Community plans

Support
1

Hi all,

As I said last month when appointed as the new Community Lead, I've
been doing some planning around where we want to get to as a
community, and how we're going to get there. This is likely to be a
long email so…

TL;DR - events, blog, videos, metrics, open questions! :smiley:

So firstly I should say - none of this is set in stone! I absolutely
want input from everyone on what they want to see, issues they have,
etc. The end of this email will collect the open questions, and if
you're not comfortable replying here, my inbox is always open :wink:

Goals

Broadly, I have the following goals for us as a group:

  • More contribution – code, bugs/testing, docs, blogs, media

This is a no brainer ;). In particular, the level of testing done by
the community is astounding, and I want to continue to help foster
that spirit. Over the last few years we've moved to a faster release
schedule with less RCs, and we couldn't do it without you.

My goal here is to see all areas increase. It's easy to focus on code
in GitHub, and almost as easy to pull stats from Redmine, but we must
also recognise contribution in the documentation, translations, plugin
ecosystem, etc. Specific actions on this are listed below.

  • Healthy event programme of conferences and meetups

Events is something that, if I can be blunt, we suck at. There are
conferences all year round, and I'm sure many of you go to some of
them and talk Foreman stuff (maybe even give a talk on Foreman
stuff? hint hint :P), but our mailing lists and Google+ calendars
remain empty, expect for February.

My goal here is (a) broadcasting upcoming events so that the community
can get together more often at events, and maybe give talks on Foreman
(you'll have seen this starting already, using the [event] tag on
emails); (b) helping to get Foreman meetup groups off the ground in
local areas (ask me if you want to do this in your area, or if there's
scope to share with other local devops groups)

  • More discussion about foreman in general

A community generally improves as it grows - more people contribute,
and more diversity in viewpoints on ideas help to ensure the
solutions. To grow, people have to know about us.

This is partly linked to the above point about going to events, but in
addition, I'll call out the blog and youtube channel as places I'll be
doing some work - both myself, and with other authors.

Actions

With respect to the above, here are most of my projects/actions for
the next few months

  • Contribution
    • Gathering a ton of metrics so I can tell if we're going in the
      right direction
    • Building a demo system for new users to try and existing user to
      test bugs on
  • Blog
    • Convert to markdown (so community can contribute via GitHub)
    • Add more content to the blog, revamp old posts (like the ec2
      blog), look for guest authors
  • Video
    • Foreman beginners guide (as previosuly discussed)
    • Tips'n'tricks series (5min or less videos on cool tips, plus blog
      posts to match)
    • More case studies
  • Events
    • Share call-for-papers and upcoming talks to the -users list
    • Add confirmed Foreman events to the Google+ page
    • Broadcast relevant events on Twitter
    • Some kind of virtual/non-local events
    • Swag will be available for speakers and meetup organisers (don't
      get too excited though :P)
      • Speak to me if you're giving a Foreman talk or organising a meetup!

Open questions

Your chance to feed back info! Here are things I'd really like to
know, with my thoughts underneath:

  • What kind of non-local events should we do? IRC meetings? Bug
    squashing/triage days?
    • I like doing both of these, but I want to avoid event burnout
      where no-one turns up
  • What sort of blog / video content do people like?
    -Deep dives? Case studies?
  • Are people interested in conference/trip reports to the user/dev list?
    • Good conferences are interesting to hear about, for me, but others
      may not like the noise…
  • What things discourage you from contributing (or contributing more)
    • other than obviously not having enough time :stuck_out_tongue:
  • How can we promote plugins better? How do people currently discover plugins?
    • Would a plugin-of-the-month sort of thing be of interest?
    • What about some kind of forge-like plugin website?
  • Design participation - while we do get discussion around the design
    proposals in foreman-dev, I'm keen to make sure we're hitting all the
    right usecases. Input on how to raise their profile is welcome :wink:

I'm sure there's more that will occur to me, pretty much as soon as I
hit send on this email. So, I'll leave it here, and get started with
what we have so far. It's going to be fun, and I look forward to your
thoughts :wink:

Greg

··· -- Greg Community Lead, Foreman IRC: gwmngilfen
2

Greg,

Excited to see you running with this stuff! I run the the Austin puppet
users group and we have a thriving foreman community including myself so
we're always talking about ideas, issues and experiences. I plan on
starting to record more of this content and make it available beyond the
meetup and maybe even set up telepresence so people can watch it live.

