[Automated-testing] RFC - Automated Testing Summit proposal

[Tim.Bird at sony.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Trevor Woerner 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 3:44 PM, <Tim.Bird at sony.com
> <mailto:Tim.Bird at sony.com> > wrote:
> 
> 
> 	If you are interested in this, please either respond to this e-mail, or
> (better)
> 	add your name to the wiki page under "interested in attending".
> Sorry,
> 	but expressing interest does not guarantee an invitation to the
> event.
> 	I'm still not sure, at this point, whether the summit will be open to
> the public
> 	or invitation-only.  It's all still in flux.  Suggestions or pros/cons on this
> 	topic are welcome.
> 
> 
> 
> At its most polite, wouldn't an invitation-only stance to an open-source
> project smack of elitism and clique-y-ness? While it might engender solidarity
> among "the chosen few", wouldn't it mostly serve to drive the majority
> away, who will end up implementing their own strategies?
> 
> Ironic, considering your stated goal is to unify the testing landscape, not to
> further fragment it.
> 
> Maybe ELC(E) should be invite-only too? If it's good enough for the kernel
> people...

Trevor,

Several projects related to open-source software have invitation-only
summits, so I disagree that ATS sets any kind of precedent.
There are tradeoffs in benefits and costs between public and
private meetings.

Keeping the attendance small helps keep discussions
focused and more productive.

Setting up a summit is a time-consuming and costly exercise.  I was
able to secure sponsorship for the event to get us one room for a
single day, that could hold about 40 people. Going to the next level, of a
fully open event, requires either more sponsorship or charging attendees.
This is logistically much more complicated, and adds overhead to the event in
terms of time and cost. 

I gave opportunity for people to express interest in the event,
and Kevin and I tried to include as many different projects as we
could, given the constraints, from among those who expressed interest
and those whose projects we were familiar with.

I have asked people who were not invited to the summit to provide
input in the form of their response to the Test Stack survey.
The event will be recorded by Linaro, and the videos published after
the event.  Kevin will be presenting the results at a testing microconference
at Plumbers a few weeks later. And we hope discussions will continue on the
automated-testing list to help develop the stack and any related standards.
I hope this will provide developers of other test systems with sufficient input
into this process.

I think it would be great to get a public conference set up, dedicated to
automated testing.

This is what I could do this time.

Regards,
 -- Tim