AB Meeting/November 2014 Minutes

== Attendees ==
* Mike Woster (chair, LF)
* Sarah Conway (LF)
* Mark Hinkle (Citrix)
* James Bulpin (Citrix)
* Konrad R Wilk (Oracle)
* Dabiel Kiper (Oracle)
* Sherry Hurwitz (AMD)
* Larry Wikelius (Cavium)
* Antony Messerli (Rackspace)
* Philippe Robin (ARM)
* (some may be missing), please reply if you attended and were not listed
Not sure whether we had a quorum (I am assuming we did, because a resolution was passed), as I don't have an attendee list. Merely took the list of people that were mentioned in the notes I received
== New Member Discussion ==
Update on SUSE re: Xen Project AB membership: Mike will check in again and keep asking, but they keep turning down joining the AB.
[Lars - offline] SUSE let me know that they were not joining the project, due to Hypervisor neutrality. In other words, if they joined the Xen Project they would have to join OVA and maybe others in the future. See last minutes
 
Applied Micro said that they would get back to Xen, Mike in early December. Will check in then.
 
== 4.5 Release Update ==
 
Konrad: so many new features, hard to distill down.
 
Challenge for news release as well -- Sarah suggested that technical blog could accompany 4.5 news release to cover more ground. Konrad said he would start working on this.
 
== Security PR Update ==
No follow up questions/comments to security discussion PR recommendations.
Sarah: George stepped up to work on this. Working on security focused analyst and media pitch. Hope to schedule meetings in next 2-3 weeks for George.
 
== CP Process, Operations ==
 
Mike: new VP of Collaborative Projects joining LF, will get a chance to meet her at CollabSummit, starts December 1, hired CFO as well. Will ensure that client service needs being met, more structure, processes, organization in place, etc.
 
== PR Updates ==
 
=== 4.5 ===
 
Konrad: still on track to release 4.5 on Dec. 10 but will know after next week’s test days during Thanksgiving week. Konrad to keep team updated on any outstanding bugs that might push this out.
 
-Need someone to step up to do media and email interviews
-Intel and Cavium to provide quotes for release
-Suggest we do another blog that looks at quality improvements and security scan with Coverity data. Konrad to talk to George about this to see if he could provide some positioning on this. Konrad would back it up with data and stats.
-Go/No Go Date for PR is Dec. 1.
-Would begin sharing news release with reporters under embargo by Dec. 4th and 5th.
=== Speaking Opportunities ===
 
Mike and Sarah offered to help AB members develop content for speaking abstracts at 2015 events, especially upcoming LF events like CollabSummit (Feb. 18-20 in Santa Rose) and new shows we might want to target in 2015 (Automotive Linux Summit, June 1-2 in Japan). Happy to serve as a bridge between Xen team and program committee selecting speakers; they know what the committee is looking for and what will fit in with their agenda. Happy to coach the team to maximize Xen talks at our shows.
 
Sarah: will also be targeting a few general cloud shows in 2015, so may be in contact with different AB members for that. Feel free to seek me out to help develop speaking proposals for Xen and/or to co-present with Xen at shows outside of OS too.
=== Project Videos ===
 
Sarah: Xen videos finalized. Will send out update on how and when those will be promoted in the next few weeks.
 
Sarah: starting to dicuss 2015 plans for Xen blog, Linux.com contributions and speaking targets. Will expand to cover all areas of PR/AR and submit a 2015 PR plan.
== Membership Resolution ==
 
Resolution Passed on Membership Application for Start-Ups:
 
Konrad asked for clarification on need for five companies to sign up to grant one AB seat. Seat will not automatically go to the first member to sign up.
== Status Update and Priorities for 2015 ==
 
Lars sent assessment on how we’re doing since July prior to meeting:
•Developer community greater than 10 percent growth year over year - on track to meet this.
•May not meet 4 new members target: have 3, working on GlobalLogic and Applied Micro.
•Some movement on user community.
•Testing infrastructure moved forward.
 
2015 priorities and plans open for discussion, will continue into next month and AB meeting:
 
Mark: We are all generally interested in development of Xen Project, very developer heavy community, not a lot of end user support, this is where we fall down, worth discussing whether we focus on end user to help bring in more developers and diversify our base. As the type of community we are right now, is this important to us now? I have always intuitively thought we should have more active end user interaction, not so upstream but we have not been successful with this.
 
Larry: agree completely we talked about it on and off, able to articulate use cases, and specific applications targets, real-world deployment would go a long way in helping, don’t have magic answer, something we have to keep pushing on to get level of success we want.
 
=== Testing ===
 
How does everyone feel about progress, machines into colo in December, testing scripts and harness in place in early Jan. Does this meet our needs?
 
“We would love to see it earlier, taking longer than hoped. Sooner we can get it going, sooner we can get value from it.”
 
“The operational aspect of running this infrastructure has been quite painful to get this running. Will this be something easier to expand and manage that in 2015?”
 
Sherry: “Excited to see it come to reality, excited about it coming online for 2015. Would like to see it expand beyond x86 architecture, get some ARM 64 servers into the test bed, that would be great.”
 
Request for budget to expand to include ARM 64. Anything else behind ARM 64?
 
Could not hear ARM response.
 
Larry: This is key milestone for 2015 and we are well-positioned to help drive this.”
 
Citrix: “Transitioning to the harness, onto neutral infrastructure, pretty much ready to go.”
 
James from Citrix: Don’t have a good story on resources beyond test, what about the Wiki and other critical project infrastructure? It’s been handled ad hoc within Citrix by engineers and engineering IT with a gentleman's agreement. Do we continue to keep that agreement in place for Citrix staff or should it be something with the LF? Almost falling through the cracks right now.”
 
Konrad response: “I have not thought much about it.”
Agreed to discuss more at future AB meeting.
== User Survey ==
 
End User survey: something to discuss at next AB meeting.
== CollabSummit ==
 
CollabSummit: Who will be attending in-person? Should there be a F2F AB meeting?
 
Sherry, AMD: will try to plan for it, but in budget for it
Larry: yes.
Konrad/Oracle: not going.
Anthony: yes
Mark, Citrix: yes
Lars, Citrix: yes
James, Citrix, possibly not
Daniel Kiper : ?
Phillip: not sure yet?
 
Five who can make it, meeting space, do you want F2F AB meeting?
 
Mark: Not an official meeting, but good to get together, have more open conversation and hear about everyone’s priorities in a less formal setting.
[Lars - offline] We could do a dinner or some informal meetings. The AB meeting is on Feb 17th, the day before CollabSummit though. I will make sure that I fly before such that I can chair the meeting.
Category:Advisory Board