(bright intro music) >> Hello and welcome to theCUBE coverage of AnsibleFest 2021, virtual, hybrid, all online now. It's been a hell of a year. It's been going great with all the interactions. AnsibleFest 2021, Carol Chen is here. She's the Principal Community Architect for Ansible Community with Red Hat. Carol, thanks for coming on the AnsibleFest 2021 virtual coverage. >> Thanks for having me here, John. >> You know, one of the things about the pandemic I was mentioning, there's the online communities have been really, that have been online, have thrived. Developers know how to do virtual, and virtual, first, now is becoming a norm for developers. So the pandemic, although it's been a really big inconvenience for many, developers, actually, haven't been truly impacted other than the face to face interactions around hallway conversations and events. You're seeing a lot more community open conversations happening more than ever before, just the trend itself was hot. Now you have more people collaborating. What's the state of the Ansible Community right now? Because you know, online content at an all-time high, I'm seeing videos hit. I've seen a lot of content flowing. All around the internet seems to be more action. What's the state of the Ansible Community? >> Yeah, definitely. And actually, from the very start Ansible Community is a very much online community because of the diverse nature in terms of, you know, geographical distribution and just people from all of the world coming together. So initially, I mean, of course we do have like in-person meet-ups, which were a popular thing before the pandemic. That kind of took a little backseat and while it turned virtual, initially, people were like wondering what to do, but, you know, we are used to video conferences and online chats. So virtual meet-ups became quite a popular thing in the first half of the pandemic. So pretty much most of last year, we actually saw a slight rise in the number of, the median number of attendees at these meet-ups, because it's more accessible. You can attend from home, you can, you know, you don't have to go to a physical place to attend these meet-ups. However, this year we are starting to see some virtual fatigue and, you know, the numbers are dropping a little bit, but, you know, hopefully with the, some parts of the world are opening up and we are seeing some meet-ups coming into, in person again, depending on the region, of course, because it's not the same around the world. But I think that the need for people to connect socially is always there, whether it's online or in person. And the Ansible Community is pretty strong in that. And I want to stress that a lot of these meet-ups are organized by the community members, not necessarily by Red Hat or the Ansible team. So, you know, the desire to connect with other people in the community has always there and it's going on strong. >> Yeah, that's a good call out on the community side. I think that the affinity groups around the communities, self forming these meet-ups. >> Right. >> People want to meet in person, that's going to come back. You're starting to see that hybrid. But it's also, you're starting to see again, a fatigue for being like attending these virtual events. But at the same time, you're seeing the asynchronous consumption still go high, too. You're seeing, "Okay, I can do a fly by the event." Or if it's in person, "I'd prefer that." But there's still a lot more asynchronous going on, and a lot more opportunities to contribute. And you guys have done this contributor summits virtually. Can you talk about that trend? Tell me about the virtual contributor summits. >> Sure. So of course we have our regular community meetings, weekly, in fact. But the contributor summit is a place where we can actually gather, previously it was face-to-face, usually part of AnsibleFest, like the day before or after, depending. And, you know, to really, you know, hash out different discussions and more in-depth technical analyses of different parts of the project that we were working on. Even though, virtually, we are still able to do that, and we are, actually, able to increase in frequency of these events. Usually, it used to be once or twice a year, depending on whether or not we have, when we have the AnsibleFest. But last year we had three contributors summits. And this year, the third one will happen along with AnsibleFest in September, end of September, so in this week. So yeah, you know, there's definitely the advantage of making things easier to, for participants. But um... >> Talk about the vibe- Talk about the vibe of the summit. I mean, these contributors. I mean, what's it like and what are people experiencing? Are they just contributing code? They working on projects? Is it hackathons? Is it more, >> Right. >> What's the format of, what are people preferring? What's the best practice? >> So, what we want to encourage is not just one person giving presentations and like a one-way thing, but actually a dialogue. So a lot of these discussions are kind of interactive. So we use tools that allow people, not just like streaming one direction, but people can also appear on video and talk and express their opinions and join the discussions or in chat if they prefer not to show their face. But in any case, it's a lot of times it's not a full presentation, but perhaps an introduction for 5, 10 minutes. And then we go to discussion of a certain topic in-depth. So it's a very, I would say discussion-based, and also we are introducing a hackathon at this contributor summit, because I think it's quite a popular thing for people to get hands-on experience or work on something right away with people to support them then and there. So, you know, you can get results in real-time. So in actual fact, even before the pandemic, our contributor summits have had like, a virtual online component. So we were doing hybrid events before they were, you know, called popular hybrid events, but... >> Before they were necessary, it was cool. >> Right, Right. Exactly. So, because like I said, our contributors are from around the world, so we always made sure that they had a way of participating in the contributor summit as well. >> Yeah. I think that's really important to point out. I mean, I won't say it's cool to do hybrids necessary now because of the pandemic, but that format actually is interesting because you got a linear event that's physical face to face. Certainly that's super valuable when that comes back. But now that the online side has kind of been tied together with the simulated live asynchronous capability, you have this new format. Talk about how you guys are taking that to the next level around trust. Because one of the things about being face-to-face and then being online and knowing people is working together and getting a feeling of trusting each other, right? So, this is a- >> Right. huge part of community. >> How are you guys, now that we're more dispersed than ever, how are you guys handling, or facilitating and nurturing that trust equation? >> Right. So as a open source project, one of the key things is we do a lot of the things in the open. We, you know, the pull request, the development of the code is all done in the open. That's, you know, a very kind of implicit trust that you can have through that. And also the community meetings are open up to the public. Anybody can join if they're interested in. And even if you're not able to join the meetings because time zones or whatever, we share the meeting minutes after the meetings to everyone. Which brings me to, we actually started a newsletter for the community called the Bullhorn, since