At the Vancouver Summit in May, we used some of our in-person work time to hear from potential Kata users on what they would like to see in the project, what blockers to use were, use cases they wanted to support (like particular kernel versions, etc). At the Berlin Summit, we have the opportunity to have these talks in a more “official” way by taking part in the “Forum” track.

The Forum track is a set of 40 minute discussion sessions (vs presentations) on particular topics that have been selected by a Selection Committee (made up of representatives from the OpenStack Technical Committee, OpenStack User Committee, StarlingX, Airship, Zuul, and Kata Containers[!!—see the next section for details on this bit]). The idea of the Forum track is to hear user and potential user feedback, and take that into consideration for future development cycles.

There is a period (now through September 12) of open brainstorming done via etherpad [1], as a community we decide what we want to submit by September 26, and then final sessions are selected by the Committee. Even if you will not be in Berlin, you can still add topics to the etherpad.

We are also looking for one Kata Containers volunteer to serve on this selection committee. Don’t be intimidated if you don’t know the ins and outs of the other projects in the Forum track. The main job is the make sure all sessions are discussion-based proposals that recognize the user-developer open source feedback loop (not sales pitches, etc). It’s ~6-9 hours of work in total, a few calls. You get to become more familiar with other open source projects and community members, and be a part of the design/develop/deploy open source cycle.

Let me know if you’re interested in volunteering on the selection committee or if you have questions about the process. Hope many of you will be able to make it to Berlin! [2]