Considering a Cloud MasterMind Group

[Brandon Wirtz]

I am considering putting together a Cloud “MasterMind” group.

Agnostic in terms of what tech could be talked about, (Amazon, Azure, Tier3 [cringe], Rackspace) and with a at least monthly Conference call to talk about a given topic.

 

Unlike this list the comments would not end up on 100 different spam sites so things you would say wouldn’t haunt you for the next 100 years, and if you said something smart you would only be sharing it with the smart people of the group.

 

A Nominal fee would keep the Looky-lous and the spammers out, and to cover the hosting, the Conferencing, and the administration

 

I operated one of these lists for Digital Video back in the day and it worked out well.  Is there enough interest from this community that you’d be interested in me starting one?

 

I’m interested in your thoughts and feedback.

 

-Brandon

 

PS I am sorry if promoting an alternate discussion group offends Google, but I think that we need a place where from time to time we can look stupid and not have people Google for it later, and a place where we can have a little more balanced discussion about the risks and rewards of the platforms.

 

PSS Said list would be free for anyone with an @Google.com @amazon.com @microsoft.com @rackspace.com address, and other cloud platforms that I deem mainstream enough to let in.

 

 

[Rohan Chandiramani]

Wouldn't an open wiki be a great solution.

This way the knowledge is spread to all to see like you have been doing, and it's in a managed place.

You could also put your face on top of every article to cover the costs and fame.

Even though... yours is not a bad idea either, but i wonder how much good it'l do if you create a closed community, users will be segregated instead and the users here might get a worse experience because all the smart guys moved on, in turn discouraging new users to cloud solutions.

In any case i'd still be interested in both options.

my 2 cents.

PS. IMO google shouldn't complain about promoting... hosting a cloud service without a best practice guide and letting users figure out what's best is not the way to do business.

[Brandon Wirtz]

For example our discussion about Dynamo DB. Or security concerns, or migration issues, I don’t really want in a Wiki.

 

The goal isn’t to compete with this forum, or with StackOverflow, but to take the non-Technical portions of the discussion, and the comparative questions, in to a forum where we have a little more control over the discussion, and where we won’t scare off the newbies.

 

It is difficult to build a community with the people who pop in and out of this group, and we don’t bridge over to the Amazon and Azure discussions. (I see pretty much none of you over there).

 

Also the hope would be that by having some Google and some Amazon and some Microsoft all going to the same place from time to time that we would all get a better sense of their philosophy.

 

Rather than solving “What’s broken with my code” the hope would be that people would talk about “Which PaaS is the best for this use case?” or “Which scenarios is Dynamo better than GQL?”

 

Also with moderation we wouldn’t end up with our emails in the spam lists as often. And people who are annoying could get a refund and be voted off the island.

 

-Brandon

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[Rohan Chandiramani]

I see where you are going now, and i think it's a legitimate and realistic goal.

Still i'm pretty sure there is a big demand for a best-practice wiki, but that's a different project then.

That leaves all the nasty issues to this board.

Do you have an implementation in mind, another groups or a reddit-like approach?

[Robert Kluin]

Hi Brandon,
So there are already several venues where some pretty talented users
hangout. There are also "office hours" held twice per month, these
sometimes attract decent groups and sometimes don't. There are also a
couple groups of skilled developers (sometimes including core app
engine team members!) who occasionally have informal "hangouts" (in
the Google+ sense) to discuss things.

I know some video logs from these have been posted to youtube so
that others can reference them as well.

There have been several efforts in the past to do things like this;
I've not seen any that really consistently attract a group for
discussions.

Robert

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[Brandon Wirtz]

Yeah but those are all Goog specific. They aren't "General Cloud".

Most groups don't have a strong moderator to keep the discussion flowing.
You may or may not notice, on days when there are no posts to this list I
make sure to post something to discuss, that isn't necessarily "a problem".
I do this to keep the smart people engaged, because if all the people
smarter than me leave, I'm just talking to a room full of people who can't
answer hard questions for me. :-)

But I'd like to get all those smart people engaged on a regular basis, and
help make them smarter.

Does that make sense?

I think I have talked myself in to it. I'll post details later, but I have
been up since I don't know when but more than 24 hours and I need to crash.

[Mike Wesner]

I really don't think you need to fill the silence with posts when this
list has a slow day. Generally people who work with different cloud
platforms are ok with visiting a couple of different discussion sites
to talk about each platform. I see no reason to combine them, but you
feel free to do so.

-Mike

> On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 08:00, Rohan Chandiramani <masterxr...@gmail.com>

[Rohan Chandiramani]

Stuff gets really boring really quick if this board only has issue posts.

[Richard Watson]

I used to participate on the Azure groups but haven't in ages. I'd be interested but probably not yet if it's too pricy.  I'm not working at the scale that my participation would be useful, but it's likely that the issues discussed would be actionable so I'd happily lurk.

[Brandon Wirtz]

I’m looking at $3 a month.

 

The price is really just so that I have a paid contract with every member so that I can enforce that members behave, don’t spam, and such, and monthly so when you screw up I don’t have to fight with pay pal or someone about the refund.

 

I’ve run groups in the past and they have done quite well at keeping a community going, and advancing all the members in the space. I don’t run them to get rich. I run them because people need a neutral ground that isn’t owned by a company with an agenda.

 

-Brandon

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[Richard Watson]

I belonged to a forum that was $100 per year. The primary benefit of the price was keeping jokers out. $3 might let them in, but is probably a good start.

Maybe ycombinator would have an interest since all their startups aim to have the problems you're trying to solve?

[Gregory D'alesandre]

I would happily join Brandon and take no offense in the suggestion that there might be better options than Google Groups out there :)

Greg

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 4:25 AM, Richard Watson <richard...@gmail.com> wrote:

I belonged to a forum that was $100 per year. The primary benefit of the price was keeping jokers out. $3 might let them in, but is probably a good start.

Maybe ycombinator would have an interest since all their startups aim to have the problems you're trying to solve?

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[Simon Knott]

Sounds a good idea to me, I'd be up for it.

Cheers,

Simon

[Dale]

I'm keen and don't mind paying a small fee.