last April, I think. Because, you know, again, we are trying to explore more channels to be able to reach to different people who may not be able to attend in person, or even during the same time as the community meetings. So they can have this bi-weekly newsletter every two weeks that, you know, shares the meeting minutes. What has been discussed, the new developments in the community, the new collections, updates, new tools and so on. So definitely we see, like, we want to improve the communication to the community and ways that they can provide feedback to us as well. >> And that's called the Bullhorn? That's just getting the word out? >> Yeah, Bullhorn. Yes. Thank you. >> It's like the updates, like it's like, you know, a quick, quick executive summary of kind of what's happening. Is that kind of the vibe? >> Right, Right. >> Okay. Well, I want to ask you specifically, I heard about this new Community Steering Committee. What's the purpose of this? What's this evolving into? Can you give us some background on the purpose and the objective of the community? >> Yeah Sure. Yeah. We established the Ansible Community Steering Committee earlier this year, and as we were saying that the Ansible project is growing, so of course the user community, and also, they're very happy to say that the contributor community is growing. So, you know, we want to provide a better structure for the upstream Ansible project. And a lot of changes are taking place that we want to have some, a group of people to be able to facilitate that. For example, people are, want to make, create new collections, Ansible collections, for automated technologies that they are, you know, working on, or even contribute to existing collections that they have invested interest in. So what are some of the procedures and policies that are needed? Right? So the Steering Committee defines these procedures and make sure that the new content coming in are in compliance to the policies and so on. I mean, this kind of decision-making and stuff has been happening in the committee, I mean the community in an ad hoc manner, to a large extent, even before this. But having the Steering Committee will provide, to add more structure, like I said, and also guidance and accountability for the Ansible Community. >> That's awesome. You know, I love, first of all, I love your title, Principal Community Architect. And you know, one of the things I've always been a big fan of with Ansible, and now as part of Red Hat, is one, Red Hat didn't screw up Ansible. They let it become what it was and became really big with the combination. But the community has always been content driven. And now you've got recipes, you've got collections, you've got content, but the community piece is key. And right now, more than ever with the pandemic, community is more important than ever before. Open source is more important than ever before. How do you look at the architecture of how to sustain and evolve communities to be more inclusive and to grow and to survive and thrive post pandemic? What's your learnings? What's your vision on architecting community for the future? >> I think the key thing is to really find channels and ways to listen to the community. We talk about how to reach our newsletter or whatever, meetings to the community, but it's also what's coming from them. If we don't listen to what they have to say, we don't know what they want and how we can make the community better, the process better for them. I mean, I've been managing different open source communities before Ansible, but every community is different, right? I cannot say what worked for the previous community works for this. So I always try to reach out to the current members in the Ansible Community and hear what they have to say, their complaints, their criticisms, good and bad, because, you know, without those feedback, we cannot grow and we cannot improve. So, and I myself, I've lived in three different continents. So I know the struggle of whether it's like language barriers or time zone restrictions. So, you know, we keep all these in mind as we, you know, build our relationships with the community. >> And I think there's, I think there's a real opportunity with this new virtual standards that not yet emerged. I mean, you mentioned you've been doing hybrid, which has always been part of a physical event, which is going to become normal. But I think there's an opportunity that we're learning in this past a year and a half, where there are new, there are new things and there's, it's good, bad and ugly. I mean, there's been some really ugly conferences. Virtual's a bit painful. But there's also been some really nice moments where people are seeing interaction. So is there any learnings that you've taken away from this past year and a half that you can point to that you might want to share with folks watching around how to tap into the magical moments that could be enabled by, you know, the virtual and or bringing people together? >> You know, I myself, I'm a lover of technology, anything new I like to try. So definitely in this pandemic there's been lots of opportunities to try different technologies. What works, what doesn't work. I think, you know, just trying things out helps. I know sometimes people are resistant to change. I myself sometimes find it hard to change my ways in, in certain, you know, I'm used to this too. I want to use it most of the time, but. But anyway, you know, give, things a chance, but most, I think most importantly, is focus on the people. Because technology aside, it is the people you are reaching out to. Right? So again, listen what they have to say. You know? If this doesn't work for them, find out what they prefer, or you know, what, how we can make things better to improve things for them. So I always keep the focus on the people, on the community and, you know, give new technology a chance. And you know sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, but you don't know 'til try and yeah, just- >> Jump in the water is warm. >> Hope for the best. >> Come on in, water is fine. So the meet-ups are happening. >> Right. >> People are getting together where there, where there's a geography opportunity where there's not a lot of scaring, too much scare going on with the meet-ups. So that's cool. What, what is the current AnsibleFest 2021 key thing that you'd like people to walk away with Carol? Because obviously the momentum is continuing. The world needs to go on. We are seeing hybrid, and then we're going to end up coming out of this soon. What's the, what's the key message this year from the AnsibleFest 2021, from the community. >> That, Ansible is open, Ansible is, you know, open to contributions from anyone. And especially the Ansible Community team is working very hard to make things easy and accessible. So please feel free to visit Ansible.com/community for ways of reaching us. And, you know, use Ansible to automate your stuff, and then use the free time that you have from that to spend more time for your family and friends. >> That's great. Be open. Listen. Now you've got a Steering Committee to steer that ship in the right direction. Congratulations. Thanks for coming on theCUBE and for the update, really appreciate it. Again, props to the community at the Ansible part of Red Hat. You guys do a great job. And again, we'll see you on the other side of the pandemic and thanks for coming in remotely all the way in Finland. >> Thank you so much for having me. Its been my pleasure. Thanks. >> Thank you, Carol. I'm John Furrier for AnsibleFest 2021 coverage. This is theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (bright exit music)