 Hello everyone. Just doing the ambassador community report. Martin's got the slide. So it's okay. We can read. So I guess we are going to do a recap of what happened last year and what we want to achieve for the next coming year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm just going to pass the microphone to Jacek. Oh, this is Jacek and I'm originally from the open technology group. And yes, it's nice to meet you guys. Hello, my name is Marcelo and one of ambassadors from Latin America and also in user group Brazil. Hi, I'm Erwin Galen, ambassador for Europe based in France running French user group. Hello, my name is Martin and I'm also ambassador for Europe together with Erwin and Christian. I don't know very much. We are doing this European region and I'm based in Budapest, Hungary and running the Hungarian user group. Okay, so we like to talk a little bit about the user group size worldwide. We have a little growth since Austin. So I guess there was around 86 user groups and we have now more than 100 all around the world. So yeah, we have seen a big growth in new regions, especially in Africa where we have a list of four new user groups and also in Asia and South America. So perhaps it's a new step for user group. At the beginning it was quite small groups, really technical. And now we can see lots of events, lots of, we have more vendors trying to integrate also the community. We've open stack there that spread over all these regions. So perhaps you can give the list of... Actually, we can check the growth. So the size of the groups maybe in the United States, Europe and Asia is not growing as much as it did previously. But I think it is not bad because... Yeah, we are seeing, the growth is still there but we are seeing a more flatter trajectory in the graph. But I think we can see the potential in the two new, two regions that are a bit smaller right now. So South America is also growing and Africa is also growing. So we need to make some focused effort in those regions. Yeah, we have a lot of new people from South America and also Africa. And these numbers is from Meetup platform. But we know we have a lot of other groups creating events but don't have a Meetup account or groups. And for example, South America have a lot of other groups in Uruguay, Chile, but they don't have a Meetup group. So we can see a lot of growing in other accounts but they don't have a Meetup account group. As an ambassador for any new group, it's one of the main missions of ambassadors is to improve and increase the activity of other groups. So we have lots of requests of organizers who want to start and the ambassador can get some internal resources, can try to find funds. We have special funds we can use also to help to launch groups. Most of them, we have some experience with this type of organization and we can give you advices about this. So you can find ambassador web pages on openstack.org and you have contact to ambassador. So it's very important for us to help you and to provide you the best advice to run groups. So we have also a tool created mainly by Martin called groups.openstack.org. So this tool is like a complete directory of the user group but it provides also some tools so you can perhaps give detail on the... Yeah, this group's portal is representing the groups all in the world but usually most of the groups are using Meetup.com to track the events and everything but we are using that portal also to collect some statistical data. So we can create those reports actually. It's also good for us to organize and to have a complete list to maintain, to give information for the foundation and also for people in the region to find which group exists and it's a group supported by the foundation. Yeah, actually. Actually it's in official user groups and what official user group means, it means that the foundation and the community is recognizing the effort of the organizers and basically stable user groups and well maintained user groups can get this title. And maybe we have six news since Austin, which user groups, do we know that? Yeah, in Austria we had eleven and now more six science in Austria. So this is on the group's official page. Okay. And about the new user group, so we said we have a group in Africa, so four new groups, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, South Africa. So we continue every region, there is a specific organization for events and so we have also to adapt, there is no common rules to say it's this way you will organize an event because in each country it could depend the hour, how to contact people, the way of presenting the event. So it's more a discussion you can have with us and it's more finding a way to improve the organization. So we've had one new group come from Asia, which is Pakistan. So there was a group previously there but it kind of, there was no activity, so new requests has come in. As we've approved it and now we are going to help all these groups along to become official, there is a process which has to be followed to become an official group. I think the link is there on the group's portal. Yeah, so we will share it in the community mailing list I think. Yeah, so everyone can take a look. But what we try and do is reduce the focus on one organizer and try and have multiple people running it. We also try and have some official means to contact the group like a mailing list or a Facebook page if you have an IRC channel. So the process is right here. So if you want to start a group and then over six months or a year become official, this is the process you need to follow. And I think regular meetups are the most important thing because once you start meeting regularly, more people find in interest, right? If you're meeting regularly, people will start coming regularly because it will become a forum to share new ideas and kind of talk to your peers. So it's very important to meet regularly. Also, when a group becomes approved, an ambassador is assigned to the group to help them