort of you miss that and then I get emails from the group what happened Why haven't we met for the last couple of months and I said, you know My dog has spent more time in the kennel than he has at home with me So, you know, I'm sorry about the meetup, but we'll get back on track and that's why I'm starting in January We're bringing on a co-organizer He's also part of my organization to address the issues that to Sue and Lisa have about being able to get in the facility Getting being able to take care of the locks and the elevators and security issues and all that kind of stuff So But it's good to have the consistency of when you're building your community What I it was a risk I didn't know if people would travel around and it turns out they will you know Walmart hosted one of our meetups And it was one of the most popular meetups again back to the having the end user speaking It was packed and you know IBM we've done a few there and we so the community will go I mean again people don't love change But they actually they like the variety like are you getting tired of beer and pizza because they might give you tacos It also it also, you know matters how easier places to get to our place is downtown in a location That's very near to our bus system in Seattle, so they don't have to drive if they do drive There are a lot of parking options nearby We did have one meetup that was across the water in Bellevue, and that was very poorly attended So we didn't do that again. We did try it and it failed, so we just didn't do it again But that's just Seattle. That's a unique test. I think the AV guys the AV guys are ready to go Jackets and they're picking up their bags and going home. So Obviously, you know how to reach any of us via Twitter handles If you have questions and you know need advice anything feel free to reach out to us Thanks for coming and staying so late on the last day of the summit. We really appreciate it I thank you to my fellow panelists and Give yourselves a hand