One thing i've noticed though, is that there is a lot of "hmm" when it
comes to foreman… like "i didn't know it still existed…" "doesn't redhat
have xyz that competes with foreman" "didn't they just acquire ansible?"
etc…etc…

beyond this, i absolutely love foreman and i'm doing a full implementation
where i work and looking to storify my experiences and maybe even turn it
into a book. Is there any support for doing that? Get me in touch with a
publisher and i'll have a go :wink: otherwise, i mean just leanpub it and do
it out in the open and do a small kickstart to see if there is much
interest.

thanks for all your hard work!

-byron

··· On Monday, October 19, 2015 at 11:32:22 AM UTC-5, Greg Sutcliffe wrote: > > Hi all, > > As I said last month when appointed as the new Community Lead, I've > been doing some planning around where we want to get to as a > community, and how we're going to get there. This is likely to be a > long email so.... > > TL;DR - events, blog, videos, metrics, open questions! :D > > So firstly I should say - none of this is set in stone! I absolutely > want input from everyone on what they want to see, issues they have, > etc. The end of this email will collect the open questions, and if > you're not comfortable replying here, my inbox is always open ;) > > # Goals > > Broadly, I have the following goals for us as a group: > > * More contribution – code, bugs/testing, docs, blogs, media > > This is a no brainer ;). In particular, the level of testing done by > the community is astounding, and I want to continue to help foster > that spirit. Over the last few years we've moved to a faster release > schedule with less RCs, and we couldn't do it without you. > > My goal here is to see all areas increase. It's easy to focus on code > in GitHub, and almost as easy to pull stats from Redmine, but we must > also recognise contribution in the documentation, translations, plugin > ecosystem, etc. Specific actions on this are listed below. > > * Healthy event programme of conferences and meetups > > Events is something that, if I can be blunt, we suck at. There are > conferences all year round, and I'm sure many of you go to some of > them and talk Foreman stuff (maybe even *give* a talk on Foreman > stuff? hint hint :P), but our mailing lists and Google+ calendars > remain empty, expect for February. > > My goal here is (a) broadcasting upcoming events so that the community > can get together more often at events, and maybe give talks on Foreman > (you'll have seen this starting already, using the [event] tag on > emails); (b) helping to get Foreman meetup groups off the ground in > local areas (ask me if you want to do this in your area, or if there's > scope to share with other local devops groups) > > * More discussion about foreman in general > > A community generally improves as it grows - more people contribute, > and more diversity in viewpoints on ideas help to ensure the > solutions. To grow, people have to know about us. > > This is partly linked to the above point about going to events, but in > addition, I'll call out the blog and youtube channel as places I'll be > doing some work - both myself, and with other authors. > > # Actions > > With respect to the above, here are most of my projects/actions for > the next few months > > * Contribution > - Gathering a ton of metrics so I can tell if we're going in the > right direction > - Building a demo system for new users to try and existing user to > test bugs on > * Blog > - Convert to markdown (so community can contribute via GitHub) > - Add more content to the blog, revamp old posts (like the ec2 > blog), look for guest authors > * Video > - Foreman beginners guide (as previosuly discussed) > - Tips'n'tricks series (5min or less videos on cool tips, plus blog > posts to match) > - More case studies > * Events > - Share call-for-papers and upcoming talks to the -users list > - Add confirmed Foreman events to the Google+ page > - Broadcast relevant events on Twitter > - Some kind of virtual/non-local events > - Swag will be available for speakers and meetup organisers (don't > get too excited though :P) > - Speak to me if you're giving a Foreman talk or organising a meetup! > > # Open questions > > Your chance to feed back info! Here are things I'd really like to > know, with my thoughts underneath: > > * What kind of non-local events should we do? IRC meetings? Bug > squashing/triage days? > - I like doing both of these, but I want to avoid event burnout > where no-one turns up > * What sort of blog / video content do people like? > -Deep dives? Case studies? > * Are people interested in conference/trip reports to the user/dev list? > - Good conferences are interesting to hear about, for me, but others > may not like the noise.... > * What things discourage you from contributing (or contributing more) > - other than obviously not having enough time :P > * How can we promote plugins better? How do people currently discover > plugins? > - Would a plugin-of-the-month sort of thing be of interest? > - What about some kind of forge-like plugin website? > * Design participation - while we do get discussion around the design > proposals in foreman-dev, I'm keen to make sure we're hitting all the > right usecases. Input on how to raise their profile is welcome ;) > > I'm sure there's more that will occur to me, pretty much as soon as I > hit send on this email. So, I'll leave it here, and get started with > what we have so far. It's going to be fun, and I look forward to your > thoughts ;) > > Greg > -- > Greg > Community Lead, Foreman > IRC: gwmngilfen >
3