through the official process. So if you have any doubts and you're running a group, please contact your ambassador or alternatively you can contact them. It's important also, some counters have only one group and some counters like United States have a lot of other groups. We can do one group only or more than one group per country. It depends on the size of the organizers. For example, Brazil have only one group registered, but it depends on the region we can create more groups also. Basically, we are really interested in healthy and long-living user groups. This is one of our goal, to keep them running. And sometimes also we discuss with organizers because in some cities there is few groups, so we prefer to let people together and to merge and to have initiative because most of the time we see one people as an idea to launch a group. So it could be quick at the beginning, but it's really important to be a team, not a team only with one company, but also when you want to organize an event every month or every two months it needs lots of time. So people who launch a group, the first thing to start is trying to get help from other people. So with this you will be able to run a group for a long time and it's very important to let your group here during the time. Yeah, basically during the last year, as I remember, we had some merge issues or a merge happened. In Vietnam group it is two groups. Yeah, and basically instead of competing groups we like to see collaborating people. So it is our interest and it is good for the entire community. So instead of doing worse and competition it is much better to focus on common goals. Yeah, basically I think a lot of user groups have issues with finding speakers. And I think if you are running a user group and like to find a speaker they submit as a good opportunity and go down to the marketplace and visit the session and try to get some very good speakers and try to invite them to your user group. So it is a fantastic opportunity that you can be here and directly contact with those guys. But we have this OpenStack Foundation speakers bureau page where you can find people who are available as a speaker. Yeah, for evening event it's quite difficult. So in this website you will find the country where every speaker can travel but for small event if you have a 30 minutes session it's quite difficult to ask for travel. But for OpenStack Day it's really easy and you will find people perhaps you don't know in your country. But also for some regions we organize sometimes some remote session. So it's not perfect to have a Skype presentation but if it's well organized with good bandwidth so it's something to prepare really not to do something quickly at the end and also the speaker it's good to have a camera for the speaker. So for Africa we have done this few times and people are very happy and we are also discussing with people but it's very important to have some good technical organization to have a good quality for the audience. So for some events you can use one remote session and two local session because most of the group are starting with one-on-one presentation of OpenStack sometimes some small workshops and after it's more difficult when we are trying to organize around topics to have an expert on Neutron, an expert on one subject. In some regions we have lots of contributors so it's quite easy to find expert on each project of OpenStack but in some other countries it's not easy. So this tool is good for big event and some countries also remote session can be organized. Okay and it is a little bit tied to the user groups and the committee somehow that we have OpenStack Days event all around the world. Yesterday we had this session about OpenStack Days event so if you missed it you can watch it on the video recordings or something but OpenStack Days event really I really help you to grow the community. So if you have some local communities in your region or multiple countries have very active user groups then it is very useful to start to organize an OpenStack Day event and bring in much more content and much more visibility for the entire OpenStack brand. I think the foundation is also helping people organize local events like the OpenStack Days event and they are helping with speakers and some financing also. So I think before you can start an OpenStack Days we would like to see some momentum in your user group being active for a while. I think becoming official is also a good part of it. So I think if you want to do an OpenStack Days you have to put in three or four months of hard work and book a venue. There are a lot of things involved. I think on this stage we've all done multiple OpenStack Days so we are aware of the difficulties of organizing these. So if you want to know more you can catch one of us after this talk and we can guide you with how to start one. The foundation can help in OpenStack Days also. We have some contacts. Denizi can help a lot of groups to create OpenStack Days and here we have a list of the next OpenStack Days through this year. We have more seven events already scheduled and for example Berlin, Cumberha, Natal, Montreal, Paris, Florianopolis, Salt Lake City. So our events are already created and we can create our event. So OpenStack Days events become official brand this year so usually we try to coordinate the dates in a region so if you're new you can ask one of the ambassadors if there is any coordination already happening so that you can get more ideas and schedule. I think these events, the day events are very helpful in getting momentum in your community and kickstarting it because we have seen that look, if you look at some of the ones in the past a lot of people attend them, you get to meet a lot of interesting people who have some good ideas and they present to you. Last year we had Jonathan Bryce attend the one in India and there was a lot of excitement around that. I think it's a good way if you're a user group organizer to kind of look to do this and help OpenStack grow in your community. Here we have some pictures from OpenStack Days. Some OpenStack Days have a hundred people or other OpenStack Days have a thousand people also. Like China, I think China is the biggest OpenStack Day. 2400. 