Re: [LSFMMBPF TOPIC] LSFMMBPF 2020 COVID-19 status update

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Sat, 2020-03-07 at 18:54 +0000, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 10:56:11AM -0500, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> > Should we have LSF/MM/BPF in 2020 and COVID-19?
[...]
> If we have to learn from efforts required to continue on with the in
> light of the risks, we can look at what SCALE 18 is doing, taking
> place right now in Pasadena [1], their page lists a list of proactive
> measures required on their part to help alleviate fears and just good
> best practices at this point in time.

I agree Scale18x is the poster child for following WHO advice to the
letter, but there are crucial differences:

   1. Scale18x has a lot of local attendees, so the conference can go
      ahead somewhat easily with local content and local attendees.  We
      have no-one for LSF/MM/BPF in Palm Springs.
   2. Scale18x did have some issues with non-local content because of
      corporate travel bans.  The whole of LSF/MM/BPF is non-local content
      and would thus be significantly disrupted.

The big problem with 2. is that a lot of corporate policies at the
moment are unconsidered blanket bans.  Even corporations who do
consider better might still be stricter than the WHO advice.  So my
company, IBM, is saying events >1000 cancel and events <1000 use your
own discretion provided they're promising to obey all the health
guidelines.  If I'd been presenting at Scale18x I'd have had to cancel,
even though under our guidelines I can still go to LSF/MM/BPF

> The landscape seems positive, if we want, to move forward in Palm
> Springs then.

For a counter example, just look at the LF Member summit which was due
to happen just after Scale18x:

https://events.linuxfoundation.org/lf-member-summit/

and that's a smaller event than Scale18x.  Remember too that the LF
runs LSF/MM so if they decide to cancel, there's not much the
organizing committee can do about it.

James