Hey Greg. I'm located in the D.C. area and my company is very heavy into Puppet and Foreman. I've been looking into putting together a write up or even do a talk on our trials and tribulations that got us to where we are now…and where we are going. I'm in IRC every day getting help from you guys, and giving help where I can (mostly on the Windows Smart Proxy).

We essentially started with an all in one implementation, which then broke out into 2 puppet masters, foreman/ca and MySQL backend. We fully used smart class parameters for everything, no roles and profiles, no hiera and no provisioning.

We then converted from the MySQL backend to a PostgreSQL backend but everything else stayed the same.

Now we have a fully built test lab which (as of tomorrow) consists of load balanced and highly available implementation of 2 puppet servers, 2 puppetdb servers, 2 foreman servers, 2 ca servers, 2 PostgreSQL servers and 2 memcached servers. We have fully implemented roles and profiles with hiera and are provisioning into VMware and EC2.

By mid November we will have this same architecture in production (with larger clusters) supporting ~2,500 Windows and Linux hosts.

You, Michael Moll, Dominic, Ohad and many others have been extremely helpful in this process and I am more then willing to share everything I have learned. I try and contribute where I can though it's mostly filing issues and testing patches I haven't written.

-Chris
IRC: discr33t

4

If you get a lot of these - maybe it's time to gather them all and put
answers to them on theforeman.org :slight_smile: What exactly confuses the Austin
Puppet group about Foreman?

··· On 10/20, Byron Miller wrote: > Excited to see you running with this stuff! I run the the Austin puppet > users group and we have a thriving foreman community including myself so > we're always talking about ideas, issues and experiences. I plan on > starting to record more of this content and make it available beyond the > meetup and maybe even set up telepresence so people can watch it live. > > One thing i've noticed though, is that there is a lot of "hmm" when it > comes to foreman.. like "i didn't know it still existed.." "doesn't redhat > have xyz that competes with foreman" "didn't they just acquire ansible?" > etc..etc..

–
Daniel Lobato Garcia

@eLobatoss
blog.daniellobato.me
daniellobato.me

GPG: http://keys.gnupg.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x7A92D6DD38D6DE30
Keybase: https://keybase.io/elobato

5

> Hey Greg.

Hey! Good to put a name to a face^W IRC nick :stuck_out_tongue:

> Now we have a fully built test lab which (as of tomorrow) consists of load balanced and highly available implementation of 2 puppet servers, 2 puppetdb servers, 2 foreman servers, 2 ca servers, 2 PostgreSQL servers and 2 memcached servers. We have fully implemented roles and profiles with hiera and are provisioning into VMware and EC2.
>
> By mid November we will have this same architecture in production (with larger clusters) supporting ~2,500 Windows and Linux hosts.

I think there's a lot of interest in how people are solving the HA
side of things just now. I'd love to talk more about either a
case-study / deep-dive, or a guest blog post on your setup (or maybe
both?), if you're up for that?

> You, Michael Moll, Dominic, Ohad and many others have been extremely helpful in this process and I am more then willing to share everything I have learned. I try and contribute where I can though it's mostly filing issues and testing patches I haven't written.

Those contributions are massively useful! Don't belittle it - without
you and everyone in the community who report and test things, we
wouldn't have the reputation for stability that we do (and that's
incredibly important when you're writing software that manages whole
networks :P).

