Summit Review

Reading time ~5 minutes

Hello all. However few of you there may be… The summit was quite the whirlwind experience.

Sleep (Not!): Everyday I got up at like 6:30 so I could be headed to the convention center by

  1. Sleep wasn’t really a thing that happened much considering I wasn’t going to bed till midnight at the earliest. It was still awesome though. So if you are planning on going to the summit, don’t think you are going to get sleep if you want to build relationships with the community and be involved in all the daytime stuff too. It’s impossible.

Talks: So my talks actually ended up going really well. My first talk at the women of openstack working breakfast was the one I was way more nervous for. I didn’t eat anything beforehand because I felt like I was going to be sick. I almost got there late because I thought it started at 8, turns out it started at 7:20. I was so warm because I was nervous that I was overheating in my blazer so I took it off. But even with all of that it ended up being really well received. As dumb as it is I was amazed by how many people tweeted things that I said and how many new followers I got as a result. I was almost moved to tears during it when I looked up and saw how my words were affecting one of my co-workers. It was amazing to feel the connection everyone had in the room while I was talking. It was an experience I won’t forget anytime soon.

As for my other talk it went pretty well too. I was a lot less nervous and I’m not sure if it was because it was my second one that day or if it was because the topic wasn’t just personal. I’m not sure. I felt really proud that I knew what I was talking about and that I could give that knowledge to the people sitting in the room, but it wasn’t the same as my first talk. It was definitely a different feeling altogether. And even though the slides had a freak out during the section I was talking during it all ended up going really well and I was applauded for how I was able to continue on even with that technical issue.

I’m definitely already brainstorming talks for the next Summit.

Sessions: There are a lot of really interesting sessions about a ton of different things. I was sad that I couldn’t make it to all of them and tried to pack in as much as I could. Even with all the planning I had done ahead of time though there wasn’t anything I could do when sections overlapped one another. I tried to go to sessions that the rest of the people I knew weren’t going to so that I could cover more ground. I guess I’ll just have to work harder at cloning myself for next time. I learned a ton at the sessions I did go to though. The session on Docker and Cinder together was really interesting even though John demo didn’t work out like we planned. I learned a lot about live migration and how’s that works with NetApp drivers. I got to see some of my friends up on stage talking about all of the things that have happened in Cinder over the last release and where we plan to go in the future releases. I got to be a part of a heated discussion about splitting the design Summit out from the rest of the summit. I got to hear the debate about multipath between Nova and Cinder contributors. All in all there were a lot of good talks but I went to and know what I wish I had been able to make it to.

New People: I got to meet so many new people! All these big names in Nova and other projects I actually got to be in conversations with. I got to meet people whose code I review! Two people in particular came up to introduce themselves to me and thank me for my reviews and it made me feel a bit like a celebrity. I was really happy that they knew who I was and appreciated the comments I made on their patches. It really made me feel like I add value to the project. I also got to meet a girl that works in Hungary on Nova; she is such a badass. Kinda my new hero.

Cinder Folks: All I can say is that I love these guys. I really don’t know that I could have found a better team to work with. They are so wonderfully supportive and inclusive. They are hilarious and fun to hang out with. I feel accepted and like I belong with them.

Bats: Supposedly there are tons of bats that live under the Congress St. bridge… like 750k of them. We tried two nights to see them take off. The second night we saw maybe a hundred bats. Not gonna lie, I was expecting something like batman where they all go blasting out of their dark holes together. Maybe we just didn’t time it right. Oh well, maybe next time.

Shooting: Shooting was pretty fun. Good way to bond with a smaller subset of the Cinder guys, though I wish more could have come along. Walt was awesome, he was so patient with all of us talking us through everything, making sure we were comfortable with how it all worked. I got to shoot a 44 Magnum, and two other handguns, but they weren’t as fun as the competition rifle and the AK-47. Those two guns were AWESOME. Duncan’s reaction to the Magnum was hilarious and I thought it was even more funny when he tried to shoot it one handed like Walt did. That thing was enormous and my hand hurt by the fourth round, but it was still fun. The Cinder folks do some cool stuff together.

-Kendall

Background images from Subtle Patterns (Subtle Patterns) / CC BY-SA 3.0

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