[Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

[Ian Romanick]

On 09/27/2017 10:07 PM, Rob Clark wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 10:49 PM, Ian Romanick <idr at freedesktop.org> wrote:
>> On 09/27/2017 04:55 PM, Rob Clark wrote:
>>> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 7:25 PM, Ian Romanick <idr at freedesktop.org> wrote:
>>>> On 09/26/2017 09:57 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> First again big thanks to Stéphane and Jennifer for organizing a great XDC.
>>>>>
>>>>> Like last year we'd like to hear feedback on how this year's XDC went,
>>>>> both the good (and what you'd like to see more of) and the not so
>>>>> good. Talk selection, organization, location, scheduling of talks,
>>>>> anything really.
>>>>
>>>> Not scheduling it to conflict with another industry event would be a
>>>> good start.  This is the first XDC that I've missed in nearly a decade.
>>>> I know I'm not the only person that missed one or the other due to
>>>> scheduling fail.
>>>
>>> Sadly by the time we were aware of the dates for the khronos f2f it
>>> was not possible to change the dates for XDC :-(
>>>
>>> The XDC dates were set in Feb, and afaict the khronos dates were
>>> announced in July (?), so take this up with khronos ;-)
>>
>> Ok... so we're going to go there.
>>
>> Frankly, that's a giant steaming load of bull.  Blocks of hotel rooms,
>> multiple conference rooms for 500+ people, and catering for the Khronos
>> meeting was booked in late 2016.  We're already working on contracts for
>> the September 2018 meeting.  Contracts of this scale are really hard to
>> change.  There are 5x to 10x as many people at a Khronos face-to-face as
>> at XDC.  Events of that scale have a massively deep pipeline.
>>
>> Google was just unwilling to find a different dates for space *at their
>> own campus*.  That's really, really weak.  This is especially
>> infuriating because there are numerous Googlers who attend the Khronos
>> meetings.  Did the organizers poll any of them?  The XDC organizers
>> clearly did not even exercise due diligence to detect a possible
>> conflict.  If the organizers had cared to be aware of dates of
>> conflicting events, they would have known.
> 
> I have no doubt there is a long lead time on organizing large conf's..
> I wasn't calling that into question.  The July date was based on a
> quick search of my khr emails.  I couldn't find any earlier reference
> to dates, but I could have missed something.
> 
> If you had known of the khr dates, and brought it up in Feb (or really
> somewhat earlier, given that XDC is roughly same time each year +/-
> few weeks), that *might* have been early enough to move things.  But
> IIRC there wasn't much flexibility in booking such a large room from
> the google side either.  Plus also trying to fit around LPC/etc..
> Khronos isn't the only other conference to avoid.  Once the XDC date
> is announced and people have begun booking travel, we can't really
> move things.  Sorry, it sucks, I wasn't happy about it either, but it
> is what it is.  As far as other conferences that XDC attendees are
> likely to go to, and given the turn-out (by far largest XDC in NA), I
> think the dates worked out reasonably well overall.

The point of my original post wasn't to start a big to-do.  My point was
just that future organizers should be more careful.

Once school starts in September, other conferences stop.  I had always
assumed that was part of the reason XDC was scheduled the way that it
was scheduled.  There are basically two events from mid-September to
early October to avoid: LPC / kernel summit and Khronos meetings.  At
least as far back as 2008, XDC had always been able to avoid both.
Hopefully that long run will be repeated and improved.

> BR,
> -R