Side note to others reading - this is a classic way to get involved :slight_smile:

Cheers

··· On 23 October 2015 at 04:30, Christopher Pisano wrote: -- Greg IRC: gwmngilfen
6

Maybe I wasn't clear. I run the user group and I talk about foreman all
the time. I read every post in here, watch issue tracker, read the blogs,
watch the hangouts and i'm practically obsessed with trying to
learn/discover everything it can do.

What i see is people who show up to the meetups generally are oblivious to
everything foreman and they hold old perceptions and a lot of it has to do
with how the market is working… Just for example at PuppetConf redhat had
a booth trying to sell satellite server 6… none of the dudes could speak
anything about foreman… (not even cloudforms or openshift) it's this type
of feedback i get at the user group.

In some ways, the easiest way i can explain this is that i have my own
voice because i run the user group and i can preach about all that is
foreman because i have this user group. I find it tough to grow beyond my
own echo chamber as a lot of conferences/events just have shown no interest
in talks like this… perhaps if i was more on the developer/product side
they would be accepted as a core-contributor vs a user story but who knows.

Within my echo chamber, we love foreman and austin has a growing
community… the meetup may as well be the austin puppet and foreman users
group :slight_smile:

··· On Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 7:08:17 AM UTC-5, bk wrote: > > Or.. who do we have in Austin that could go to the meetup and do a state > of the project type of talk? > > -- bk > > On 10/21/2015 07:01 AM, Daniel Lobato Garcia wrote: > > On 10/20, Byron Miller wrote: > >> Excited to see you running with this stuff! I run the the Austin > puppet > >> users group and we have a thriving foreman community including myself > so > >> we're always talking about ideas, issues and experiences. I plan on > >> starting to record more of this content and make it available beyond > the > >> meetup and maybe even set up telepresence so people can watch it live. > >> > >> One thing i've noticed though, is that there is a lot of "hmm" when it > >> comes to foreman.. like "i didn't know it still existed.." "doesn't > redhat > >> have xyz that competes with foreman" "didn't they just acquire > ansible?" > >> etc..etc.. > > > > If you get a lot of these - maybe it's time to gather them all and put > > answers to them on theforeman.org :) What exactly confuses the Austin > > Puppet group about Foreman? > > > > -- > > Daniel Lobato Garcia > > > > @eLobatoss > > blog.daniellobato.me > > daniellobato.me > > > > GPG: http://keys.gnupg.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x7A92D6DD38D6DE30 > > Keybase: https://keybase.io/elobato > > >
7

Or… who do we have in Austin that could go to the meetup and do a state
of the project type of talk?

– bk

··· On 10/21/2015 07:01 AM, Daniel Lobato Garcia wrote: > On 10/20, Byron Miller wrote: >> Excited to see you running with this stuff! I run the the Austin puppet >> users group and we have a thriving foreman community including myself so >> we're always talking about ideas, issues and experiences. I plan on >> starting to record more of this content and make it available beyond the >> meetup and maybe even set up telepresence so people can watch it live. >> >> One thing i've noticed though, is that there is a lot of "hmm" when it >> comes to foreman.. like "i didn't know it still existed.." "doesn't redhat >> have xyz that competes with foreman" "didn't they just acquire ansible?" >> etc..etc.. > > If you get a lot of these - maybe it's time to gather them all and put > answers to them on theforeman.org :) What exactly confuses the Austin > Puppet group about Foreman? > > -- > Daniel Lobato Garcia > > @eLobatoss > blog.daniellobato.me > daniellobato.me > > GPG: http://keys.gnupg.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x7A92D6DD38D6DE30 > Keybase: https://keybase.io/elobato >
8

Got… it… thanks! I appreciate the feedback on puppetconf, I will make
sure that I get this back to the organizers.

Perhaps Greg can help with extending the voice comments.

