By Catherine Lefèvre – ONAP TSC Chair
The LF Networking communities from CNTT/OPNFV, and ONAP participated in the first ever LFN joint “virtual” conference as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference was redesigned from a 2 full-day Face-to-Face event to a 3 half-day virtual sessions. The sessions saw record levels of registrants (528) and attendees (370) with a diverse range of participants from operators, supplier companies, and universities, represented by 39 countries (36% located in EMEA, 35% from NAR/CALA, and 29% from APAC).
The event contributed to the communities’ forward progress thorough this unprecedented time as 60+ presentations were shared including 4 joint cross-community sessions.
The ONAP agenda was organized into four tracks – Presentation of the next release requirement candidates (Guilin Planning); Reinforcement of our “Security by Design” principles; Continuation of our ETSI/CNF alignment and Others (Demonstrations, Test Automation/DevOps, Doc, Lesson Learned, etc.). The OPNFV/CNTT community had an equally packed three days covering key areas like Reference Model (RM), Reference Architectures (RA), and Reference Implementations (RI); including initiatives like OVP.
I was impressed by the high attendance numbers, the quality of the talks, the community members showing respect for others, the speakers meeting their time schedule, the level of engagement and cooperation during these discussions.
I also felt re-energized by the enthusiasm and the willingness of the ONAP Community to evolve towards a cloud native platform.
A virtual “happy hour” was also held to conclude this event, promoting socialization, a bit of fun, and personal connections.
I encourage you to check out the 2020 April LFN Virtual Technical Event wiki to view the topics, meeting notes, presentations, and recordings.
To those who attended, thank you for trying our virtual event experience with us and sharing your feedback, we are all learning!
Based on initial comments, we will work with the Linux Foundation to create “more open collaboration time” for the next event along with other improvements.
Our next “Virtual LFN Developer and Testing Forum” is scheduled for June 22-25 to carry on the momentum. Save the date, stay tuned, and we hope to “virtually” see you there!