2400 a lot of people so the OpenStack Days can be we've ever, ever sized and it's a good option to present OpenStack. I think before we move to questions I think there were some things we needed to discuss with regards to, there are some changes happening in the summit format that we need to communicate to our various communities and I think there were a few questions around travel support as well. I think all of us had them. So I guess we need to kind of collate the questions and ask the foundation because a lot of questions have come to me from my own user group saying what's happening with the summit? It's being, PTG is being separate. There is a forum also. It's just a lot of questions. It's a new format. Is travel support going to be dropped for PTG or is it going to be dropped for the summit? How does it work? So I think Denise is here so we can ask the questions indirectly and if any of you have any further questions? Yeah, I have a question for the audience. Who is running a user group or is your hands? Okay, super. So how many of you are official users? So I guess you guys can also help other people. So I guess you guys can also help if anyone has questions, you can always come to us but there are other groups who have gone through the official process. They might have a better insight into what is needed to become official. Yeah, so if we are looking for the future, I think we have more questions actually than answers. So definitely these changes will happen and we will have some tasks with the new logo, for example, for the next one year. So... I think there is also a new logo. I think there are some... We have to also discuss the format of the meetups because in India we've usually done a very long meetup but we're finding that fewer people are attending the longer meetup which is more than two hours. So we are thinking of doing smaller meetups which are like in an evening after office hours, maybe two hours, just one or two talks and gather for a coffee or a beer or something and it might be easier for people to come to that. I don't know what your experience has been but previously we used to do a full Saturday from like nine in the morning till five in the evening of meetup once a month and it's just that people are just... it's too much sometimes. So we might be looking at shorter meetups so if you guys have any feedback for that? Yeah, we have a microphone. You can meet Mike, it's okay. It's true, you do the meetup at... we start normally at three o'clock in the afternoon and we do four every year and we build it up to the open-stake day so we do it and it has all been aligned. So we are running the meetup for the open-stake Netherlands and we do also the open-stake day. We did the open-stake day in September, I think and we had 600 people over there, so it was great. So you have to make planning for a whole year and communicate every time about it and be aware that you are also using LinkedIn for making it aware and find speakers. Yeah, so we have speakers for... we plan for a whole year. So we are planning now for next year. We are a bit more chaotic, we plan like everyone. But in Europe it's difficult because in Germany you have, for instance, six user groups. It's all splintered. In the Netherlands you have only two. It's easy in the Netherlands. In Belgium it's a small one. Peter Dennis is running it. So start at three. Thanks. Thank you. So, yeah. Yeah, but we are recording just for the video record. Oh, sorry. So I'm Denise. Nice to meet everyone here. I also wanted, in addition to what you spoke about, I wanted to bring up to this group, we, open-stake does a lot of industry events. Open-stake does a lot of industry events. And I want to start utilizing some of the user groups and the ambassador team to help me find speakers. So for example, Martin, you know, you're working with me on FOSDEM that's coming up. And we haven't typically used the ambassadors or the end users, the user groups for help, but I think we really need that. So, you know, coming locally. And so we were talking about some of the events that are coming up in the Benelux area and there's an event, the World Hosting Days, that's coming up in Russ, Germany. And how can we have a presence there, for example. And those are some of the things I think I'd like to reach out to this group to help me find local people, local speakers, and then local support. And if you happen to have an event in your area that you want us to take a look at, then send an email. So I managed all of the 2017 industry events as well. And we have a complete list of all of the events we post. So I don't think you guys knew about all that, but yeah. Thanks, Denise. Yusuf, you had a question? Yeah, this is not so much a question. I represent the South African OpenStack user group. And it's more for me to tell you guys what we've been doing. The last six months we've held three meetings and people have been encouraged because of you guys' support. So I want to say thank you to all of you and the rest of the OpenStack family for helping Africa get on the map. We've been quite important to us and we're glad that we are part of the community. Thank you. I think no need to thank us. I think it's just the beginning, right? We've seen 40% growth in Africa. We want to make that 100% growth next year. So keep doing what you're doing and thanks for your effort. I'm Daniel Marin from Romania and I'm representing the user group from Romania. We have currently about 350 members on Meetup and 680 on LinkedIn. We currently keep about three to four Meetups per year. This year we make only two of them. We held one in February on 25th and we get about 100 people in. And the format is a short one. We're starting about 6 o'clock and until 9 in the evening. Usually