– bk

··· On 10/21/2015 09:13 AM, Byron Miller wrote: > Maybe I wasn't clear. I run the user group and *I* talk about foreman > all the time. I read every post in here, watch issue tracker, read the > blogs, watch the hangouts and i'm practically obsessed with trying to > learn/discover everything it can do. > > What i see is people who show up to the meetups generally are oblivious > to everything foreman and they hold old perceptions and a lot of it has > to do with how the market is working.. Just for example at PuppetConf > redhat had a booth trying to sell satellite server 6.. none of the dudes > could speak anything about foreman.. (not even cloudforms or openshift) > it's this type of feedback i get at the user group. > > In some ways, the easiest way i can explain this is that i have my own > voice because i run the user group and i can preach about all that is > foreman because i have this user group. I find it tough to grow beyond > my own echo chamber as a lot of conferences/events just have shown no > interest in talks like this.. perhaps if i was more on the > developer/product side they would be accepted as a core-contributor vs a > user story but who knows. > > Within my echo chamber, we love foreman and austin has a growing > community.. the meetup may as well be the austin puppet and foreman > users group :) > > On Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 7:08:17 AM UTC-5, bk wrote: > > Or.. who do we have in Austin that could go to the meetup and do a > state > of the project type of talk? > > -- bk > > On 10/21/2015 07:01 AM, Daniel Lobato Garcia wrote: > > On 10/20, Byron Miller wrote: > >> Excited to see you running with this stuff! I run the the > Austin puppet > >> users group and we have a thriving foreman community including > myself so > >> we're always talking about ideas, issues and experiences. I > plan on > >> starting to record more of this content and make it available > beyond the > >> meetup and maybe even set up telepresence so people can watch it > live. > >> > >> One thing i've noticed though, is that there is a lot of "hmm" > when it > >> comes to foreman.. like "i didn't know it still existed.." > "doesn't redhat > >> have xyz that competes with foreman" "didn't they just acquire > ansible?" > >> etc..etc.. > > > > If you get a lot of these - maybe it's time to gather them all > and put > > answers to them on theforeman.org :) > What exactly confuses the Austin > > Puppet group about Foreman? > > > > -- > > Daniel Lobato Garcia > > > > @eLobatoss > > blog.daniellobato.me > > daniellobato.me > > > > GPG: > http://keys.gnupg.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x7A92D6DD38D6DE30 > > > Keybase: https://keybase.io/elobato > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "foreman-dev" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to foreman-dev+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
9

Response in-line :wink:

> Greg,
>
> Excited to see you running with this stuff! I run the the Austin puppet
> users group and we have a thriving foreman community including myself so
> we're always talking about ideas, issues and experiences. I plan on
> starting to record more of this content and make it available beyond the
> meetup and maybe even set up telepresence so people can watch it live.

That would be awesome - let me know if I can help.

> One thing i've noticed though, is that there is a lot of "hmm" when it comes
> to foreman… like "i didn't know it still existed…" "doesn't redhat have
> xyz that competes with foreman" "didn't they just acquire ansible?"
> etc…etc…
>
> beyond this, i absolutely love foreman and i'm doing a full implementation
> where i work and looking to storify my experiences and maybe even turn it
> into a book. Is there any support for doing that? Get me in touch with a
> publisher and i'll have a go :wink: otherwise, i mean just leanpub it and do it
> out in the open and do a small kickstart to see if there is much interest.

I was looking at gitbook myself recently :). My big problem with a
book is this: how do I make it different to the manual (which covers
installation and basic usage fairly well), without being completely
off-topic or just a collection of anecdotes? I can't find a narrative
which works for a book without replicating most of the manual - which
would be out of date within a few months.

> Maybe I wasn't clear. I run the user group and I talk about foreman all
> the time. I read every post in here, watch issue tracker, read the blogs,
> watch the hangouts and i'm practically obsessed with trying to
> learn/discover everything it can do.

Epic! Bryan, send him some swag immediately! We need more power users
:). Also, input for the tips'n'tricks column would be welcome if you
already have a list of cool things you've found.

> What i see is people who show up to the meetups generally are oblivious to
> everything foreman and they hold old perceptions and a lot of it has to do
> with how the market is working… Just for example at PuppetConf redhat had a
> booth trying to sell satellite server 6… none of the dudes could speak
> anything about foreman… (not even cloudforms or openshift) it's this type
> of feedback i get at the user group.
>
> In some ways, the easiest way i can explain this is that i have my own voice
> because i run the user group and i can preach about all that is foreman
> because i have this user group. I find it tough to grow beyond my own echo
> chamber as a lot of conferences/events just have shown no interest in talks
> like this… perhaps if i was more on the developer/product side they would
> be accepted as a core-contributor vs a user story but who knows.

