Next week is the OpenStack Conference and Design Summit sponsored by Citrix in Santa Clara, CA at the Hyatt Regency. For those of you who have been following the registration saga, we originally planned a 350 attendee event based on the Fall event in San Antonio with 250 attendees; however demand for this event has been outstanding and we currently have 400 registrants with around 100 people on the waiting list. As an open community, we have searched for a mechanism that can allow us to have everyone who wants to attend be at the event while still managing to the hotel maximum. Thus, we have made some decisions on how the event can remain open to all interested parties while still managing to the budget and maximum size set by the hotel.
OPEN EVENT
At this time, the OpenStack community is declaring the event open to any attendee wishing to be at the facility with several restrictions in place for attendees not currently registered for the event or on the current waiting list.
RESTRICTIONS
- All attendees not registered or on the waiting list will need to register at the Welcome Desk with name, email, and organization. We need to track all people who are at the event; even those not registered. Unfortunately, we will not have any deliverables available to hand out to these registrants. You will be designated as an unregistered-attendee.
- All food service including meals, snacks, and access to the developer lounge will be for registered attendees only WITH A BADGE; BADGES will be checked at all event functions
- All “official” evening parties hosted during the OpenStack event are also for registered attendees only WITH A BADGE
- All sessions are for registered attendees with a BADGE with any remaining slots in a room made available for an unregistered-attendee (see below for more information on this process)
ROOM ACCESS
- All session rooms will be filled up by registered attendees with a badge
- At the start of each session, all available seats will then be made available to unregistered-attendees so they can attend that session
- Unregistered-attendees will go to a specific room at least 1 hour before any session to request access to a specific session by sitting in a specified location and waiting your turn. Once open seats are identified, people will be taken from that room based on their seating in the waiting room. We believe this method will allow as many unregistered-attendees as possible to attend various sessions
We appreciate the desire of many people to attend this event but are simply unable to accommodate the numbers currently planning to attend based on budget and space limitations. We hope this announced process still provides access to attendees wishing to take part but unable to register as we are sold out. I am a big believer in the benefit of the “hallway discussions” that occur during events and believe that opening up the event will encourage even more community members to share ideas with a variety of people leading to a more open and friendly community.
If you have any questions, please contact me directly or we can discuss further at the event next week.
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