POLL: Xen Summit and the Queen's Funeral

[George Dunlap <George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxx>]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Due to the Queen’s funeral, the first day of the Xen Summit (19 September) is 
now going to be a public holiday in the UK.  We’re trying to figure out what 
the best option is (detailed below).

*If and only if* you are attending Xen Summit, please fill out the following 
poll before Wednesday midnight:

https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/w8pI8KNpo9gxXSdUc0BwbvKiowzM8aL8ZBon7rrXf5U/

You don’t have to give your name, but if you do it will give us some confidence 
that there hasn’t been “ballot-stuffing”.

THE SITUATION

* The State Funeral for HM Queen Elizabeth II will be on Monday, 19 Sep. It 
will also be a public holiday; so normal office workers in the UK (such as 
those at Amazon, Citrix, and ARM) would normally have the day off.

* Official government guidance says: "There is no obligation to cancel or 
postpone events and sporting fixtures, or close entertainment venues during the 
National Mourning period. This is at the discretion of individual 
organisations. As a mark of respect, organisations might wish to consider 
cancelling or postponing events or closing venues on the day of the State 
Funeral. They are under no obligation to do so and this is entirely at the 
discretion of individual organisations.” [1]

* The Amazon offices will likely be open, but one of the conditions of the 
event was to have a 6:1 ratio of external attendees to Amazon employees.  
Additionally, the facilities manager wants to minimize the number of people 
working that day.

* We’ve already mostly consolidated the schedule into 3 days, with a 4th day 
for “Hackathon / Extra discussions”

* Many people from outside the country will already have booked travel to the 
UK to arrive on Sunday evening or Monday morning. It will be a “normal” working 
day for them: they may not feel comfortable taking it as a day to be a tourist, 
and working from a hotel isn’t very nice.

As far as I can tell, we have the following possible options:

1. Leave the schedule unchanged. This would require all the UK attendees — in 
particular the Amazon employees — to “work” on what would otherwise be a bank 
holiday. (Or alternately, would require arranging at short notice to suspend 
the 6:1 ratio.)

There’s also 1a: Leave the schedule unchanged, but get rid of the physical 
component on Monday. We’d always intended the talks to be virtual-first; we 
could just make it virtual-only.

2. Shift the schedule, so that the talks are on Tuesday, and Weds / Thurs are 
the primary design session days. This has two flavors:

2a: Shift the schedule, and leave Monday empty. This means we don’t have to 
worry at all about the 6:1 ratio; however, it’s not great for people who will 
have travelled here from abroad, and may have to work from their hotel rooms 
(or just take the day off).

2b: Shift the schedule, and make Monday an “Hackathon / optional” day: Open up 
the space for people who’ve travelled from abroad, but hold no other events. 
This would still require at least a few Amazon people to be willing to work, 
but the number would be greatly reduced. (Or alternately, it would require the 
6:1 requirement to be relaxed, but this might be much easier with the lower 
number of people.)

There have been arguments both ways; please give your thoughts, as well as 
specific ways in which each decision may affect you.  NB that not all options 
may be feasible.

Thank you for your patience and flexibility as we deal with this unprecedented 
event.

Peace,
 -George Dunlap

[1] 
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-demise-of-her-majesty-queen-elizabeth-ii-national-mourning-guidance/the-demise-of-her-majesty-queen-elizabeth-ii-national-mourning-guidance

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