That's sad to hear - I really enjoy hearing user stories (even
PuppetConf had Walmart as a keynote, which I understand was basically
a user story, albeit for Puppet). I don't have any concrete
suggestions for improving how conferences decide on what talks to
accept, but I am very keen to hear what conferences people are going
to, where we might fit in, and who'd be willing to speak (from the
user community as well as dev community). If we can match those up
well, we have a better chance.

> Within my echo chamber, we love foreman and austin has a growing community…
> the meetup may as well be the austin puppet and foreman users group :slight_smile:

As soon as I get the event section of the website sorted, you'll be
first on there! I'd also be happy for you to post [Event] emails to
the user list for your meetup, since I'm already doing it for other
meetups (although these are one-offs for now). Please do use the
[Event] keyword though - it means people can filter the list if they
don't want to see those mails. This goes for anyone else running
devops-type meetups who may be reading this, you're more than welcome
to post :wink:

Greg

··· On 20 October 2015 at 13:24, Byron Miller wrote: On 21 October 2015 at 14:13, Byron Miller wrote:
10

Hey Greg,

I would definitely be interested in doing a case-study / deep-dive or guest
blog on the setup I built in our virtual test lab and what I'm building in
production. I reached out to our InfoSec/Legal department this morning to
see what I can/can't include and if I can even do it under the guise of the
company I work for. If for some reason they say no, then I would still be
able to, and very much willing, to take part just without any information
about the company. I think it would be a great experience either way and I
would enjoy doing it.

-Chris
IRC: discr33t

··· On Monday, October 26, 2015 at 7:22:57 AM UTC-4, Greg Sutcliffe wrote: > > On 23 October 2015 at 04:30, Christopher Pisano > wrote: > > Hey Greg. > > Hey! Good to put a name to a face^W IRC nick :P > > > Now we have a fully built test lab which (as of tomorrow) consists of > load balanced and highly available implementation of 2 puppet servers, 2 > puppetdb servers, 2 foreman servers, 2 ca servers, 2 PostgreSQL servers and > 2 memcached servers. We have fully implemented roles and profiles with > hiera and are provisioning into VMware and EC2. > > > > By mid November we will have this same architecture in production (with > larger clusters) supporting ~2,500 Windows and Linux hosts. > > I think there's a lot of interest in how people are solving the HA > side of things just now. I'd love to talk more about either a > case-study / deep-dive, or a guest blog post on your setup (or maybe > both?), if you're up for that? > > > You, Michael Moll, Dominic, Ohad and many others have been extremely > helpful in this process and I am more then willing to share everything I > have learned. I try and contribute where I can though it's mostly filing > issues and testing patches I haven't written. > > Those contributions are massively useful! Don't belittle it - without > you and everyone in the community who report and test things, we > wouldn't have the reputation for stability that we do (and that's > incredibly important when you're writing software that manages whole > networks :P). > > Side note to others reading - this is a classic way to get involved :) > > Cheers > -- > Greg > IRC: gwmngilfen >
11

That's awesome, thanks for offering! I'll drop you a mail and we can
schedule a time.

Greg

··· On 26 October 2015 at 17:56, Christopher Pisano wrote: > Hey Greg, > > I would definitely be interested in doing a case-study / deep-dive or guest > blog on the setup I built in our virtual test lab and what I'm building in > production. I reached out to our InfoSec/Legal department this morning to > see what I can/can't include and if I can even do it under the guise of the > company I work for. If for some reason they say no, then I would still be > able to, and very much willing, to take part just without any information > about the company. I think it would be a great experience either way and I > would enjoy doing it.
12

I already reached out :slight_smile: Awaiting PM back.

– bk

··· On 10/21/2015 10:31 AM, Greg Sutcliffe wrote: > Epic! Bryan, send him some swag immediately! We need more power users > :). Also, input for the tips'n'tricks column would be welcome if you > already have a list of cool things you've found.