[ANNOUNCE / RFC] Periodic Upstream Call for KVM

[Sean Christopherson]

I am "officially" announcing a Periodic Upstream Call for KVM, a.k.a. PUCK.
The intent of the PUCK is to provide a vehicle for having "in-person" technical
discussions of features, designs, problems, etc. that are cumbersome to discuss
asynchronously on-list, e.g. because something is too complex, too large, etc.

Exact details are TBD, and obviously can be adapted as needed.  Proposal:

  Frequency: Weekly
  Time:      Wednesday, 6:00am Pacific Time
  Duration:  60 minutes
  Software:  ???

My thinking for weekly versus fortnightly (every other week) is that we can always
cancel meetings if there are no agenda items, and bump down to fortnightly if we
are constantly canceling.  On the flip side, if we go with fortnightly, it'd be
more difficult to clear the backlog if PUCK gets booked out multiple sessions, and
PUCK would be less useful for discussing urgent issues.

As for the time, 6am Pacific Time was the least awful (and still quite awful IMO)
time I could find that gives the majority of the community a reasonable chance of
attending.  I know we have developers in at least the below time zones (and probably
more, though I don't think anyone works from Hawaii, and if someone does work from
Hawaii then they have nothing to complain about :-) ).

  PT   (6am)
  MT   (7am)
  CT   (8am)
  ET   (9am)
  WET  (2pm)
  CET  (3pm)
  EET  (4pm)
  EST  (5pm)
  CST  (9pm)
  NZST (1am)

The obvious alternative would be to invert the schedule and have the sync be in
the evening/night for Pacific Time, but to get 6am for ARM folks, we end up with:

  PT   (10pm)
  MT   (11pm)
  CT   (12pm)
  ET   (1am)
  WET  (6am)
  CET  (7am)
  EET  (8am)
  EST  (9am)
  CST  (1pm)
  NZST (5pm)

which is quite unreasonable for pretty much everyone based in the US.  Earlier
than 6am for WET is likewise unreasonable and will result in people not attending.
9pm for China is also unreasonable, but I hope that it's not completely ridiculous
and is doable enough that people can at least attend on an as-needed basis.  Sorry
Kai, as the sole representative from New Zealand, you get hosed :-(

Wednesday because holidays and (short) vacations most often land at the beginning
and end of the week.

60 minutes because I'm not waking up at dawn for anything less, and anything
more will likely have dimishing returns, especially for folks on the edges of
the time zone table.

Lastly, the big unknown is which video communication software to use.  My default
is obviously Google Meet, but I've been told that Meet is unusable in some
countries. :-/  My only requirements (beyond basic, obvious functionality) are
that (a) there's a web interface (no install required) and that (b) the calls can
be recorded.

To kick things off, I am leaning toward a "launch" date of May 24th (Pacific),
with KVM guest private mem (a.k.a. UPM) as the first topic.

Please chime in with thoughts and ideas!


P.S. This is an open invite, feel free to forward at will.  The Cc list is by no
means intended to be definitive.