Open Stack

Please accept my candidacy for election to the technical committee.

Election season is both a time of intense activity as well as
(hopefully) a time to self-evaluate and commit or recommit to a personal
vision of OpenStack. OpenStack is exactly as we define it and I hope
many folks are taking a bit of time to consider their vision as well as
the meaning of one's personal work and efforts in that vision.

I'd like to share some of my vision as well as what I find meaningful in
my daily activities.

Vision: creating cloud software that our users can use
That's a paraphrase of the OpenStack mission statement (both in its
present form and in the form that is undergoing amendment currently).
The vision that gets me up everyday (or middle of the night if it is
Tuesday and I'm chairing a third party meeting) is that I'm engaged in
creating software that makes clouds and that our users are using. Now
many of my activities may seem far removed from the creation of software
parts some days but that is the motivation that drives my actions.

Some of my daily activities: answering questions in -infra, helping
folks debug logs, reviewing project-config patches and discussing design
of project-config related concerns, attending weekly meetings of other
teams, chairing two third party meetings per week

That might not seem like much, and I used to be able to do more things
that I could list, but some days it is all I can do to read backscroll
and keep up with the conversation in channel at the same time. Our
incredible growth has put us in a position of having to be in
fire-fighting mode in what used to be a few times per release, to being
in fire fighting mode once a week, to being in fire fighting mode all
the time. I'm concerned that our wonderful, incredible growth as an
entity is causing some teams to not have the time they need to
communicate with each other.

I'll add in here a quote I came across the other day from Viktor Frankl,
Austrian psychiatrist:
"Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the
story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the
whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact,
freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it
is lived in terms of responsibleness." Now Viktor goes on to say he
thinks the United States should build another statue, I'm not going to
hold my breath on that but I do agree with Viktor in as much as the
portion I have quoted here.

I think we as a community need to start taking a look at our
responsibilities, to ourselves as people, to our co-workers and team
members and to others in the community as well. Businesses don't decide
how we treat each other, only we can decide that. We are putting an
awful lot of pressure on each other and we don't seem to be allowing for
a pause.

Folks who are able to be effective in these circumstances have all
undertaken personal choices about how much input they can address at any
given time. Yes we need new contributors and those willing to teach and
mentor them are appreciated for their actions, but we also need to start
valuing each other again on a daily basis, some days for just continuing
to show up and do our best.

Good jazz musicians know the basic patterns of jazz but the most
important quality they have is to listen. To play with the intent of
pausing and letting someone else take centrestage for 8 or 16 bars, then
taking a turn themselves. Jazz works because of the ability to pause and
listen. I'm concerned we as a  group have lost our ability to pause, and
by extension to listen.

I don't have solutions, I do have some observations. I also am effective
at leading and moderating discussions. Any solution our group finds
needs to come from the group. It is hard to have a group discussion any
more, we have moved to talking points in order to get things done and
that is sad for me to witness, as I see listening as a group as a
strength. I also consider solutions coming from the group as a strength
as well.

One last point I will make is that operators are becoming more effective
at communicating their needs, to each other and also to developers. I
think there are some good structures in place to foster that
communication and I see that as a huge benefit to OpenStack.

Thanks for reading.

Please read all the candidate platforms and please vote.

Anita Kuno. (anteaya)