Open Stack

Howdy folks,

I'd like to submit myself as a candidate for the OpenStack TC,

The reasons why are varied (and longer than I can list here) but it
really comes to my desire to see OpenStack succeed and prosper and
exist (in whatever shape and form) going forward in a way that is
sustainable for the companies consuming *and* contributing to
OpenStack. I believe the TC as it exists helps (or can help) act as a
guiding force that ensures that sustainable future (along with
everyone involved in OpenStack).

In my honest opinion times ahead are going to be a little ‘scary'
for some as alternative tooling (such as containers and container
services) come into existence that offer similar (and yes sometimes
more uniform and better) functionality than what we have via the
diverse set of OpenStack components. I personally don't see that as
bad, but what I do see it being is a thing called 'evolution' and we
need to ensure we have a strong set of leaders that is helping ensure
our relevance (whatever it may be) going forward.

I feel we need to ask the 'hard' questions like:

- Where does the diverse set of OpenStack projects & components have
   value in this evolution?
- Is it better to align with some other community and create alliances
   (a *united* cloud nation for example) that work well for both/all?
   - Why have we been resistant to such things before? What can
     we do better going forward...
- Are we learning from from operator difficulties, distributed system
   best practices (and other successful large scale distributed systems)
   so that we can architect and develop smart & sustainable solutions
   that *out of  the box* have zero to no operational difficulties?
- How do we get there (while still keeping our own ship afloat)?
- And more...

This may involve some changes in how our community operates and the
outreach to other communities that are becoming more popular and
widely used (and yes we may even need to slim down a little). I
personally feel it is the job of TC leadership to help guide our
community in this regard (and to make it a goal of *all* folks in our
community to do outreach, to produce great & innovative code and
products and projects that can be valuable beyond 'just being useful
in OpenStack').

Because one thing evolution has shown is that if we don't try to
evolve (and this evolution may be uncomfortable for some) that we
*may* (there's no fate but what we make) quickly become obsolete. So
instead we probably need to do some really deep thinking around
various questions like 'where does the community see itself in 3-5
years'?

TLDR; I'm hoping that being on the TC with others that I can help raise
       these kinds of questions and encourage the discussion (along with
       others) that starts to ask these hard and likely uncomfortable
       questions (and hopefully we can offer a clear(er) path for the
       general community as a result). Overall I hope we as a community
       try to rally behind a sustainable future where the majority
       understands our future evolution and the majority can get behind
       it and help *all* of us get there (it’s highly likely there will
       be a minority who will likely not be in agreement, that
       IMHO is ok and natural).

Thanks for my consideration,

FYI, harlowja on IRC, feel free to find and chat with me if you want :)

-Josh