[chef] Re: Re: Community Summit and some personal thoughts

["Eric G. Wolfe" < >]

On 10/05/2014 03:19 PM, Julian C. Dunn wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 12:36 PM, Eric G. Wolfe
> <
 >
>  wrote:
> 
>> The question was posed if there was an increasing tendency in 
>> introducing one's self at Chef events, such as the summit, by
>> asking "Do you work for Chef?".  I was also asked, "How do you
>> feel about that being repeatedly asked of you?" and "Do you think
>> this attitude makes people uncomfortable?".
> 
> Hi Eric,
> 
> I personally did not experience this phenomenon, so I'm trying to 
> tease out what bothered you about it. Was it the implication that
> your views carried more or less weight because you did (or didn't)
> work for Chef Software, Inc.? Was it the perception that you were
> being recruited to come and work for the company? Or is it
> something else?
> 

As AJ mentioned I understand that people, Chef employee or otherwise,
have an interest in my personal story and journey.  If I were wearing
a Chef t-shirt, or hoodie, its normal and expected conversation also.

At a certain point it starts to sound like one is an echo chamber, "do
you work for Chef?".  I heard about how this bothered another
community attendee and I wanted to ping the list to get some feedback
on whether this might be a real or perceived problem.

> As a Chef employee (who was a community contributor before I
> started working here) I do find the increasing requests for an
> "official Chef Software, Inc. position on X" to be annoying, as
> there is almost always no such thing. However, I've tried to be
> empathetic about it, and I've narrowed down the genesis of those
> queries to two factors:
> 
> 1. There is genuine confusion about the various ways to do X that
> have worked. This is often expressed as asking for "best
> practices". 2. Many folks in IT have long been told by their
> software vendors exactly what to do, and they don't know how to
> deal with a vendor that doesn't do that. Hence, some people are
> afraid to experiment for themselves for fear that they'll "do it
> wrong" and that their vendor will tell them "it's unsupported".
> 
I also find this annoying as well, as best practices are subjective
and discovered in practicing them.  The best thing that I may do, is
different from the best thing you can do.  We often have different
realities and business requirements.

> To point #2: I hope that we never become a company like that. If
> you are using Chef, you are "supported". If you have a commercial 
> relationship with the company & call for help, we might recommend 
> optimizations that you could make, but we'll never say "you're
> doing it wrong and you are unsupported".
> 
> To point #1: as a community (and as a company) we could do a
> better job of documenting "things that worked for people" and
> collecting that in a central place. Not quite sure what that place
> would be, but it's almost like we need an IBM developerWorks for
> Chef.
> 
> - Julian
>