we have three speakers. In this group we are two companies supporting. It's the Skylab, we are part of it, and Cloud-based Solution, which are a very strong community participant in Romania and also worldwide. So we are trying to balance and to bring more power to our group. And of course we are looking also for foreign speakers. Sometimes we are lucky, so we are able to bring two of them or one, depending on the availability. Unfortunately in the last period we were not able to plan a long period in advance. So we are doing kind of a short notice, but also we get a lot of attendance. So I just want to thanks for the foundation because they help us a lot with advice, with some prizes, with some money. So thank you, thanks. Thank you. So I guess if you are, as a part of the user group in India, we've also invited people who are not purely OpenStack, but might have an application running on OpenStack, or might have a product, like might be part of say, for example, NFV, OPNFV, right? So we've invited them for a talk at a meet-up, right? So it's always good to mix it up a bit and try and get some interesting topics like that, because the users will appreciate it a lot. Questions? Yeah, yeah, okay, I have a question from user group leaders. Do you have any special need from the foundation or from us? Pain points? Yeah, or do you have any pain points where you like to see some improvement, for example, or something that would make your work better? So question from Denise. Maybe we combine the OpenStack days to fit it in one week, for instance, to make it much easier to get international speakers for that. So I think we are doing it in Asia, right? We've got about ten days and five countries together, and I think it starts with Jason, right? So from Korea, Japan, India, China, and Taiwan. So we've got five days, five events in the space of ten days. So it's easier for international speakers to plan their travel. But it's like we are a part of a huge community, you know? So it's always good to maybe talk to a neighboring country's user group or if you have multiple user groups in your country to talk to each other and keep lines of communication open. But because at the end of the day, we are all working for the same community. So you can use like a community email list, and if you try to find other user groups in your region, we or Dennis can have an email. So in Asia, we started from email, and we created EtherPad, and we start to put all the dates and options from each user group, and we start coordination on that. So you can do the similar things. I think groups.openstack.org also has a list of all the user groups and who is the administrator for each user group. So if you want to reach out to someone, then you can definitely do it. And I think all the user group organizers are fairly well-versed in the philosophy of open source, right? So if you reach out to someone for help, chances are 99%, they will try to help you as much as they possibly can. So this is all about maintaining a healthy ecosystem and a healthy community. I do have one new case. So lots of people are using meetup.com, right? But that's not free, right? You have to pay a little bit more. Yeah, but I think we had this discussion for years now. So it is not so trivial to move in the meetup. They go to the portal because we have a little bit of hostages. They're trying to say, I have experienced with other open source projects, and they support meetup.com like the FIST. And I realized that then it's really easy for someone to actually create and use tools to start and launch their user groups in your country. So it will be trivial money. So I'm just suggesting it can be one of the good options from the foundation to support user groups. Yeah, I think the problem I have now is I have more than 5,000 members on my meetup group. How do I move them? I can't get everyone's email address. So if I want to contact them directly, I can't do it. I have to do it via meetup.com. So it's like vendor lock-in, right? I don't know how to escape that because it's very difficult. There are members who will only respond once a year. So it's very difficult to ask them to move. I don't want to lose communication with those guys. Yeah, so I have to... It's $70 or something, I just paid once a year and I forget about it because at the end of the day, I just feel like the community is more important than vendor lock-in in this case. Yeah, about tools. So meetup.com is not easy to move off from meetup.com because we have a big story there. But I've heard more and more user groups trying to use or using Slack for interactive chat, instant messaging. We have IRTC in the OpenStack community which is more open, doesn't require registration and stuff like this. I think it's important to encourage people to use standard tools like mailing lists and IRC rather than proprietary solutions, protocols like Slack which also has usability issues. You have to set up a page for people to register otherwise it's invite only. There is no, I think, possibility of logging while we use logging for IRC on eavesdrop.openstack.org. So I don't know if we... There have been a few discussions about this on some mailing lists but not a lot. What's your opinion as ambassador about this specific topic? So I think as almost all social media group tools are vendor logged in. Facebook, LinkedIn, there's nothing you can do. LinkedIn, if you have your LinkedIn group, you can't transfer it to some other social media. You're stuck with LinkedIn. It's just because they are SaaS products. Yeah, you can make an export of the email address. Yeah. I think it's just like SaaS products. You're consuming it. It's a utility. We are a victim of our own success, I guess as cloud users, right? Okay, I think we have time. So, yeah, we are almost done. But I think if you have any questions, you can reach us. Feel free to drop us an email or talk with us directly after this session. And we are trying to help and thanks for coming. Thank you.