[sn-cg] SNIA education session for OGF (proposal)

[Fred Maciel]

Hi,

     Here is a summary of my proposals in the teleconference today.
     I'd say that we agree that, as one of the requirements for SNIA and
OGF to deepen their collaboration, that SNIA needs to teach the OGF's
Data Area which technologies it has that can be useful for the OGF. The
current situation is that the OGF participants don't not know what SNIA
has to offer, so we have to start small. Trying to get a training
session at the SNIA Tech Center is not OK, since people would not be
able to justify the time and travel expenses. Doing something in OGF20
is easier since our target audience is there -- but what to do is the
question. Doing a one-day workshop is not OK, since people will have
other sessions to go (and until we have more interest from the OGF side
not many people would participate -- the DMTF once tried one of these
and ended up with only 3 people in the audience). Doing a meeting
parallel with OGF20 would "compete" with OGF20, which is not exactly
collaboration. So, my proposal is to do one or two sessions (depending
on the amount of material) in OGF20. 
     The objectives of the sessions would be to give a general overview
of SNIA to the OGF Data Area as a whole (wide and shallow, as the very
first step), and to try from the response of the audience to find some
WGs, projects and individuals to collaborate with (go narrower and
deeper).
     According to the schedule posted in the OGF site (URL below), OGF20
+ EGEE runs for 5 days. I presume that many people in our target
audience will want to go to the EGEE sessions on Friday, so Monday and
Tuesday seem less crowded and thus better days to do it.

http://www.ogf.org/OGF20/events_program_ogf20.php

     As it happens with any session in an OGF conference, we are
fighting with 6 other sessions for participants, so marketing and
scheduling are critical. On marketing, we need to invite all the Data
Area WG chairs, with an invitation that's *compelling* for them and for
their WG members, and to ask them to forward them to their WG's mailing
lists. (This could be done directly or through the Area Directors). On
scheduling, we need to put ourselves in a good slot without major
sessions in parallel. So, I suggest that we get support from the Area
Directors (and, I'd say, even Mark Linesch) before asking for Joel for a
good slot. The sessions should be part of the Data Area "track" so they
don't overlap with data area sessions.
     Finally, two pieces of advice, from my experience of promoting CIM
in OGF. First, we need patience and perseverance. Lots of them.
Promoting CIM took years, and promoting the SNIA technologies will take
time. Second, be aware that being unlucky is part of this activity
(namely, very few people might come to your session due to reasons too
numerous to list here).
     Comments please.

Regards,

Fred Maciel
Hitachi America R&D
www.hitachi.com/truestories